This will be my last Blog post as I will soon finish up the class and High School In general. This class has taught me a lot in not only taking pictures but editing them and using photoshop. When I first came into this class I knew the bare minimum about photography or editing. Of course I knew how to take a photo but I soon learned that there is so much more to capturing a good photo than just taking it in focus. The photo that you see above is my first photoshop assignment where I was to take one photo then change the color on it four times and put them next to each other. During that time I struggled to even do that simple task but it was all part of the learning curve. As you can see in the photo below overtime I got a lot better in my opinion. I learned how to merge photos and i had a lot of fun with this assignment. I took five different photos of myself with the same background then cropped myself in a different spot all into one. In the picture above I was capturing macro photos meaning taking pictures from up close. I did an okay job at capturing the details of the wood but I was using the flash at the time which caused unnatural lighting as you can probably tell. Same goes for the picture of my dog. When I now look at this it is clear to me that this is not the best quality picture that I could have taken of this. I took what Mr. Bush taught me about that and applied it to an upcoming photoshoot that I did on my car. I waited for sunset then positioned my truck in a way where I had the sun setting in the background yet was still light enough outside all around to capture the full figure of the truck.
0 Comments
This week I decided to take pictures of cars, I only took pictures of my own personal car but I feel like the photos I got from this photoshoot were more than good enough. I tried to incorporate the sunset in the background for a few and also I tried to capture the under-glow lights I have running underneath my car. The tough parts about this assignment were trying to capture the lights shining under my car without the outdoors being pitch black out. This photo is my favorite picture from this assignment. I love the sky and trees in the background. I was looking uphill at the car parked in my front yard. I raised the Exposure, shadows, whites, clarity, vibrance, and the saturation. I dropped the contrast, highlights, and blacks in this photo.
This week for my assignment I was to take photos as a portrait. We were to take two different shots of a person, one using Natural light and the other using lights set up in a studio. The main struggle of this assignment was working with the natural light and finding it. As the seasons start to change it is hard to find good natural lighting.
This week I focused on changing pictures that I shot to black and white. I Really liked how black and white changes the mood of the photo so to say. In changing photos to black and white the editing is a little different. I mostly touched up the shadows, whites, and blacks after it was changed to a black and white photo. This assignment was fun for me because as I have come to find out through the duration of this class is that I like the editing aspect as much as I like to take the photos. This photo above was my favorite photo from the Black and white assignment. The flowers shown were originally yellow while the wood behind it was a brighter tan color. I feel as if the black and white editing fits this photo very well and compliments it nicely. The editing done to this photo was bringing out the whites and blacks, dropping the exposure, and raising the shadows because the bottom of the flower pot was kind of dark.
This weeks assignment was to use photoshop and take pictures of the same area but with someone in different spots around the area. I chose to take pictures of myself in a sitting area here at the school. One struggle that I came across while taking this assignment was not moving the camera in between shots. Another struggle was before taking the picture finding the perfect settings for the photo. The tripod helped a lot with this problem but it was still the most challenging part. Personally this has been my favorite assignment so far.
For my fifth photo assignment I decided to do a Macro assignment. Macro photos are close up pictures really focusing on the small details of the photo. In my experience shooting this assignment I really tried to get as close as I could to the object I was shooting. I think I liked shooting this assignment the best so far, it was fun and it was cool to me to take close up photos. The photo displayed above is the photo I like the best from this assignment. I love the small little details in the wood and the nail in it. The rustic look and the design it naturally have from chipping. This is actually a barn door from a fallen down barn near my house that my family got and hung in our house. I did a little editing on this photo consisting of lowering the exposure, contrast, highlights, and blacks. I also raised the shadows, whites, clarity, vibrance, and saturation to really bring out the detail in the wood.
For this weeks photo assignment I chose to capture photos of food. I chose to take many pictures of the cookies my mom baked, also I had a jar of walnuts that I took a few pictures of, i really like the photo of the jar of walnuts from above where it is seton a placemat and you can see the details in the placemat. Another type of photo I tried to take is honey dripping it was hard to capture this and I only managed to get one decent photo out of it. The photo above was probably my favorite picture from all of them really focusing on the detail of the cookies. I used photoshop to increase the clarity, whites, blacks, shadows, and the temp a little. I only decreased the Exposure in this picture.
In this photo shooting assignment I decided to take pictures of animals. I was originally planning on taking pictures of the ducks, squirrels, and other different types of natural wild life out at my pond by my house, but I fractured my wrist so I decided to settle on taking pictures of my two dogs. The larger image that you will find below would probably have to be my favorite picture out of all of them. I was holding up a treat for him as I took the picture so it almost seems like he is looking right at the camera. Also I managed to capture a good amount of detail in his eyes which I learned last week in class was what we should try and focus on. I learned in this assignment that taking pictures with one hand is significantly harder than taking them with two. Also I learned that having someone to help try to control the animal is helpful. Some editing that I did for this photo includes raising the exposure, shadows, clarity and saturation. Also I decided to lower the contrast, whites, and blacks. Within all these editing changes I believe that it really brought out the dogs eyes and face.
This week I started to learn and apply the basics of photoshop, which I used on the photo below. In this first photo shop assignment that I did I was required to take the same photo, just taken from the computer I was working on, and turn it into a four different color Pop-art assignment. Overall this in my opinion was a great start to get to know my way around photoshop and I am excited to learn and use it more often.
For my first photo shot I choice nature. I really enjoyed this photo shoot because I went outside and got to take pictures of natural things that are already set up for me. During this assignment I Experienced how some of my favorite photos are ones I barely noticed when I first took them, but when I imported them to my computer and saw them full screen and really got a good look at them I noticed how good they were. The editing That I used on this picture is bringing out the green color more, toning down the highlights, shadows, and blacks. Also I increased the clarity of the photo.
|
AuthorMy name is Ryan Koch, I am 17 years old, and I am senior at saline high school. I live with my parents, sister, and two younger brothers. I have interests in sports and being active, I like to go out with friends and relax. |