The inspiration for this project was photographer Marko Metzinger's images. Once I saw them I knew instantly that my students would want to try creating similar images for themselves!
The assignment suggested that they recreate the effect of looking thru a kaleidoscope (because everyone loves kaleidoscopes!) - but first they had to make a simple "butterfly" effect (4 of the same image flipped around a center axis). By now most students have a decent "toolbox" of PS skills and there are lots of tutorials online. It was great to see all of the different approaches and creative problem solving and I was not surprised that each and every student was successful!
You can access the student blogs here to see their posts about this project.
If you have Photoshop and want to have a go at it, here is one basic way to create an easy "butterfly:"
(The steps below correspond with the photo gallery below - click on the image to see the step.)
- Open a photo with interesting colors/shapes in Photoshop - unlock the layer
- Using the crop tool >Crop the photo to a square
- Go to Image>Canvas Size
- Resize the Canvas to double both dimensions
- Move the Image to the corner of the canvas
- Duplicate the layer
- Grab the side anchor and pull over (alternatively, go to Edit>Transform>Flip. You can just pull the anchors if you're working with a square - which is why we did that first)
- Repeat your way around the center point.
Also, make sure all 4 squares are touching (to eliminate any distracting white line cross hair).