The first day of Photography, I walked in not knowing much. I knew the general controls of a camera, like how to focus the lens and I knew the rule of thirds from taking Video Production last year. I was excited, but also a little nervous. I had been told a few days before to remember that Photography was not a blow off class and that I would have to work for a good grade. When I heard that I got a little worried; I had taken the class to have an easy hour and learn a few things about cameras and lighting. Because of this tip though, I worked hard on my pictures and received good feedback. In a matter of weeks my experience and skills grew. As I near the end of the trimester, I can look back at my first bunch of pictures and shake my head at the barely quality pictures. I notice things as I take pictures quicker now—a blurry spot, a glare, an out of place shadow—and I can correct them with ease. When I first took the class I also didn't know how to work Photoshop. It was very overwhelming at first, but once I went through the Photoshop assignments, I became more comfortable with working with Photoshop. Now I know how my way around Photoshop and can use it to my advantage to edit out and around the little mistakes and errors in my pictures that I don't catch and correct. Below are a small collection of pictures I've gathered to show my improvement.
Photoshop Assignment
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This assignment was really fun! It was entertaining looking through different phobias and mashing these pictures all together. For Hylophobia, I got several pictures of forests from Google Images and blended them together, added two trees to the left and right to draw attention away from the busy background, and a cartoon kid looking scared. For claustrophobia, I first cut and pasted a boy into a box and shaded the inside to make it look deeper, then decided to add that first box into another box and a lady being scared in an elevator because there was still a lot of empty space. I really enjoyed this assignment because we had the freedom to do practically anything we wanted as long as it was a "visual dictionary".
In this assignment I used all the tools I have used previously in other assignments. I had trouble at first when editing the boy into the box(s), but I figured out I could put one box layer under the boy layer and another on top of the boy layer, then erase the top layer to reveal the boy without having to be so careful to not show the very bottom layer. Try to guess my puns... In this assignment, I used skills I had previously learned through other assignments in photoshop to piece together images I took from google. It was actually kind of hard to find pictures that weren't super pixelated from being shrunk or stretched once I put them into photoshop, but I eventually found ones that worked. In the second pun, I'm very proud of stretching the word "Just" to make it look like it was laying back in the briefcase using the perspective crop tool! The third pun is my favorite one though. It's really clever.
In this assignment, I had to take multiple pictures in the same place and edit them all together so there are multiple people in the frame. I really liked this assignment because it was fairly easy and I had fun taking the pictures! I learned how to use the photo stacking tool on Photoshop, and it was very easy to use and edit. I can see where other people where having problems, but everything turns out find if you do things right and don't move or adjust the camera. I turned in the top picture.
Edited PicturesOriginal PicturesFor this week, I decided to take pictures at the swim meet that was happening last Friday and I was excited to use it for sport after checking with you if it would be okay! While I was taking pictures though, I found it hard time the photos to get them diving off into the pool because the camera couldn't take several photographs right after the other, so I quickly ran out of time to take the photographs. That was a little frustrating and I had to quickly learn good timing for the pictures. I got a few good ones though, pictured above. They're not the shots I was picturing in my head, but I don't hate them. For a lot of the pictures I selected the busy background and turned down the vibrance to make it less distracting. The first image is the one I turned in:)
During this assignment, I focused more on adjusting the levels of the colors' for their black and white balance. I brought the brightness up on the blues and purples and brought the yellows and greens down so that there was a sharper contrast between the sky and the vegetation in the pictures. In the picture of Grace, I made the background darker so that she stood out more because she kind of blended into the school and sidewalk behind her. Overall, this assignment was easy and enjoyable!
I was doing homework when I looked outside and saw the pink and purple sunset. I quickly grabbed my camera and ran outside to take these pictures. They turned out really well, but for a lot of them I had to darken the trees a bit to make a better contrast and look more like a silhouette. For the picture I turned in, I darkened the grass and trees, but if you look close enough in my edited photo, you can see that I left a little bit of the grass to show the distance and depth of field. It's beside the original picture (top). In doing this assignment, I learned how to turn the automatic flash off on my camera, because I didn't want the harsh flash washing out the sky and trees in the photographs.
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Fun PhotosThis picture above is of a few friends. I took advantage of the pretty sky in front of them and snapped a picture real quick before they walked too far away :)
This is a picture I used for depth of field, but I edited the background to look cartoon-ish and block-ish. I just thought it looked cool and wanted to share it!
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