Final Relfection

Early Pictures

     At the beginning of second trimester, I walked into Mr. Bush's digital photography class. Truthfully, I wasn't expecting anything hard or to really learn anything. I took photography earlier this year and I thought it could just be an easy break in my day. The first week was pretty easy. I relearned a lot about composition in pictures and got to apply these things in a few pictures. Although this wasn't that much of a challenge, it was alright and fun. This assignment reaffirmed for me that I could fly through the class. I walked around like, "hey, I got this!" The first photoshop assignment we did wasn't hard either and I thought I had made a friend in technology. That first month was fantastic.

Taking it easy

Early Photoshop

 










Then, we started going at it. We learned new techniques about motion and new things we can do in photoshop. These photoshop assignments made me realize that technology was just trying to draw me in to break me down. I swear the computer is always teasing me like, "hey, you can do this! JUST KIDDING!" I began being frustrated with photoshop, since it never really did what I wanted it to. My pictures need more as well. By this time, I realized I need to apply what I know to really take pictures to compare to others in the class. Starting then, I had to work to get the great pictures I wanted. It frustrated me at first to actually have to work in the class, but it was so rewarding that I couldn't help but still love the class.

Later in photoshop :)

   









     Even though I had many bad days in the class, I learned a lot about digital photography. I got to a point where adjusting photos in photoshop wasn't that hard. I could fix little mistakes in the picture with the clone stamp tool, and adding other things to a background picture. Photoshop was even starting to do what I wanted! My pictures were also turning out better. I got to a point where taking pictures wasn't too hard again. I learned to quickly apply things I learned and make the exposure pretty good. In the end, my last pictures turned out amazing, if I do say so myself. Actually, not to brag, but one of my pictures was chosen as one of the top ten in the class. This to me was a great end to the class because it showed that my hard work paid off. I knew that I learned more about the digital camera and how I can enhance my pictures on the computer. I think that photography is something I will always love even if I stop doing it for a while, I know I can always go back to something I enjoy doing. It's sad to leave the class because I know I won't be able to take another photography class for the rest of my high school career, but at least I discovered something I can be good at and something I love.

My Favorites

Macro

     This week I shot macro for my photo assignment. The point of the assignment was to capture little things that maybe would go unnoticed by the naked eye. I shot a lot of things out on my patio and around my house. I wanted to branch out from nature although  did take shots of a flower and a leaf. I liked the ones of the car that I took because of the repetition in the design. I picked the fork as my best picture because I liked how it was the only thing in focus so the eye was immediately drawn to the points. Shooting macro was hard, but I found it a worthy challenge. I liked trying to see something maybe that I didn't notice at first. Besides nature, I think this has been my favorite photo assignment yet. 

Best Photo
ISO: 200
Aperture: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60s

Photoshop: Visual Puns

     This week in photoshop, we combined images to create visual puns. We used creative commons to look up images then combined the to portray common phrases or words. The assignment was very fun because I love puns. Also, I didn't have to fight with photoshop as much to get it to do what I wanted. Combining the images and arranging them the way I wanted was very easy. I am glad that I can use photoshop easily now because it used to be a big frustration for me. When I had to photoshop assignments in the past I always started hating the class. Now I  can do things with ease. I am glad I learned so much with photoshop even though I don't use it to tweak my photos that much. I can always use it to do fun assignments like this one!

Here are my puns:

Photo credits:
Clam picture- Todd Franklin, Feb. 08 2012

Smile- Aimeelovesyou, May 22, 2011, wordpress

Eyes- betsy2you, kaboodle

Pair of birds- ljmacphee, January 5, 2006 flickr

Pink heart- Roosevelt collection, Feb. 8 2012, blog

Red hearts- kablam, drawn by George Supreeth, Jan. 14, 2009, clipart

Rope- Matti Mattila, March 9, 2012. flickr

Person- craig Cloutier, December 31, 2008 flickr

Answers: Happy as a clam. Love Birds. On the ropes. 

Open Assignment- Trash

     This week I did my open assignment. Last week when taking pictures for shadows I used a dead flower to try to create a cool shadow. I took pictures of the flower as well, which is where I got the inspiration for this assignment. I decided to try to find broken things around my house that we just never get rid of no matter how bad it gets. That strategy was hard. My parents get rid of anything broken. I took picture of basement which is currently under construction so I got quite a few pictures from there. My favorite pictures where that of the dead flowers around and that is what I ended up picking. Most pictures I feel like where better in color since I tried to put my subject on a plain background. I liked this assignment because I think it's fun to look at broken things and try to fix them so we can keep them and use them again. 

Best photo
ISO: 400
Aperture: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/50s

Photoshop: School Context Project

     This week we transformed the school. We took a picture of a place in the school and then using photoshop, we turned the place into something of our imagination. We cut out items from other pictures and moved them into the background picture from the school. This assignment was really fun. I liked cutting out things from pictures I got off the internet to put them into the school. I'm not really a imaginative person, but putting things into the gym was fun. I think that it was a great assignment to test my understanding of photoshop as well because I had to use many tools to stitch the photo together. Making the scene look natural was a challenge but after some tips from Mr. Bush, it went together nicely. The picture wasn't exactly what was I wanted but I think it looks nice. The only other thing I wanted to add was a bridge connecting the railings and the track, but whenever I tried to do that it looked very unnatural. Below is my final image.

And here is another I quickly put together once I got done with my first one: 

Light and Shadows

     For this week I explored lighting and shadows. As you can see, there are not many pictures with shadows because I couldn't find shadows that I thought could be a good subject. I mostly took this assignment to explore the magic of silhouettes. I really like silhouettes because it makes the picture mysterious. To take silhouettes, what I did was take a light meter on the sky instead of the subject. When the sky had good exposure, the subject would be dark so you would only see the outline. I couldn't really decide what to use a subject so being the person I am, I choose to shoot mostly nature. I like the picture with my house as the silhouette, I think it can cause people to wonder about what is going on in the house. Even though other pictures are a better use of color and have richer colors, I like using the house for the subject. Also, I think I got bored of trees when I started actually looking at the pictures so the house is a good break. It was fun to take this set of pictures and I loved exploring silhouettes.

Best Photo
ISO:100
Shutter speed: 1/250
Aperture: 22

Portrait

     This week we learned about light. Our main focus was three point lighting. There is a main light that is off the the side of the person. The reflector is on the opposite side of the main light or key light. This reflector on the opposite side lights up the side of the face of the subject away from the main light. Lastly, the hair is light is behind the person. It creates a small halo effect on the person and makes the person stand out from the background. When using the sun light coming in from the window as main light, the only two lights you use are the main light (from the sunlight) and a reflecting surface for the secondary light. Also, we learned about making a good portrait. Some tips we used were making your subject comfortable, using a large aperture, and using a relatively fast shutter speed like 1/60 of a second. We used these lighting skills to take portraits of people in our class. I think that these skills really helped define the subject's face light up and it was fun to take portraits. I don't like taking pictures of people, though, so I won't use these skills specifically for portraits most likely but I could use it for other lighting in pictures.