Photo Final

Portraits

These were three that I was somewhat satisfied with. Like I posted in the discussion board, my subjects were less than enthusiastic about me shooting them so I couldn't do anything posed. They were somewhat aware that I would be taking pictures all day but they didn't know when about half of them were taken.

Text

Here are my two photos with text added. I used the overlay layer technique that we used for dodge and burn so that you get some of the colors from the background in the text instead of it being a solid color.

Clone Stamp

The above was the first image, and then I used the clone stamp tool to make it look like my sister was out in the middle of the water instead of not far from the shore.

Dodge and Burn plus Filter photos

Here is my original photo. It's pretty boring -- nothing special.

Here is the photo after using the dodge and burn tool. I darkened the sky and brightened up the trees. I think it totally changes the feel of the shot. Dodge and burn is probably my favorite new photoshop discovery! It was so easy!
In this photo I added a grain filter and then lightened my cousin so that he wasn't blocked out as much by the filter. This made the filter affect the background and highlight him a little more.

Here I added a few filters -- I don't remember all of them but the main one was the noise filter using horizontal noise. The photo was also a lot lighter but I duplicated the background into a second layer and used the overlay method which emphasized all the colors and shadows a lot. I like how this makes it look less like a digital photo and sort of like a bad, old, regular printed photo.

Fixed Photo #2

So durring the wedding I was experimenting with different flash settings to try to get the best lighting. Clearly this was a photo where the settings were WRONG so I used it and tried to fix it for this assignment. I lightened it with multiple layers and selected the subjects to lighten only them and not the background, cropped it to get rid of the partial flower right in the front corner, and then made the whole thing black and white because some of the colors were very off after the lightening.

Fixed photo # 1

For this photo I selected my cousin and her husband in the boat, then used the inverse selection option, and changed the saturation on the water and reflection so that the focus was more on the boat and the two people and less on the background.

Photoshop experiments

So this is a picture that was created with two shots -- one of the stars and one of our new puppy lying on our kitchen floor. I used the select tools to take the puppy out of the kitchen and place him in the grass. Then I resized him a bit, copied the grass on one side and placed it in front of him on the other side since the grass in the spot he is was too tall to use as a layer in front of him. I will be posting at least one more experimental photo soon!

These were two photos again that I merged using selection and layers. They were taken in two totally different lightings but I thought they looked cool together anyway. The selection isn't great and the quality of the photo of my little sister isn't great but I couldn't help but use it anyway!

Landscapes

These were a few of my landscape shots. I wasn't thrilled with any of them since they're pretty basic, but I like the colors of the top two a lot.

framing photos - AnnieWright15 - Picasa Web Albums

framing photos - AnnieWright15 - Picasa Web Albums

Balance

For this week's research assignment I looked into balance and how it affects the composition of a photo. A well-balanced photo seems much more pleasing to the eye. When a photo is balanced it means that there is an good distribution of people, colors, and shapes so that the entire shot feels balanced. For example there aren't large amounts of people on one side of the photo with only one person on the other. If there is a bright color in one corner of the shot, bright color in the opposite corner would balance it out. This doesn't mean that a photo has to be perfectly symmetrical though -- it just shouldn't have all your attention drawn to one small space with nothing to look at in the rest of the frame.

The link I used is listed below. It had some great photo examples. I would check it out if you are interested in seeing more of what balanced means in photography!

http://photoinf.com/General/KODAK/guidelines_for_better_photographic_composition_balance.html

Framing shots

I had a hard time finding good frames, but here's what I came up with!

Rule of Thirds

These were my two shots comparing a "bull's eye" photo with one using the rule of thirds technique. I use the rule of thirds often because I had learned it in an art class I took a while ago. I think that sometimes a photo looks better when the subject is smack dab in the middle, but often is looks better a little off-centered. I especially like the rule of thirds shot out of these two because of the one stem that strays off from the rest of the daisies. I find that it pulls your eye away from the bouquet, like we learned that leading lines can do in our reading this week.

Colors

This first photo was my analogous color shot. It was a number of blue vases next to each other with the sky out the window behind them.

This second shot is my complementary color one. I find this one a lot more pleasing to the eye which I was surprised by. I especially like how there is just a small bit of red on the ends of the berries as well.

Different lighting

I took the third picture shown here first while I was just experimenting with long exposure and night shots but I really liked it so I decided to take a couple others of the same view for this assignment. It's the view out of one of the upstairs windows in my house. The first picture is pretty plain but I like how you start to see some color in the sky in the second shot, and then I loved the headlights from the car illuminating the trees in the third.

I don't think that if I hadn't taken the night shot first that I would have picked this scene to shoot for this assignment. I was just so surprised at how much I liked the night shot that I had to use it. I was actually trying to get a shot of the stars when I took it but the car came along which I think made it so much better.
The evening shot would have been better if the sun set in that direction and the color was brighter, but I kept an eye on the sky the whole afternoon and night trying to capture some better color and something a little more different from the first photo but that was the best I could come up with.

Macro collage

Here is my week 3 collage assignment. I took a lot more photos that what is shown here but I liked the similar colors and lighting in these so chose to leave the other ones out.

Photo Assignment 1

For the assignment on multiple perspectives of the same object I chose a tiki torch in our yard.
This first photo was my favorite. I love the texture that you see, but I also think that because it is such a close shot it actually directs you to look beyond the torch toward the window on the barn in the back. If it had been farther away and you could see the whole torch I think it would draw you to look only at the torch and not what was behind it.

This shot on the other hand has a pretty simple background, so there isn't much to look at besides the torch. I again like the texture that you can see in the grass below, as well as the shadows in the weaving. The lighting is a little bright -- I wish the weaving wasn't as washed out, which is probably why I didn't like this one as much as the first.