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When was the last time you stopped to admire all the examples of great design around you?
Autodesk challenged 13 – 24 year olds to take a picture of exceptional design and enhance them usingAutodesk® Pixlr® Express – a free, powerful and easy-to-use photo editing tool.
The result – Over 900 youth from 24 countries around the world shared their personalized photos in the Snap, Style & Share competition.
“What’s powerful about platforms like Snap, Style & Share is how by simply putting a consumer app into the hands of students, we provide them with tools to express their unlimited creativity and potentially inspire them towards careers in design or to being lifelong design hobbyists,” said Naman Khan, director of Secondary Education, Autodesk.
Nine entries impressed the prestigious panel of judges with their ingenuity, visual impact and skill. Come January 2014, they will be exhibited at the Autodesk Gallery on One Market Street in San Francisco alongside other select and innovative work by Autodesk customers.
“It’s inspiring to see the world through the lens of youth from around the world, and how participants were able to inject their own creative expression into their photos using Pixlr Express in both dramatic and subtle ways,” said Eric Suesz, judge and Pixlr community manager, Autodesk.
The winner also received constructive artistic and technical reviews by artists, Henry and Fong Lien. Henry is the owner and director of Glass Garage Gallery in Los Angeles, while Fong is the Vice President of the Taiwanese American Photographic Association.
Read extracts of the creative reviews for each entry, and visit the Snap, Style & Share Gallery to see all the submissions for the competition. You can also share your thoughts with us on the Autodesk Students Facebook page today!
Competition Category: 13-15 years old
Grand Prize: Ricky from USA
“This is a vibrant picture. The processed image eliminates almost all of the natural colors from the original photograph, and introduces a psychedelic color scheme and added swirls that accentuate the sense of motion that is inherent in the subject matter.” – Henry & Fong Lien
First Prize: Emily from USA
“Emily has taking a striking image, and preserved the natural colors of the tree while introducing a cosmic trippy theme accentuated by the celestial overlay. The creation of a frame-within-a-frame gives viewers the impression that we’re looking through a lens that shows a greater reality.
Overall, it might have worked to even better effect if the overlay were limited only within the borders of the frame within the frame, thereby accentuating the theme of being able to view a different, greater world through the inner frame.” – Henry & Fong Lien
Special Prize for Inspirational Creativity: Ruby, USA
“Thematically, the use of the hole cut out of the paper creates a nice metaphor about necessity being the mother of invention. It creates a negative space, but instead of creating emptiness in the composition, it’s the source through which light – as a symbol of creativity and invention – pours through.
The dark, flat hand suddenly becomes helpful to carry this theme, as it takes on the appearance of a hand snapping its fingers. It’s another visual representation of the "a-ha!" moment when light, ideas, and invention suddenly appear.” – Henry & Fong Lien
Competition Category: 16-18 years old
Grand Prize: Shoaib, India
“This piece is sublime and perfect in its simplicity, and it shows admirable restraint and maturity. Instead of utilizing showier effects, the desaturation of the color out of everything but the eyes makes them leap out of the image with glistening life in a way that they could not in a naturally colored photograph. Excellent work.” – Henry & Fong Lien
First Prize: Mandina, India
“The addition of an exuberant man-made pattern that’s confined to the borders of the leaves – rather than simply overlaying it over the entire photograph –makes the processed image come alive. The man-made pattern is reminiscent of beautiful paisleys and Indian textile designs, and their addition to this photograph of leaves reminds us that so many man-made designs have their origins in nature and natural forms.” – Henry & Fong Lien
Special Prize for Inspirational Creativity: Matthew, United Kingdom
“Matthew’s photo demonstrates solid technique for converting a color image to black and white, and it creates a nice study in extremes. You have a figure dressed in professional class garments and one dressed in working class garments. You have a figure coming, you have a figure going. You have a face, you have a back.
These polarities emphasize that part of the very definition of a city and the human-urban experience is a study in contrasts – rich and poor, clean and dilapidated. That tension between them is part of what defines urban living.” – Henry & Fong Lien
Competition Category: 19-24 years old
Grand Prize: Souvik, India
“There is a subtle space exploration theme in this piece. The circles suggest bodies in space and the tubes suggest rockets. There is also a theme of music that comes through this work, where the cylinders resemble organ pipes which makes the photograph ring with a "music of the spheres" subtext. The cylinders reach out towards us and we reach out back towards them.
Excellent work, and our favorite piece in the entire competition.” – Henry & Fong Lien
First Prize: Rajat, India
“This is a lovely, slightly melancholy, contemplative piece that’s composed of such stark elements – land, sea, sky, human figures, and globes. The most sophisticated and startling feature of the composition is the conversation between the globe in the foreground, the globe suspended in the sky, and the invisible globe between them, under the feet of the human figures.” – Henry & Fong Lien
Special Prize for Inspirational Creativity: Subhra, India
“This piece exhibits interesting contrasts in light values. Thematically, the idea of looking down to find something that soars is a positive and hopeful. It emphasizes the idea that surprises await us in unexpected places, and that reality is no match for imagination”. – Henry& Fong Lien
*Free apps are subject to acceptance of and compliance with the terms of the applicable license agreement or terms of service/use that accompany the app.
