Photo Assignment #7: Open

After many photo assignments, I was finally able to do an "open" assignment for photo assignment #7, which meant I was free to choose whatever photography theme I wanted to do. For this assignment, I set it up so that the photoshoot would be a color themed display of items. Each photo is made up of multiple objects that are similar in color and captured on a white background, so that the light would reflect the color back onto the subject. Although I had many great photos, this one was by far my best one:

Original:

Edited:

ISO: 100
Shutter Speed: 1/18 seconds
Aperture: f/3.6



I had a lot of fun with this photo assignment, and I feel as if I showcased my best photography skills in it. I liked how everything turned out, and how I was able to apply skills learned from previous photo assignments into this one. My first photo assignment, macro, also taught me a lot about how to capture different angles and views to make a photo look more three dimensional. I didn't struggle with anything, except for running around the house, trying to find objects of a certain color (and cleaning up!) This photo assignment was a great way to finish the 7 Major Photo Assignments.

Photoshop Assignment: Visual Puns

For this week's photoshop assignment, we had to photoshop two or more things together to form three visual puns. Here are the three that I did, though you can probably guess what they are: 

For not googling any of them, I thought  these were pretty clever puns. However, I was kind of disappointed that I couldn't photoshop to my full potential, due to lack of time and other assignments I had to finish. There was nothing in particular that was hard to do, but photoshop was being kind of glitchy and not allowing me to use the text tool for the first pun, so it took me at least 15-20 minutes to figure out how to enable the text. I also think I could've done a better job with the third pun, but the picture is still guess-able. 

Photo Assignment #6: Still Life

This week I wanted to take pictures of subjects using still life. It seemed artistic, yet simple. What I did for the background of these photos was put a black T-shirt behind the subject for some of the photos, and use white or green cardboard for the other photos. Here is my best photo from this album:

Original:

Edited:

I edited the mancala marble to look sharper and clearer.

ISO: 100
Shutter Speed: 1/10 seconds
Aperture: f/3.7




This was the easiest photo assignment I have done so far (technique-wise), but the only difficult part was finding the subjects needed to be captured and finding the right camera angle. I really liked how these photos turned out, and how they didn't need much editing because of the window light technique I used.

Photoshop Tutorial Assignment: Phantom Deer in a Nature Landscape

This week I was instructed to follow any free, simple photoshop tutorials online that was within my reach, so I decided to go for a ghost figure in a nature landscape. Since I could only get the deer picture they provided me with, I had to use one of the landscape pictures I took myself from my nature/landscape photoshoot. I wanted a misty, blue sky background behind the landscape, so I had to edit that in before I made my phantom ghost.

I consider this tutorial to be intermediate. I struggled a lot with the layering of distortions to make the deer look translucent, and I go seriously annoyed with the quick select tool, which really wasn't all that quick.
 Looking at the final photo, I decided that I could've done better, but I just needed to get this tutorial assignment done and move on to the next one. The next time I do this tutorial, I will highlight the phantom deer much better!

Tutorial Link: http://www.photoshopstar.com/effects/ghost-in-the-landscape/

Photo Assignment #5: Light Painting

This week I decided to try to take pictures under the theme of light painting. I had a neighbor pose as the Statue of Liberty while I set the long exposure to 15 seconds, then sprinted behind her and outlined her figure with a small flashlight. I then took it to photoshop to make it darker for contrast and bluer:

Original:

Edited:

ISO: 100

Shutter Speed: 150/10 seconds

Aperture: f/2.7

This photo assignment wasn't difficult, but it wasn't exactly easy either. I had a lot of trouble getting started, such as figuring out how to set my dad's camera (because mine doesn't have the ability to set the camera to manual focus). I also kept drawing too quickly, so the lines weren't as neat as I would've liked, and the drawings were sometimes unidentifiable. Once I was able to figure out how to set up the camera (with help from my dad and the internet) I had a lot of fun tracing subjects and doodling in the air.

Motion Demo

This was a quick photo assignment that was given to teach us how to take photos of subjects in motion. What we did was move our camera with the subject still in the center, and snapped the photo:

This assignment was relatively difficult for me. I had to take several pictures before I found one that was clear. However, whenever the subject was clear, the background would be also, and often times half out of the picture. Others were extremely blurry. I finally decided to set the camera to an ISO of 100, shutter speed of 1/240, and an f stop of 9. Although it darkened my photo, I was able to take a clear photo of the subject while the background was blurred out.

Panoramic Photographs

For this in class photo assignment, we were instructed to take 3+ photos of a place inside of school or outside, and merge them into one photograph. My best two panoramics were of the third floor balcony and the sidewalk:

In my opinion, this was by far the easiest photoshop assignment because photoshop did most of the merging. In a few of the panoramics I did have to recolor the edges of the photo and the places were lines were visible, so photoshop didn't do all the work for me. In this photoshop assignment, I learned how to merge several photos together and color photos to enhance the panoramics. I didn't find this assignment difficult, except for making sure the camera didn't move (even with the tripod, my camera was pretty unsteady.) I really enjoyed this photoshop assignment!

Photo Assignment #4: Nature and Landscape

This week I decided to try to capture landscapes. Since I did macro before, taking pictures of the flowers were quite easy. I wanted to work on taking pictures using the rule of thirds, so this was one way to work on that. Here is my best landscape photo:

 

ISO: 200

Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds

Aperture: f/3.6

From this assignment, I learned how to take better pictures using the rule of thirds. I got better than before in my composition project. I also applied other composition elements in this photo assignment, such as space and color. I liked how simple and beautiful my pictures turned out, and there wasn't anything to dislike about it. The only struggle I had was positioning the camera accordingly, but that was easily fixed.

Portrait Demo Photoshop Assignment

Today, we were assigned to do another photoshop assignment. This one was very much like the kind of photos you would give to someone as a senior picture. The photo on the left was taken using natural light by a window, while the photo on the right was taken with a set up studio. We then took these photos into photoshop and arranged them as accordingly:

I really enjoyed this photoshop assignment, because I learned how to frame the photos to make them appear professional. I also will be using the photograph techniques, particularly the window light one, because it gives off a nice glow. I know I will be using the skills I learned from this assignment for out of class uses!

School Context Photoshop Assignment

Our in class assignment today was a "school context assignment." The goal is to put people, characters, objects, places, or things in our school that wouldn't normally be there. What we do is take a picture of any place in the school, and photoshop the objects in there. My theme was "Harry Potter and Dementors in the school." I wanted to make it look more realistic, so I feather the edges of the three dementors and Harry,  free transformed them to make them fit comfortably in the sky, and used overlays and white puff paint brushes to create the gloomy sky and cloudy effect.

I really liked this photoshop assignment, because it gave me a chance to use photoshop freely without any guidelines, while discovering new ways of editing photos. This assignment also gave me a chance to show what I can do with photoshop using my imagination and resources. From this assignment, some major things I learned were scaling pictures and feathering photos and inserting photo. I will definitely be doing more of this outside of class in the near future!

Photo Assignment #3: Food

For this week's assignment, I decided to satisfy my cravings and present my photography skills through the theme of food. Of course, the goal was to make the food look delicious, so I set out to take lots of pictures. This was one of my best ones (mint chocolate chip ice cream, YUM!) :

ISO: 250
Shutter Speed: 1/60 seconds
Aperture: f/3.6




Even though I thought this would be an easy assignment, I was surprised to find that this photo theme was harder than macro! I had difficulty positioning the food item to balance the background, as well as getting enough light on the subject. In addition to that, capturing the food was difficult for me, because I didn't want the food to look colorless, flat, or unappealing in any way. I struggled with camera angles and white balance a lot. I was rather pleased, however, with how I managed to keep the ice cream looking sharp and detailed, while blurring out the background. I'm glad I did this assignment, otherwise I would've never came across these kinds of situations and learned anything out of it.

Views on Photoshop

Photoshop is a pretty touchy topic when it comes to the media. Claims are made that its only used to slightly enhance a certain feature of someone or something, yet it usually comes out as a complete modified and unnaturally polished digital painting. I personally don't like the way the media uses photoshop, because they like to completely transform the shapes of people and things, confusing people into thinking that the perfect body made in photoshop is actually real. It would be one thing if the media admitted to dramatically altering the object or person so people wouldn't feel bad about themselves, but another to actually try to deceive the human mind of what's proportionally accurate. Overall, photoshop is not a bad thing, but I would rather have use it if it were only used to enhance minimal features rather than every single imperfection.

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/do-photoshopped-images-make-you-feel-bad-about-your-own-looks/

Photo Assignment #2: Black and White

This week I tried to take pictures with the theme of black and white.When I chose this assignment, I knew it would require strong contrast in order to make the object stand out. Too much gray wouldn't be a black and white photo, it would be...well, just gray.. The picture below is what I believe to be my best black and white photo:

ISO: 200
Shutter Speed: 1/110 seconds
Aperture: f/4.1






This was a challenging theme for me, mostly because I had to find objects and backgrounds that contrasted each other. I thought the picture I chose as my best picture showcased the best contrast between black and white, and also showed the white threads on the boots as well. The  lighting also played a major role in how the black and white turned out, and I tried to avoid dark lighting so my photos wouldn't end up gray. Overall, this was probably my favorite photo assignment so far, not because it was easy to do, but because I like the way my black and white pictures turned out; simple, yet of quality.

Photoshop: Car Transformation Assignment

For today's assignment, we were given a picture of an audi at an auto show and taught how to remove the background, tint the windows, and enhance the color of the vehicle using Adobe Photoshop.  

Before:

In this picture, you can tell the focus is on the car, but there are a lot of distracting things in the background that draws the attention away from it.

After:

This is much better, because all distractions in the background are removed, the lights on the hood of the car are removed, the focus is completely on the car, and it has a professional sheen to it, just like a commercial.

After doing this assignment, I learned many quality techniques for editing pictures, such as enhancing the color on the car and removing objects irrelevant to the subject. I did not find any problems while using photoshop, particularly because I already had prior experience. My favorite part of the assignment  was using the selection tool and tinting the windows.

Photo Assignment #1: Macro

For my first "official" photo assignment, I decided to try taking macro pictures. Macro photography is simply taking pictures of objects or living things close up. It is often used to capture details on the objects that we often skip over. Here is my best macro photo I took among the few:

ISO: 200
Shutter Speed: 1/220 seconds
Aperture: f/4.7




From this assignment, I learned how to control my hand movements, take pictures in focus, and follow the rules of exposure. The thing I liked most about this assignment was the clarity and the outcome of the photos. I also liked trying the different ISOs and zooming in and out to get each photo in focus. The least exciting part of this assignment was trying to find objects interesting enough to shoot. I had no insects handy and wanted to stray away from generic photo shoots. the lighting was very difficult to get right as well, so I had to keep relocating and trying different angles until I got it right. Overall, this was an enjoyable assignment for me; I'm satisfied with what I have produced!

Pop Art Assignment

Today's assignment was a quick Pop Art avatar consisting of 4 of the same pictures, each in different colors. It was pretty easy to do, and quick!

The primary point of this assignment is to get us used to photoshop, and learn basic techniques such as cropping, coloring, and white and black balance. There wasn't anything I disliked about this assignment, and I learned how to use photoshop!

Inspirational Photos

1.) This is a macro shot of a water droplet on the tip of a plant. The photographer placed a rainbow background behind the droplet and the plant, which is seen clearly with the droplet acting as a magnifying glass. I chose this picture because I thought it was unique, as well as a great example of macro. It displayed an original idea while being simply a macro closeup, which is what I would like to accomplish.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/6017642048/ User: Doug88888

2.) The second photo is a closeup of the tip of a pencil. The composition in the photo was simple, and that's partly why I chose this. You can see the details of the pencil lead, as well as the texture of the wood. The color contrasts nicely as well.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mystic/41422849/ User: Thiago Lopes

3.) Lastly, the third photo is a picture of a jumping spider. I liked this picture because it was setup so there was a distinct color scheme with the white sand contrasting with the brown spider. Since this is a macro shot, the furry details of the spider can be seen, as well as its marble-like eyes, while the background is blurred out smoothly. The amount of light also coming in is just right. This picture will definitely act as one of my models to my future pictures!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickmaninov/3678151593/ User: Rick_in_the_QC

Composition Assignment

I took these 11 pictures for a composition project in digital photography. In this lesson, I learned how to:
-Take pictures with certain elements that makes pictures appear even more enhanced.
-Work photoshop and the camera "properly."
-Manually adjust certain settings, such as white balance or exposure to follow certain rules of composition.
-How to use the rule of thirds and make more "professional" pictures.

I struggled a lot on:
-A composition called "balance." I didn't know where to find objects that seem to balance each other.
-Taking clear pictures, as I always shake and the pictures usually turn out blurry.
- Taking pictures using the rule of thirds; although I knew what to do, I simply couldn't take decent pictures.
-Taking pictures using the rule of symmetry; I knew what it was, but I had trouble trying to find examples of it at school or at home. (Even doors weren't completely symmetric!)

Overall, I had a lot of fun with my first photography assignment. I especially liked:
-Taking pictures using the element of texture and the clear look of it.
 -Playing with the color settings and make the pictures appear slightly vibrant, or make the object look more enhanced by toning down the background.
-The idea of being able to apply these skills to future pictures I take in or outside of school.