I know, I just posted my final reflection, but I am back. I just finished digital photography 1 last trimester and am starting digital photography 2 just now. I love taking pictures and always will. But there are still many things that I want to improve and learn. This class directly continues after the other trimester. My photography skills or expectations didn't really change over the last weekend, so there is not a lot more to explain in this blog. I love taking pictures of thing like nature, events, or things that I just randomly find somewhere in a corner or on the ground. Sometimes the little things that no one pays attention to are ending up as good pictures. In this trimester I will try to fine a wider variety of events and things to take pictures of. I will try to give the person who looks at the picture a feeling. The feeling that I felt while I took that picture. This is a really hard skill to learn but I will try to improve my pictures.
I am excited for this trimester and what to expect.
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Wow... Almost unbelievable, this trimester is almost over. We did so much in this class. The first day I walked in this class I was really excited. I knew that I like taking pictures and I thought that I already know some things about cameras and photography. I think I was wrong. I learned so many different things about composing images, having the right settings and editing them. At my first day in this class, I saw the pictures at the wall from the photography students last trimester. I was so surprised that after that short about of time they took so amazing pictures. I thought that must be impossible. Now, after this trimester, one of my picture also eded up on the wall. It is the picture of the bubble. One of my absolute favorites. When we first had an assignment to take pictures I was really excited. I still didn't know any settings in the camera, so I used the automatic settings. We were supposed to take composition pictures. I didn't know what to take pictures of. The school looked the same on every floor and it was winter. But after a while of walking around I found some interesting things. It was a challenge, I have to admit. But I got better and better in finding the "perfect picture" It is still hard sometimes, but it is way easier than at the beginning. The very first time I opened photoshop was overwhelming. So many tools and things to do. How will I ever understand that and work with it!? Even after our first Photoshop assignment I still had no idea how to use it. Slowly I started understanding, how the tools are being used and how to make the best out of the picture. Still, we all only learned the basics of Photoshop and there is so much more to explore, but I would say that I am not totally lost anymore. Now I will show you, how my pictures changed in this trimester. The first picture is one of my very first pictures this trimester: One of my best pictures this trimester and also my favorite one (after starting to understand the camera better) This is, how my pictures changed in the time of this trimester. I learned many different things to make my pictures better.
In our very last assignment we went outside to take pictures of motion. We had to wait so long because it has always been too cold. Luckily the weather got a little better and we went outside. I learned a lot about taking pictures today. I always thought that when something is moving you can not take a good picture of it. It might be blurry. But today I learned that when you have the right setting for your camera and you move the camera in the same speed as the object, you can get a sharp object and a blurry background. The blurry background shows the motion in the picture but the object seems so stand still because it is sharp. My edits: Black and white, exposure and contrast up. Cropping the picture and adding my name.
Our last Photoshop assignment was multiple me. I looked for a place with a lot of space. I set up a tripod and took many pictures of myself. Different positions and faces were important to make it more interesting. In photoshop we used layer masks to create this picture. The brush tool became really important. At the very end I tried to make it look more interesting with adding a mood to it. So I turned it back and white and added more contrast. I really like that assignment because you need some creativity to make it.
As my last Photo assignment I took some pictures of marbles. I have to admit, this week my motivation to take pictures wasn't the greatest. So I went trough the house = tying to find something good to take pictures of. I found some marbles which were actually perfect for the assignment. Depending on the lightening, the had really cool shadows and reflections. I was lucky I found them. So I ended up having some acceptable pictures. Really important with still life pictures is the lighting. It really made a difference! My edits: turn it black and white. Clarity up a little bit. Contrast up, exposure up.
I really liked this assignment. I always wanted to be able to take good pictures of people. You can't just take the camera and shoot some pictures of people, sometimes there is a little bit more behind it. Composition, keeping the model smile and more. I thought it was interesting that we needed a white sheet to take the picture on the window. We needed it to reflect it so that the face is good lighted. In photoshop we made the pictures a lot smaller, created a frame and background and done was it!
It is getting warmer outside, so I decided to take some pictures from nature. I love flowers they always remind me of spring and the sun. The sunset pictures are pictures I took over winter break in Florida. The sunset at the beach was beautiful and so colorful and also kind of match the colors of the flowers that I took pictures of. My edits: I turned up the exposure and the contrast up a little bit. I also cropped the image.
From warm to winterIn this assignment we could do whatever we wanted to do in Photoshop. So I went online and looked for a tutorial that I would like to do. Very fast I found a tutorial which tells you how to add snow in a picture. After I was done with that, I decided to add some snow in the background and make the whole picture look a little cooler. I learned a lot while I did this project and I slowly start getting into Photoshop. Thank you to Tiffany for being my model :)
My tutorial: The snow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP7qiZIuTA0 The background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itq_FRz1u_A As our next Photoshop assignment we did panoramic pictures. I really liked that assignment because we could actually make a panorama. Normally we always take them with the phone and we don't know what actually has to be done to take a quality panorama. The photoshop work is not that hard, because it almost does everything for you, but the settings of the camera and staying in the same position is a little challenging.
A funny thing happened while I took the tree picture. The sun came out in one picture and hide behind a cloud in the next picture. That's why it has this shadow and light in the picture. I could have fixed it in photoshop, but I thought that it looks kind of interesting. Since the beginning of the year I was super excited to me able to do this. I mean, being able to paint with just a little flashlight is pretty impressive, don't you think so ? It took quiet a while to take these pictures though. First we had to come up with an idea. Being creative is the first hard thing. Once we had some ideas, we had to find the right camera settings. After all this was done, we were ready to go. It was really interesting how each of the pictures turned out. Since the room had to be completely dark to take the picture, we started in the night and finished at 1am. I really was tired in the next morning, bit it was worth it! My edits: I didn't do very much on this picture. I liked the way the green color came out. I painted some black over some reflections and cropped it and done was the picture!
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