Final Project: My Photostory

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Week 11: Portraits

I had a lot of fun with this week's assignment, I think photographing people is one of the most interesting forms of photography. I asked for all of my subjects' permission before taking their picture, including the two of these which came from my my photostory pictures. Other than overcoming any nervousness about asking these people for their cooperation (the homework excuse makes it much easier), my biggest challenge was capturing them in the way that I saw them without the camera. Reproducing these people candidly was something that took a good deal of effort, but I'm rather pleased with the results:

My Photostory Preview

Here are six photos that I plan on using in my Photostory, which will be called "A Day On The Day Lake." All of them are unedited except the very first title picture:

Week 10: Text, Clone, Patch and Paint

I tried to take a picture with a fair amount of open sky in it for my clone tool experimentation because the assignment's instructions say it's great for taking contrails out of the sky. I adjusted my hue, color, and brightness quite a bit for this photo, then I added text and attempted to use the clone tool to "dissolve" the colors in the sky so that all attention went to the subject in the bottom of the photo. I believe I used it just enough to accomplish this without dissolving the sky away entirely into one uniform color. Here of the before and after shots of my clone tool alteration:

These second two photos are only altered using color, brightness, hue, and of course by adding text. They are both a preview of what will be in my final photostory project, which will be titled "A Day On The Lake" and which I plan on opening with this next photo:

Week 9: Dodge & Burn and Filters

I used one of my favorite subjects this week to take a photo with overexposure so that I would be able to easily apply Dodge and Burn. I took this original picture of my dog and used the Dodge and Burn tool to darken the subject and lighten the background so that the contrast was greater. Applying this change attracts the eye to the subject quicker and more directly. I think it does a better job bringing out the dog against the background.

For these next two photos, I used various filters to alter the photographs. I don't think that the changed photos are any better, but it was a good exercise to experiment with all of the filters and get an idea of what they can do. This first one uses mainly softglow, bump map, and unsharpern mask:

This last photograph was altered using mainly the drop shadow, despeckle, and warp

filters:

Week 8: Color Adjustment

This first image is actually one that I took a little bit before the class started, for the Maple Festival back in April. I know we are supposed to use new photos, but this photo has so many colors and adjustment opportunities I couldn't help myself from using it for this week's assignment. For the adjustments, I used some basic adjustments like the color balance and levels, but I mainly used the brightness and contrast. The biggest adjustment was selection the area I didn't want in color, and changing it to black and white. I think this the coolest adjustment I made and gives the image a very neat effect.

This next image is one that I took a few weeks ago at my brother's end-of-season jamboree. I played around with a few more color adjustment features for this second image. I used the ones I was less comfortable with like the posterize, desaturate, and threshold, all with only minor changes, nothing too crazy. The adjusted version has an interesting tone to it and may be a little too bright, but it was good to get experience with more color adjustment features.

Week 7: Selection Tools

I certainly spent more time this week trying to familiarize myself with GIMP than I did actually editing my pictures. There is so much that this software can do, exploring it all is quite daunting. With my first picture I played around with coloring, cropping, flipping vertically, and putting extra blur in the background:

With the second picture, I tried to play around more with the layers, which turned out to be more confusing than I imagined they would be. I went for the overlay effect, but I really don't like the obvious lines from where the edges of the pictures are. I spent a while trying to get rid of those lines, but I wasn't able to without losing the effect of the opacity and overlapping.

Week 6: Landscape Photography

After far too much rain and miserable weather, we've finally had a few nice days to work on our landscape photography assignment. I took a trip around the area to take my pictures; I was looking to find some more open areas. What I learned about Landscape Photography is that although the subject can be extremely vast and cover a great deal of area, the smallest shifts in perspective and positioning can make huge differences in the picture. I tried many different ways of shooting each area and they all came out quite different in their composition and effectiveness. These are my four favorite shots from the week:

And since today is Independence Day, here is a photo I took of my family in the Williston Fourth of July parade this morning:

Week 5 Assignment #3 - Framing

I decided to take all my framing shots at the tennis court. I thought it allowed me to shoot an interesting and dynamic subject and the location gave me plenty of options for framing photographs. I believe all of the framing and sub-framing in my shots does an effective job bringing out the subject and drawing the viewer's eye directly to the subject of the photo. The first frame I was lucky enough to find was this whole in the fence:

I also used the net as a frame for these two shots:

I found an old tire near the court that I was also able to use a nice circular frame for these shots:

My favorite framing shot is this one, which uses one player to frame another player:

Lastly, I used the car's mirror to get this shot with a nice sub-frame:

Week 5 Assignment #2 - Rule Of Thirds

I took a lot of pictures trying out the rule of thirds, but most of them ended up being too cluttered. I was trying to put too many things in each of the thirds and it was becoming unclear and confusing which section of thirds my subject was in. So I've decided to use my simplest two for the assignment purposes, where my subject was simply a car emblem, located in the center of the photo and then in the bottom right corner of the photo. It does make a big difference and this simple composition technique does make it much more pleasurable to look at.

Week 5 Assignment #1 - Composition and Aesthetics

When I started my research on aesthetics and composition, I came across a lot of basic examples of these techniques like we did in the readings. There are so many repeated themes in the rule of thirds and especially framing readings that I started to think of ways to compose my own unique shots. I came across this article about how to not be cliché and I found it very interesting. The article is titled "Three Good Ways to Avoid Clichés" but I found the third way, "take pictures that are personally meaningful to you", to be the most resonant. I liked this one the most and it really made me think about my shots that I have taken and the ones that I want to take. The article reads, "Robin P. sent me a picture of a dog who just got a new mat. Now, to you, or anyone else, that might just be yet another dog picture. You might think it's a cliché. But it's not to Robin. To Robin, it's his beloved Daisy, who he knows very well, and whose expression in this photograph naturally delights him. That makes the picture infinitely richer and more resonant to him than it might be to a stranger."

Here is a link to the article:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/photographic-aesthetics/

Week 4: Color and Lighting - Assignment 2

I spent most of my time on this assignment deciding what to use for my object. I wanted a dynamic object that would be able to capture light in many different ways and forms. I ended up choosing a glass Coke bottle, thinking that maybe the rounded glass would refract light and make different lighting scenes look very unique. In hindsight, maybe an non-translucent object would have been better; something that actually reflects the light and has different angles for the light to hit, but I think I was able to get some unique shots with the glass bottle. I took some shots outside in the sun, some inside with the flash, and several at night with different light sources.

First, I took the bottle outside and took a photo with the sun reflecting off of it:

Then I attempted to change it up and shoot the bottle with the sunlight coming through it:

The next two shots were taken at night with the light source coming from underneath the bottle:

This second shot with the light source beneath the bottle also included the use flash:

I also tried some back-lighting with the glass bottle:

I also took several nighttime shots with the light source coming from an angle instead of directly behind. The first shot was taken with flash and the final two shots were not.