For this assignment, we set up a studio for portraits in the Hornet Hub, as well as took portraits outside of the studio. I took my pictures outside of the studio off campus. Both the studio and non studio portraits required us to take pictures of two different people. This assignment was fun. The hardest part was getting people to sit still and cooperate. I learned how to use my camera to take portraits more intentionally than I had before, and I'm proud of how my pictures turned out. I didn't really edit them aside from some cropping, so I was quite impressed.
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For this assignment, we found ads online and then tried to duplicate them using pictures we had taken and our photoshop skills. I took the picture of my shoe here and then changed the color of the font and background to match my shoe. For this one, I took a picture of the Pringles can and the pringle. I did a gradient background with the red, painted in some shadows, and added the fire and text.
I thought this was really cool because I figured out how to do everything by myself. I didn't realize how much I could do with Photoshop without instructions, and I was kind of impressed honestly. It was a little stressful, but much better than taking pictures of myself for self portraits. This week, I decided to take pictures of architecture because it wasn't something I had done before. I took pictures of different buildings found on Eastern Michigan's campus, including the water tower that I ended up focusing on. I really enjoyed this shoot because the weather cooperated so beautifully. The sky was blue, and it was relatively warm outside. I worked with the clone stamp tool a lot with this particular picture, and I was quite impressed with how well I was able to erase the sign from the image without making it look unrealistic.
For this assignment, we were tasked with taking four different self-portraits of ourselves and two environmental portraits of people doing what they do. Taking pictures of myself was hard, so I used mirrors and a tripod. Taking pictures of people in their environment was much easier because they were actually doing something rather than posing for a random picture. I felt like the hardest part of this grouping was figuring out how to get myself in front of the camera while still showing my personality. For my best two, I took a mirror picture of myself smiling wearing a pretty typical outfit (a cross country shirt), and for my second picture, I was wearing my club singlet for the indoor track season and holding my spikes. Running is a big part of my life, so I wanted to include it. Taking environmental pictures was much more enjoyable because I just had to capture people doing things they love. The first one is my friend Ella, who is very involved in art, working on an art project that involves drawing on wood. The second picture is Ella again, except this time she's racing. She has been running since fourth grade, so running is an integral part of her life.
This past weekend, we had an indoor track meet at Eastern Michigan University, and I thought it would be really fun to take pictures of the competitors from both our team and others. This was a challenge because the lighting in Eastern's field house is less than ideal, and there are always a lot of people running. Many of my pictures ended up blurry because people crossed in front of my camera and threw off the focus. I thought that the motion left in some of the pictures added to the understanding of the sport. Indoor racing is filled with never-ending motion, and something is always going on. The lighting presented a challenge, but overall, I'm happy with how my pictures turned out. We don't usually get pictures of us running, especially at club meets, so it was cool to be behind the camera for this one.
We had a lot of free range with this project. We had to first complete a tutorial that made one picture look like it was made up of several polaroid shots, and then we had to find three other tutorials of equal difficulty to complete. This tutorial was the one assigned. This tutorial was intended to make a smoke effect where it looked like the subject was dissolving into smoke. It involved downloading a brush set and messing around with special effects in photoshop. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GRUl4U8jik For this tutorial, I did a double exposure with a mountain range and the sky superimposed onto my friend's face. I used different pictures and slightly different colors than the tutorial did, but the end result was the same. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOYz669WNpU This tutorial was by far the most frustrating. My picture didn't align the way it should have, so the glitch effect looks like it was just staggered. I used a different color scheme, so instead of using the red-blue combo, I opted for the green-purple combo. At the very end, the video instructed on how to make a copy of the effect so that you could use it on any object, and when I did this, it erased my original image, which I was much happier with. Nonetheless, my final product still followed the tutorial. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bFQH7_dCiM The most frustrating part of this experience was when photoshop had changed the names of things in tutorials so I couldn't find them or when I needed to download extensions, like special brushes, that I didn't have. It was also somewhat difficult to find tutorials that walked me through things rather than just giving me fast-motion screen captures of what they were doing. Overall, I had a good time with this because it's not something we get to do, but it was much more stressful than necessary.
For this photoshop assignment, we just had to compile images that represented us, either in the present or in the future. The first composite image we made was a practice with a couple pictures of flowers. After that, we had to use pictures that represented us to create a collage of our life now. Once we finished that, we made a collage of what we hoped our future would be like in ten years. The most difficult part of this assignment was definitely the fact that there weren't any instructions for us to follow, so I had to figure out what worked mostly on my own. It took me a while to figure out what worked best for me, which ended up being the eraser tool with a lowered opacity to blend the edges.
I chose to shoot pictures of a chess set for the still life. I set up a blanket to get a solid-colored background for my shoot and then positioned different pieces on the chess board. I used my brother's lamp to get direct lighting on the pieces and focused on the singular pieces rather than the whole board set up. My biggest issue with this shoot was that I took pictures in my basement, which is pretty dark. I was nervous that my pictures would end fuzzy as a result, but most of them ended up being clear. I really like this set of photos because I think it's really cool to see the intricate details of things, and this shoot displays the close ups of pieces of a board game that most people wouldn't think twice about beyond their function in the game.
This past weekend, I went to Georgia to visit my old friends. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to take pictures of my best friend who I was staying with, so we took portraits in her yard. For this assignment, we took pictures of a landscape scene from several different angles. I started out taking a panoramic style picture and then going back in with my camera titled to capture the sky and ground, as well as some of the edges of my finished product. Then, I used photoshop to lower the opacity, line up the subjects in the pictures, and create the panographics. I loved this assignment because creating the panographics felt like doing a puzzle. I used the computer to generate one of them. In my opinion, it looks cleaner and more professional than the others, but I liked the feeling of making art through my pictures. I struggled to find the scenes I wanted to photograph more than anything else, but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself having fun doing an assignment I previously dreaded based on my panoramic spinning-circle experience.
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