Week Fourteen - It has a purpose

I got so excited when I read the assignment! The picture I am posting isn't impressive when you see it and don't know the story. So check it out:

This picture was taken with my cell phone, from the passenger seat of a car going about 60MPH. I couldn't believe that it captured the road signs!!

Week Thirteen - Vanity...?

My biggest problem with taking portraits this week would have to be finding a subject! It's not that I don't see people, it's that nobody has the time to set up a good, personal shot, let alone sit around while I take multiple pictures. I ended up being my own subject, which of course presented its own problems. I set my timer for two seconds and placed the camera on a speaker. I feel like the pose/connection gives of a little bit of a complex vibe. It shows that I am curious, to myself at times, unsure... What it doesn't portray is that I am all about having fun! But I think everybody has different sides to them, and this is just one of mine. The setting of the picture encompasses my lifestyle now. A bit messy, living in a tight space (I cropped it so I take up more of the frame)... it is black and white because I don't like living in this room very much, so I don't let it take over my life.




Also, I had red-eyes in this photo... voila! I think I did a pretty good job covering them up :)

Week Ten - read THIS

Here are my text photos. The first is simple, text on top of a picture. The second is text at a slight angle, with an opacity of about 40.

Week Ten - Hide my flaws

It was tough finding a picture to work with for this assignment. I have plenty of pictures with flaws, but most of them were either to big to fix or too small to notice. I settled on this one. There was a hand on the left most part of the railing that I removed. This assignment was the hardest for me, because PSP7 does not have a "patch tool", I researched a bit and it wasn't added until the most recent version. I used a combination of cloning and pushing to get this picture where it is.

Week Nine - Filter this.

I applied a "straw wall" filter to this picture, then cut out the globe so that it showed through clear. The straw layer is 66% opaque.



This next one I did a similar process, except I used a sepia filter and I erased the rabbit out instead of cut. There is 100% opacity.

Week Nine - To dodge or to burn?

I tried to just use dodge and burn to fix this slightly dark picture, but I instead ended up brightening just the color on the tree, then burning it to look more natural. Here are the results:

Week Eight - Playing with colors

I'm having quite the time converting Photoshop tutorials to PSP7, but they are very similar for the most part! I find myself assuming that the options will have different name, or just not exist altogether, but that is actually rarely true. I don't quite understand what they all do, so I mainly just move sliders around and see how the colors change. That is how I decided to turn this photo from a mid-day picture to a sunset picture (or at least try to...):



To get it I mostly just played with color, adding a bit of red and a little green. I also darkened it a bit. Everything else I tried faded the picture or made it look too fake.

The next set I have is... "crop-inspired":



I wanted to crop the antenna out at first, then I just kept going. I also messed with the colors a little bit to make the scene more fantasy like. The road is darkened to make it stand out a little, and the saturation is a bit blotchy for that "drawn" effect ... does that make sense?

Week Seven - Cropping and stuff

My idea was to combine two of my "lighting week" pictures. I did this because I thought it might be cool to directly compare the lighting, and all of my lighting subjects were taken from (virtually) the same angle. I went through my folder and picked which set of pictures had the closest angles.


I'm using Jasc PSP7 instead of Photoshop, so the process I used to do this is probably slightly different than the rest of the class would. I chose my pictures, then created the crescent selection and cut it from the "morning" picture. I then added two more layers behind my "morning" layer. In the furthest one I pasted the "night" version and aligned it to match with the front. In the middle layer, I altered the selection to be about 20 pixels smaller all around. After that, I inverted the selection and pasted yellow into everything but the crescent. Voila! It turned out much better than I first anticipated, mostly because I didn't know if the pictures would line up properly.

Week Six - Landscapes

I have to admit- I misunderstood the assignment and read last night that we have a landscape picture due! I considered my options... I couldn't take a picture at that moment (too dark out) and there wouldn't be enough time later. I settled on looking through old pictures that I have taken. I'm not sure if I will get credit, but I am going to post anyway!

These pictures were taken at my camp in NY over the summer. I am still a little unclear about what exactly a landscape is, though. Is it solely nature/land, or is it any sort of view representing that which you can see from a regular "human-eye" view? I chose these two pictures, because the first has a man-made dam in it and I'm not sure if that is appropriate. I think it's a very good picture though! The second is a beautiful sunset-time sky through the trees, and if that isn't a landscape... well then I am VERY confused :)

Week Five - Rule of Thirds

This dorm room stifles my creativity! OK, enough with the excuses, I actually think these shots are kind of cute. Learning about the rule-of-thirds was eye-opening in the sense that I always noticed the different feeling an off-center picture provides, but the science behind it is fascinating! I often take things for face value when I first encounter them, something I should work on...
I took about 15 versions of these pictures, with different lighting and placement. The pictures with low lighting were too blurry and the pictures with medium lighting had funny shadows. The flash reflects well off of the (slightly) shiny shoes, which is cool. After all was said and done and I had chosen my favorites, I was uploading to blogger and noticed my foot in the top right corner of the second shot. Darn it! My inability to "fill the frame" nicely came back to bite me again. About the rule-of-thirds... I'm unhappy with these pictures in general, so I don't have a favorite. Maybe if the bottom one had text or something in the blank area (and no sock :( ) it would be interesting.

Week Five - Framing Slideshow

I thought the first was kind of funny, looking at a contact lens case through a pair of glasses...

The second is a rule-of-thirds framing job I guess. Kind of cool? Haha.

The third was courtesy of my boyfriend, when he saw me walking around struggling with this assignment. He did a good job setting it up!

The fourth was when I finally sucked it up and went outside... it wasn't as cold as I feared! I like that the house is able to be seen through the spokes.

I walked into the fifth, the bottle was just sitting there already with the window behind it. I tried it with a flash as well, because I didn't know if only using the light from the window was going to mess it up, but when I used the flash it illuminated a sign that was next to the window... completely destroying the shot. Funny though!

The sixth was my Mother's idea. I used the flash, because it made it so much sharper. Without the flash it was fairly boring and dull.

The seventh is funny, because it was a picture I took during our macro lesson. It didn't quite fit the assignment, but I really liked it so I left it on the card. Turns out it is perfect for the framing assignment!

Week Five - Research

In looking up different composition techniques, "filling your frame" grabbed my attention right away. I thought about many of the pictures I've taken. I never figured out what wasn't quite right about many of them, and this technique answered my question! A lot of my pictures have something in the background that I didn't think through before I took the shot, so it off balances them. There will be a random splash of color that doesn't fit, or clutter behind my subject that takes attention away. I read a short bit about it here.

(I made sure not to read other blogs before I wrote my own, because I knew I wouldn't be able to think for myself if I did. Now it's time to go check everyone elses to make sure I didn't accidentally copy!!)

Week Four - Lighting

I really liked the idea of taking "the same" pictures at different times of day to experience different lighting, so this morning I went outside and picked 4 different subjects. Two more times today I went outside and took the pictures again from (as close to) the same angles as I could. It was very interesting to see the results!

10:30 AM

The sun was bright and direct in this shot, as well as behind the camera. It was great! You are able to see the tree AND the sky beautifully. It almost makes me want to start my days earlier instead of waking up so late! ... not quite, though.

5:45 PM

This shot shows diffused sunlight from behind the subject. I like silhouettes, but I don't like this picture. I think if I had more freedom with the angle it could be better, but because I was trying to mimic the first shot it is not very pleasing. Also, a tripod could have made this clearer. I thought it was funny though to see the difference in snow, seeing as it melted throughout the day.

6:45 PM

This is pretty much the reverse of the previous picture! I had to use a flash... If I didn't use one it would be a pretty boring photo, haha. It was dark and scary outside at this point, so I just pointed, clicked, and ran. Even though the tree is just as clear in the first photo, when I look at this one I notice the details much more. They pop without the distraction of the sky (though I do like seeing the sky... wow I'm indecisive!)

Week Four - Colors

Nice colors are hard to find this time of year! I ended up having the most difficulty finding colors to satisfy the analogous scheme. I had to fight with myself over which photo to choose to represent the complementary scheme, I had two favorites! The one I didn't choose was a close-up of a Mardi-Gras mask I have that is blue and gold. It came out really nice, but it didn't interest me for some reason.

Monochrome Scheme
Here is a pile of gold-ish necklaces, taken with the macro setting. I set them on a silky white piece of fabric and turned the flash off.

Complementary Scheme

I used the macro setting for this one as well and it had a different effect in the end. The lighting is natural light spilling in through the window, with just a small reflection showing on the glasses.

Now it's time to do other homework while I wait for the sun to move so that I can take my different lighting shots!

Crowd Pleaser

A couple classmates noticed this photo in my collage, so I thought I'd show a bigger version of it.

Macro assignment, check it

During this assignment, I learned that my camera is not very macro friendly. Well, I don't know if it's my camera, or cameras in general, but I thought I would be able to get closer than I was. Also, when the flash is turned off (which is kind of important in these cases), the shutter speed is longer on my camera, so I had to practice steady hand!

I wasn't able to get very inspired, but I did take a couple of shots that I really liked.


This one makes me regret eating so much fast food yesterday :) The lettuce doesn't look the most fresh, but the close-up still entices me. I would love to be able to afford a better camera, to get shots like this, but much crisper.


I don't know if this exactly qualifies as using the macro setting as intended. It's just so cool how the front is clear and the back is blurry! I think I need to invest in one of those bendable tri-pods to increase the clarity of my pictures.

Steady hand...

There is absolutely no theme among my subjects... :)

Found my calling?

When I first read this assignment, I knew right away what I wanted to photograph. Last year I decided on a whim to go home for a night (it's about an hour drive from school, and I don't have a car, so I can only make the trip so often). It was one of those times where things happen just right, and you don't know why. I came home to my parents waiting in the kitchen, with a surprise for me. My dad had built me a table, based on my passively expressed interest in having a table that wasn't made out of crates and plastic. It was perfect in every way for my dorm room: Size, shape, material, quality. A year later it has gotten a lot of love, and it is one of my most cherished belongings.

After taking various pictures, I eliminated all of the ones that had angles that didn't line up, apparently I like perfect lines and angles.





I can't explain why this first picture is interesting to me. I guess I like the way the lines of this part of my table come together. I tried to get a backdrop so there wouldn't be any distraction, but I had limited resources. A tripod would have helped straighten the shot a bit, but all in all I got what I was trying for.




This picture gives a completely different feeling, which is why I chose it. The table surface is littered with scribbles, but this is one of the most meaningful to me. It is the score to a card game (pitch) I play with my dad. I like how it is virtually the only thing in focus and you see the mesh of colors around.

This was an interesting assignment, a challenge for me. I have never considered myself artistic, so I got stuck on analyzing my pictures. Hopefully I'll learn how to do it better by looking at my classmates blogs!

Everyone is busy

Here I am sitting at work between classes... catching up on my reading for digital photography. All I want to do now is play with my camera! But I have to wait until after classes, after meetings... I think it's time to work out my time management. I cleaned my room last night so I could use my table as the subject for my first assignment, I even vacuumed! Turned out my camera batteries were dead anyway. Charged them last night and now I'm just hoping the room stays clean until I get the pictures taken!