Still Life

Assignment Summary

For my last photo assignment I decided to focus on still lifes.  While taking pictures I found that the most difficult part of creating a good still life was choosing a good subject.  i tried to pick things that alomst seemd to tell their own story such as my saxophone with sheet music, cards with dice, and my soccer shoes with a trophy.  To achieve a black background that would serve to focus the viewer's attention on the subject, I used a black coat and then on a fw of the photographs had to use the paint tool in Gimp to fix a couple of spots where the backdrop didn't quite cover.  Since I took most of the photos in relatively low light conditions (indoors in th evening), many of the photos came out with a reddish-yellow tint.  I fixed this problem by adjusting the red and yellow saturation in Gimp.

Best Photo

Photo Info

ISO: 400

Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec

Aperture: 2.8

What I Learned

This assignment helped me to realize what makes a good subject for a photograph.  Most of the items I choose to take still lifes of and that actually worked well had some sort of extra visual appeal such as shine or bright color.  For still life I also found that it is nice to have an image that tells a story or shares an idea with the viewer like the cards, dominoes, and saxophone that I photographed.

Light Painting

Assignment Summary

This week I decided to experiment with light painting.  In order to create an enviornment that was dark enough to be conducive to light painting, I took my photographs in my basement with all of the lights off and at night.  I set my camera at a really slow shutter speed to create the painting effect with a flashlight and a low ISO so that the digital sensor on the camera wouldn't be too sensitive to the light.  For a lot of my photos I tried to use subjects that had somewhat reflective surfaces like glass or metal, to really play up the effect of the flashlight reflecting off of them. In my best picture I used glass hearts for this reason and I really liked how the designs within the hearts kind of mirrored the design of the light painting.

Best Photo

Photo Info

Shutter Speed: 6 sec

ISO: 100

Aperture: f 8

What I Learned

From this assignment I learned a lot about light painting and found it to be a really fun type of photography to create.  My entire family got in on the action and they really seemed to enjoy it as well.  I also learned that sometimes you have to be patient and continue pursuing an idea until you get it right, but there are also times when your idea just isn't going to work out and you have to realize that.

Gimp Context Assignment

Assignment Summary

For this assignment we took a photo of a scene around the high school and then used Gimp to edit in images from other pictures on the internet in order to portray the school in a different context.  For my photo, I took a picture of the main hallway in the school then added pictures of Harry Potter and others playing quidditch and a backdrop of Hogwarts castle through the library windows.  To accomplish this I had to open each picture in a separate Gimp window, cut out the section that I wanted, and paste it into a layer on the backdrop picture of the hallway.  For the shadows I had to copy the layer, flip it vertically, and adjust the color levels and opacity to make the image look like a shadow.

Black and White

Assignment Summary

This week I decided to ficus on black and white photographs.  There were two different ways that I captured the black and white images, for some of them I simply went to the settings on my camera and set it to black and white mode, for others I took color images on the camera then converted them to black and white on photoshop.  The black and white tool on photoshop is very useful tool when converting a color picture because often it will present you with more than one black and white version of the image (for instance it may have more white than black or vice versa).  This variety can help you to customize the photograph and chose the best possible image.  I also used both the color pop tool in photoshop and the hue saturation tool in Gimp on a few of my photos to add some character in the form of a faint hint of color.

Best Photo

I chose this picture because I liked the way the texture of the shoe really stood out and even though converses tend to be colorful, I thought it translated well into a black and white image.

Photo Info

Shutter Speed: 1/125

Aperture: f 2.8

ISO: 1600

What I Learned

In taking black and white photos I learned how to look at things in a different way.  When taking pictures in color, I tend to look for things that are bright and eye-catching whereas this week I had to force myself to look beyond color for other factors that make an interesting subject such as texture and shadows.  I also figured out how to select your own color to pop because in both photoshop and Gimp there is a tool that alows you to click on the color that you want to work with.

Portrait Demo

 Assignment Summary

The objective of this assignment was to learn about how to take a portrait of a subject.  We utilized the "sandwich lighting" technique in the photography lab to create the optimal light setting for a portrait.  There was a "hair light" pointed down from above, a background light behind the backdrop, a main light off to the side, and another side light that was dimmed through a screen.  We also learned how to use a bounce card, which is a white piece of cardboard, to reflect the natural light from a window onto out subject. We were also able to utilize the tools of Gimp such as layers, filling, and the writing tool, to put the two images side-by-side in a very professional looking photograph.

Animals

Assignment Summary

This week I chose animals as my subject.  Luckily, I was able to visit an aviary and I captured several images of beautiful birds and my dog, Abby, served as an excellent subject for my pictures as well. The pictures pictures of my dog were taken outside in really high light conditions so I had to adjust the exposure quite a bit, mainly by adjusting the shutter speed because Abby was not staying still and I wanted to freeze her in motion and capture a brief moment in time.  For the birds I also had to maintain a high shutter speed to avoid blurring, but since they were in low light conditions it was more difficult and I really had to play with aperture and ISO to get a good photo.  I also used gimp to edit most of the pictures. I had to crop a few with the crop tool, fix reflections with the stamp tool, adjust the exposures with levels, and bring out the colors by changing the saturation.

Best Photo

I chose this picture because I really thought it captured the personality of my dog, I like the way she is up high following rule of thirds, and I thought the green of the tennis ball and grass looked good with the gold of Abby and the leaves.

Photo Info

Aperture: f 3.5

Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec

ISO: 200

What I Learned

While I was taking pictures of my dog outside it was afternoon and the sun was really bright so I had to figure out how to manipulate the exposure triangle so that the light was just right and I had to learn how to get everything positioned just right so that the shadows didn't ruin the picture.  I also learned that when you're taing photos of an active subject that doesn't listen to you, you have to keep your camera set to a high shutter speed in order to freeze  the motion and avoid blurring.

Panoramic

This assignment introduced us to the process of creating a panoramic picture. We had to take three pictures using a stable base (aiming for about a 20% overlap between them) and then use the tools in Gimp to put these pictures together into one complete panoramic image. We had to use various tools such as the eraser to erase one layer, perspective to align edges and angles better, and the scale tool to stretch or condense the photo so that seams would match up. I really liked the attention to detail and freedom to figure out how to merge the images together involved in this assignment.

During this assignment I learned that your camera had to be on manual so that none of the exposure levels would change from picture to picture and that you need a stable base like a table or a tripod to make sure that the angles of your photos would match up.  I also learned more about the tools in Gimp.  I already knew about several of them like the stamp and the eraser, but I was able to figure out how to use tools like scale and perspective to manipulate the orientation of the image.