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: