For this assignment, we took pictures of the same subject in AV mode at one or two stops underexposed, one normally exposed, and then one or two stops overexposed. For most of mine, I combined five pictures because I thought it would make the resulting image richer. We needed to take pictures of differing subjects. Although we only needed three off-campus, I chose to take all seven of mine off-campus. The most difficult part for me was trying to keep the photos looking realistic. For the ones I took of my house, there was a halo effect around my house, which irked me a little. Using the technology was really easy; Photoshop made this feature user-friendly and accessible. The only difficult part was that sometimes I couldn't figure out which filter looked good with my picture, so I ended up trashing the entire photo. I thought the one of my mom's car ended up being the coolest-looking because of the contrast with the highlights and the shadows worked well with the program. Unfortunately, the sky was all grey and gross when I shot these pictures.
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This photo assignment was originally supposed to be still life, but none of those photos turned out well when I looked at them on the computer. I decided to just scratch the whole idea and take pictures of my dog, Georgia, instead, which ended up being much more fun and productive. I lured her outside with her favorite delicacy, sugar snap peas, and then I used these treats to keep her focused as I snapped pictures. Luckily, Georgia is quite photogenic and also willing to do almost anything to secure some veggies. Shooting these pictures was really fun, even though it was super cold out. Most of my photos ended up being cropped or straightened, so there wasn't much photoshop involved in these pictures. Overall, I really enjoyed taking pictures of my dog, and I'm sure these photos are some of the ones I'll save to look back on after I finish this class.
For this assignment, we had to find collections of objects we had at home and take pictures of variations of the same thing in the same location. I set up a blanket from Delta over a dresser and used a tripod to keep my position the same for each. I also used manual mode so the exposure wouldn't change as I took the pictures. For the first set, I took pictures of mugs I have collected over the years, which felt generic. The second set had a slightly more interesting subject. My family travels to upstate New York every summer to see my grandparents, and we stop at a brewery that offers tours about history and their processes. The main "mascot" of the company are two beer steins, and the company has created collector's versions, which I took pictures of for my second set. The process was relatively easy to combine them in photoshop. I used the guide tool and resized all of my photos to fit into the boxes I made (math ew) before framing them by adding some canvas size. I was a little skeptical about using photoshop to merge the photos together because I was hesitant about whether or not the process would work correctly. However, it was relatively easy to use once I understood what I was supposed to be doing in the application. Taking the pictures wasn't difficult either. However, I decided to just trust that my camera battery would last (it didn't), so I didn't check it before I took it home (I should have), and then my camera died after I took my first picture (cue: panic). Luckily, while rooting through my dad's office to find a camera, I found a battery charger that somehow fit the battery pack in the camera I was using (a miracle). After that final hurdle, the process was all smooth sailing.
For this week's photo assignment, we could choose from any of the topics listed on the Photo 1 sheet. I remembered how much I liked shooting macro sophomore year, although there weren't any flowers this time around for me to use as subjects. I manually set up my camera to get a small depth of field, focusing solely on the object right in front of my camera. I also switched into the macro setting. For this project, I took pictures of several objects found around my house, including (but not limited to) the subjects of the photos found below: a sparkly pinecone, a bell, a pig ornament, some fake flowers, and a nativity character. The main issue I encountered was focus. For that reason, not all of my macro photographs are super zoomed in or up close. The pictures where my camera lens was up close and personal with the subjects typically ended up blurry or with weird exposures or flashes, which was really unfortunate. Some of my pictures, including my best, seem to exhibit the true spirit of macro photography, but others are not as close as I would have liked them to be. However, I had fun with this assignment and am overall proud of my work.
For this assignment, I practiced setting up a camera manually in order to maintain the same exposure in each photograph I took. Using a tripod, I took multiple pictures of a subject while pivoting from left to right. During this process, I was careful to keep the setting on manual and keep the camera steady so the pictures would be able to merge correctly. Although we needed five pictures for a minimum, most of my panos included more than five photos. Then, we utilized Photomerge in photoshop to combine all of the pictures together. For all of my top five taken, I used the fourth option, which I believe was called "Perspective"; the panoramic of the commons was created using the cylindrical effect. Once I had my best two, I touched them using the Camera Raw Filter, although I didn't do much to them. When I took Digital Photography 1 over two years ago, the software that merged the photos into panoramas was definitely not as streamlined as Photomerge is, so there was less work that I personally needed to do. However, the computers functioned quite slowly, so that was frustrating; I felt like I was sitting there waiting for the computer to load and essentially being unproductive, even though there was nothing else that I could do. If the photoshop process had gone by faster, I think I would have enjoyed this project way more. Even though I got agitated with the computer frequently, it was still wicked cool to watch these multiple pictures go into a program separately and emerge as one.
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