Project 9: Global Issues

Global Issues: Domestic Violence

For this assignment, we had a type of new twist on last years PSAs. For my global issue, I used domestic violence.

My aim was to show little of a voice that those who suffer from domestic violence have. Because of the situation that they’re in, they may be feel that if they spoke out, they’d receive treatment from their abuser that is so much worse that what it initially is; or they may keep quiet in fear of not having their voice heard to begin with.

In order to accomplish this, I smoothed my skin and rid it of any obvious blemishes. From there, I used the pain pull to do several layers to receive a bruising affect. Lastly, I used the spot healing tool in Photoshop and grabbed a patch of my forehead to place over my mouth. In order to give my covered mouth more of a realistic feel, I smoothed skin some more and edited it by adjusting the shadows and hues so that I could achieve that.

Edit: Before turning this assignment in to the teacher, I added text over the mouth and edited the mouth piece further.

Project 8: Painting with Light (Studio)

Painting With Light (Studio)

The idea of this project was to use a small flashlight in order to light up our picture–studio lights and natural light was out of the question. In order to obtain this, we had to throw our camera onto a tripod, open the shutter manually (by setting it to “bulb”), and using the flashlight for a specific amount of time (depending on the subject and the feel you were going for). Flashing the light onto the subject, we were able to create lines to highlight our subject or use just enough light to cover our subject to where it looks more natural (mine for example).

I wanted my shoot to be simple. That morning, I picked up some tulips and arranged a few in a small “vase” (I use that term loosely), and scattered petals and leafs around the arrangement; I also used water to add some sort of texture to the photograph so that it wasn’t so plain.

Afterwards, I opened up the shutter, and experimented with what sort of lighting I wanted. After I settled with holding the far away from the subject so that it looked more natural, I used a yellow filter to add a warmer glow to the photograph.

Overall, I am pleased with the photo, but while I was editing the photo, I noticed a slight motion blur which was probably caused by the accidental nudge of the tripod when I went to go take a look at the photo while closing the shutter; I should have been paying more attention.

Project7: Diptych/Triptychs using Photoshop Actions

Triptych p.1

Triptcyh p.2

Diptychs and triptychs are when you take simple photographs and editing them so that they become types of abstract art–or so I’ve gathered. Diptychs have two photos where triptychs typically have three or more.

Though I am able to respect and appreciate abstract art, I sided with a more neutral tone. For practice, I took several photographs of logos of the cars here on campus. Surprisingly enough, I was pleased with how it turned out despite the lack of vibrant colors; same goes for the signs that can be found around campus.

When editing, I quickly learned that I’m not all that great with math considering I had to get the help of a fellow student in figuring out the proportions for the final products. Since I sided with keeping a more simple take on editing my photos, editing was fairly easily and quick.

Project 6: Studio Portraits

Studio Portraits

Under construction.

Project 4: Multiple Exposure

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Under construction.

Project 5: Photoshop Tutorial

Photoshop Tutorial

My guess for having us touch on this way to remind us that there is so much more to do with Photoshop than the basic effects. Though I was wanting to try and more complicated tutorial, I unfortunately didn’t have the time of the patience.

So, I sided with a tutorial that would enhance a photo that I already had in mind. Having taken the photo at the San Jose Friendship Gardens, which has a koi fish pond, I wanted to do something that would have the water smooth and enhance the colors of the fish–watercolor.

It was a simple tutorial and you’d have to be juggling torches in order to be lost, but it was informative and a perfect reminder that there is more to do with the advance

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Tutorial can be found at: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/watercolor-painting/

Emulating a Photographer

Emulating Photographer p. 1

Emulating Photographer p. 2

This week we had to emulate our favorite photographer–either we had to identically mimic a specific photograph of theirs or we could use their style to take our own photo.

I chose Terry Richardson.

Finding a model was easy (using my friend Victoria Robles), but the hardest part was finding a way around Richardson’s style; he is notorious for explicit photographs, pushing the boundaries, and even has gone as far to have been charged with sexual abuse. Of course the accusations have come from everyone other than the models who next to always have nothing but kind words about the photographer.

But, thankfully, there were a small handful of PG-13 photoshoots that can be considered more school friendly. Using my model to do my best to replicate a photo all the while trying to add my own touch to it was difficult but I’m sure I managed to do just that.

Since Victoria, my model, has more of an olive complexion, copper-colored hair, and darker eyes in comparison to the original model (the photo to the left and above), I had to edit her eyes and hair selectively–I masked the layers so that her skin tone wasn’t affected when I brightened the photo. As for the photo to the left, the background was darker so I had to create a new layer to brighten it and mask it so it didn’t affect the model.

I learned to go with my gut feeling–sticking with Richardson as a photographer to emulate–despite his history because he is a wonderful photographer and I love his simplistic style. I also became a bit more confident with masking and am looking forward to using masks more.

Project 2: Panoramas

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I’ve said before that I like landscape shoots; I have no problem with them and prefer them over portraits more often than not. But that was before we were assigned to shoot panoramic landscapes. At first, I was excited at the thought and it wasn’t until I was standing in the middle of a field– seeing whether or not there was plenty of ground and sky to be available in the photo–that I realized how tedious this project really was.

In my regular panoramic photo, I got the chance to head to Roaring Camp Railroads just in Felton, California (a few miles outside of Santa Cruz). It was in the morning, so I thought that lighting would be perfect enough. But, to my horror, the trees were clearly too tall for me to get enough of the sky. So with the hope of Roaring Camp being my planet shot shattered, I sided with at least giving it a shot to see what sort of photos I could pull out of the location. Thanks to the trees, there were some who were obviously too tall for me to entirely get in the shot. Also, because the sun had made its way up past the mountains, I have a nice ol’ sun flare on the right side of my photo.

As for my planet, there’s too many flaws for my liking. What I shot was an airfield in Sacramento (often referred to as ‘SAMs’) and because of the fact that airplanes buzzed around at 160-plus miles per hour, there were no trees and I thought it the perfect location. Fortunately it was, but the fact that I was lazy with the tri-pod leveling and focusing, there’s two obvious seams, the edges of the individual photos are fuzzy, and the ground doesn’t always match up. Also, because I didn’t entirely get the clouds in the shot either, they smeared across the rest of photo after I Photoshopped it into the planet shape it has now (tool: polar coordinates).

The process of putting the pictures together was importing them to Lightroom so that I could edit them so that they were all alike and there wasn’t a difference. After that, I exported and pulled them into Photoshop by clicking ‘automate’ under ‘file’ and let the computer work by itself to fit the images together into a panoramic image. I cropped off the unnecessary bits and that was it. But, for the planet shaped image, I sized it to be a giant square, flipped it 180 degrees, and used the ‘polar coordinates’ tool underneath ‘filter.’

All I can say is that I learned that I need to stop being lazy when it comes to my photos (among other things, admittedly). I know I’m capable of photos better than this, it’s just that I’m too lazy to get myself going–it’s something that I definitely need to work on.

Scavenger Hunt

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Having the second project be a scavenger hunt served as a great refresher for the year. Because summer did a great job at having me forget a majority of the techniques I learned, it was nice having this project to help bring me back into the world of photography.

Despite me not doing blur motion or panning, I now realize that those two things are something I definitely need to be working on; I also need to focus more on making sure I have the proper setting for when I take freeze motion shots–overall, I know that I need to pay more attention to making sure that all of my photos are in focus. Because I was messing around with manual focus instead of sticking with auto focus, more than a few of my photos are out of focus thanks to that.

Even though we were more than capable of taking all of the required shots at the school, I checked out a camera so that I could take over half of the needed shots so that there was more of a variety of them. I managed to get my brother to agree to ride around on his bike for me so that I could take a few pictures and I also bothered my cats for a good hour or two.

Project 1: Advanced Montaging

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For our first project of the year, we were instructed to make three things: a tool check, a press pass, and a locker label. All of which would be used to let us check out photo equipment, give us the ability to be out during class, and a place where we could claim and store our work.

In order to do this, Ms. Cheung (photo teacher) took a few pictures of us in the studio for use. Afterwards, we had to pull two stock photos and successfully blend them together. We then use our full body, torso, and face shots and used effects and blending modes to make sure that all blended well and nothing looked (too) out of place.

I learned how to better blend my photos as well as easily cut out objects with the quick selection tool and refine edge option. Because of this, it makes cutting out objects in images have much smoother edges and look more natural when I move them to another image.

So that I could make the project my own and unique, I picked out a stock image of a lighthouse off the coast in Santa Cruz and an image of the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, both very close to my heart. I poised myself against the lighthouse and bridge and blended myself into a moon on all three images.