Final photo story

Make a free picture slideshow

What was done to each photo:
1) First, I used the selection/move tool to copy and paste various parts of the white rocks to cover a wall that was to the right of the rock path. I also decreased saturation to make it black and white and adjusted the light to make it a bit darker.
2) I added a filter, “polar coordinates” to swirl the photo to represent the cycle of the seasons in Vermont.
3) In this photo, I adjusted the color balance, adding higher levels of blue and lower levels of cyan.
4) First I used the blur tool on some of the darker rock, making them lighter to blend with the water. Then I added the oilfy filter because I really like the soft touch it gives the water.
5) Here I lowered lightness and increased saturation a little bit. Then I selected and painted the boy’s sweatshirt and shoes, dying them green to really pop out.
6) In this photo I again increased saturation, and decreased the hue slightly to enhance the colors, making them clear and precise.
7) Again here, I increased saturation, this time by much more. Then I decreased the lightness and finally added text: “Lyndon State” hovering over the rainbow.
8) Here I first cropped out some extra open water to focus on the lighthouse. Then I sharpened the whole photo (It was originally taken from my camera in black and white).
9) This photo was already very purple and florescent but I did adjust the midtones of magenta to enhance the color even more. I also used the blur tool in the background on the mountains.
10) In this photo I added the filter “lens flare” from the top left of the photo where the sun hits the spaces between the two bridges.
11) Here I increased the saturation, contrast, and lightness slightly and decreased the brightness just a little bit.
12) In this photo I adjusted the hue to enhance the green colors of the trees. Then I increased the saturation significantly and added the text, “802” to wrap up my slideshow!

Rusty and Hayden- Portraits

This is my oldest nephew, Rusty. My camera automatically picked up his face with face detection which seems to really help put the attention and focus on his face. I cropped it a bit because the stuff in the background is a bit distracting. I wanted the head on view so the focus would be on his emotions through his facial, I'm glad I finally got him laughing. I love his little dimples :)  I found that rule of thirds seems to fall into place its self  when photographing portraits because the human face and body creates these sections.

This is my second oldest nephew, Hayden. We were walking through Burlington and he wanted to go up the stairs. He posed like this all on his own :) I intended it to be more natural and tried to get a few shots of his back as he walked up the stairs. But then he stopped and stood like this, and it made for a much better photo for this assignment. He looks like a model, trouble trouble. So other than the unnatural setting, I like the scene and the overall photo.  I do wish he smile though!

week 10 manipulations

   Before After

In this photo I used the clone tool, holding shift to make a box around the red text "focus". Then I moved the mouse over in the areas where I wanted that piece to go, as you can see multiple times to produce my final product. I found this tool to be a bit tidious, it took me a few tries to get what I wanted, I still don't think I have the hang of this tool as much as I'd like to but, practice practice practice!

BeforeAfter

I added text in this photo using the text tool. I selected the tool and put the box at the bottom of the picture. Then by playing around with the colors, fonts and sizes, I finally found what I wanted and what fit to the picture. I chose white font to help it pop out because the background of that area (our pants) is pretty dark. Are they're effects that can be added to the text tool other than the watermark? I could'nt seem to figure this out yet. I think it could make for better quality and overall effect if effects were added. (As you can see, I also adjusted the color temperature by turning it all the way up and the saturation slightly up.)

Before

After

This is photo from a lighting/contrast shoot that I took in one of my courses in high school. To start I used the bucket fill tool on the gray table. Using black I clicked on various spots on the table and the bucket filled that area. I liked the patchy effect that this caused, so instead of trying to fill it all as a whole I kept it like this. There is a little patch on the bottom of the flower pot that got covered up by this that I noticed afterwards, oops. Once I had the table done and blended into the black background I played with the brush tool and discovered the "sparks" option. I turned the brush scale up to almost 10.0 and moved my mouse around the flowers and pot. Kind of a out-there result, but I think it's eye catching and interesting.

In the first set of photos, the first is the original and to make the second photo I applied the cartoon filter found under artistic filters. Then I added the neon filter on top of this turning the radius up significantly and keeping the amount low.

The second set of photos again the first is the original and to make the second I first turned lightness down and adjusted the hue to make the color really pop. Then I added the oilfy filter chaning the mark size to 20, turning the intensity algerithm on and chaning the exponent to 10%. All of this helped to sharpen the edges of the words on the can and make them bolder, catching more attention.

The third set of photos are of the Fairfax Falls. The first photo I appliedthe cartoon filter again, this time turning the mask radius up and the percent of black down a tad. The second photo is the original and the third I applied the oilfy filter as is. I like the softness that this filter shows in this photo, very smooth and calm where as the one where I applied cartoon there seems to be more noise and texture. Filters are my favorite part of photoshop!

Burn/dodge

Before

After

To make this photo I used a few layers to give the whole photo the effect of burn as well as overlay. I made the layer mode burn at 46.5% opacity and a new layer in overlay mode at 100%. In this layer I used the brush tool with a larger brush to darken the sky and I tried to fix that little blotch of sunlight that looks kind of funny. (I kept the range set at midtones.) I'm not sure I was very successful in fixing that part of the photo, but I like the overall effects, it almost looks like I turned up the saturation. I think this photo could be more interesting if cropped or maybe with a filter on top..

Lighting photos

Before

After

In this first photo I did a series of modifications. First I enhanced the lightness of shadows and brought the color curve down. Then I enhanced the yellow shadows and mixed the hue a bit to blend with this effect. The last thing I did was pump up the saturation which really finished the photo. I spend a lot of time fooling around with this one, it's hard to make pictures of sun like this look good without overdoing the light. Overall I like how it enhances the sun and the reflecting light and it almost creates a fading boarder around the entire photo.

Before

After

This is a picture of a painting that my sister did. I think my nephew stole my camera and accidently took this, but I figured it would be pretty cool to edit because of all of the colors and patterns. I kind of just opened it in GIMP and played around with things until I found something that looked decent. To start, I decreased the lightness significantly to pull the colors more and fix the lighting. I jacked up the saturation to 80% and pulled down the color curve a tad then finally pulled up the contrast as well. The contrast helped to make the colors pop from the photo. I really like how this one turned out. I actually glows under a blacklight and the after photo here kind of resembles what it looks like when it's glowing.

Hornets

I used this photo of my boyfriend playing baseball (: In this photo I used the same process to get the logo (which I had saved from a document from Lyndon State, but it is accessable on the Lyndon Hornets page) out of a picture. I used lasso again and then pasted the result to the photo. I added a decor filter because it just looked kind of silly in full color because the original is a little fuzzy.

Gimp

This is a poto I took of my nephew a while back at the park :) I wanted to remove the background from the photo. It came out a bit rough, but it took me quite a while. First I used the lasso to go around the subject that I wanted to pull from the photo.  Then I activated the quick mask. I used the paint tool to go around the rough edges and try to tighten them up. I toggled off the quick mask to remove the background. I moved the layer to "alpha to select", inverted then feathered the selection. I couldn't make up my mind what to do with the background, but I saved the image to maybe put something in later.

Landscape

My intention of this photo was to bring attention to the sunset and the mountain in the background, yet balance the photo with the tree in the foreground. Compositionally, I explored many options with this week’s assignment. Another element that contributes in this photo is the brightness of the sun shining through the tree further back.

 This photo as well as the next one are I think my best ones from this week’s assignments. My intention of this first one was to capture the sunset while using the rule of thirds between the sky with the smooth spread out clouds in the upper third split by the tree line in the middle as well as the gorgeous orange sun and finally the ice-capped snowy field in the lower third of the photo. I also intended to capture an analogous color scheme with the orange sunlight and the white between the sky and reflecting snowy field. The tree line is a nice offsetting touch to this scheme. I like that the sun is off centered in this first one, it is really appealing with the tree line to the right of the sun.

My intention of this one was color wise the same as the one above, but compositionally I intended to break the photo apart a bit more suddenly by centering the sun in the middle third with the tree line and again the sky in the upper third and snowy field in the bottom third. I think that this photo is still very appealing but possibly compositionally a bit boring compared to the first.

 My intention of this photo was to put more focus on the foreground of the trees rather than the sunset and mountain in the background. Part of landscape photography is to capture all aspects of a photo opportunity. I think that because the sunset is set back further, it draws the eye a bit more. I like the different colors that the sunset reflect through the photo starting in the back and still warming the foreground. Thus I think that the most successful element of this photo and the other photos is the sunset itself because no matter how it was captured, it still seems to be the highlight of the photos and brings a happy, warm and relaxing mood to each of them.

This one shows a closer image of the mountain, putting emphasis in the background on the mountain and the sunset. I think that compositionally this photo is successful because it shows rule of thirds and framing. My favorite feature is the fence in the lower left and the tree branches that give a natural and openness to the photo in the upper left. One thing that I really like about this one too is that I could easily crop it a few different ways and still capture different elements of landscape. For example if I were to cut out the left side, the mountain, the sunset and the trees glistening in front of it show a bright, warm feel of a winter day. Yet if the right side were to be cropped out the emphasis would be on the fence and tree branches to the left and the photo would show a complementary color scheme more than the analogous scheme to the right of the photo.

My intention of this photo was to capture a warmness through the air of the warm winter day in a compositionally appealing way. Again rule of thirds comes into play, but at a diagonal with the road in the bottom third. I like the way the trees blend between the bottom and top third. If I could change one thing about this photo I think I would have backed it up a bit to show the other side of the snow bank on the other side of the road. I think that this would have helped frame the photo and make it more balanced.

Finally, some variety for this week’s assignment. Unfortunately I did not have much time to do enough shoots this week to get great photos so I had to use many from one shoot but I also chose this one from another quick shoot in Fairfax, Vermont. Fairfax has some really great views of mountains. I wanted to capture some good photos of Mount Mansfield, but again I ran out of time. Instead, I took this shot from roadside on a back road. My intention of this photo was to capture a monochromatic color scheme. The hue of the pale sky balances well with the snow covering the mountain and the fields that cover the photo. Again, the tree really sticks out in this photo and adds a nice offsetting touch for our eye to draw to. One thing I would like to change about this photo is the focus of the mountain. It seems to be a bit blurry as it is almost lost in the background. This might be due to the color scheme, but that’s Vermont winter!

Slideshow

https://picasaweb.google.com/108484000271266690538/DigiFraming?authkey=Gv1sRgCIuL-_6zp6SF5wE#slideshow/5578140380549042642

Week 5: ah-ha's on readings

I loved the examples the readings shared. One thing that I learned from this week was the dynamic symmetry. I knew it existed but did not know exactly what it was.. This helps put emphasis on THE focal point and focus of the photo by drawing attention to these point by drawing a "diagonal line from one corner to an opposite corner then drawing a second line perpendicular to the first from a third corner." The intersections where they meet are the points of interests. I have started taking photos for this weeks assignment, I found the grid function (which shows a basic rule of thirds grid on the camera screen when shooting) to be quite helpful.

Complementary

This photo shows a complementary color scheme. The two larger flowers (orange and yellow) are emphasized by the blue background. I also like the little green and purple in the background, they draw you into the background a bit more.

Toy Story

This week’s readings were as warned, pretty confusing. I did grasp a few interesting concepts that I have struggled with and wondered how to fix. For example, chromatic aberration leads to distortion while contrast leads to blurring. I have experienced the problem of balancing the two to get the right shot just like the eagle in the tutorial. Something I also seem to struggle with using my camera is the relation to focal length and a fuzzy image resulting. The example of the hallway in terms of perspective of each detail of a photo helped me to sort of re-evaluate to make sure I am putting perspective into more of a consideration while photographing which will hopefully help to produce a better product. Perspective and composition can also help in reducing camera shake. Many times I sit and take shot after shot of shaky photos, even if I try to use the “camera shake sensor” feature on my camera. Now I know that this is due to other factors as well that can easily be factored out. One aspect that I am still be a little flustered about is the f-numbers and how to apply them.

I was looking around the house to find something to shoot for this project and I saw all of these Toy Story toys spread through out the house. I decided to try exploring the Macro setting on my camera and took under consideration all that I had learned from the readings to create a Toy Story theme. Overall I think that the shoot was pretty successful.

week two

I chose these two photos because I like the way the different flash and ISO settings worked with focus and over all picture. The first picture shows a further view with the complete scene from an interesting angle while the second captures a closer focus on a few of the items.