School Context Assignment

In this assignment, we were given the freedom to take a picture of somewhere in the school, then edit the photo to make it appear there's something going on in/with the school that isn't actually real. For mine, I decided to take a picture of a hallway, then add a portal from the game Minecraft to the end of the hallway. This assignment was a bit annoying for me, just because things weren't working for what I envisioned in my mind. Oddly enough, in the beginning of the class I liked Gimp, and slowly I'm starting to dislike it.

Black and White

For my last photo assignment, I chose to do a black and white photo shoot. What I did was I went around my house, taking pictures of things that I thought would look good in black and white. What ended up happening was I would take a lot of pictures of something, then right as I finished up taking pictures of that scene, my eyes suddenly saw something else I could take photos of.

My best picture is a picture of a shelf of old books. The reason why I think this photo is my best is because a lot of people will associate old with black and white, and so I feel that these two things match together. Also, the angle and lighting of the books on the shelf looks good to me. When I turn the books straight, they actually look off.



ISO: 400
Fstop: f/2.6
Shutter: 1/8

Motion

For this week's photo assignment, I decided to do motion photos. What I did was I took pictures of different objects while they were moving, either freezing one small moment, or letting it blur together over a longer period of time. Usually I don't add multiple pictures of the same object, but with the pictures of the chocolates, I just adored them and how they looked, so I decided to include them as well.

My best picture was a picture of a fan with the blades moving. The reason I chose this photo is because even though you would see this normally when looking at a fan, it really shows the motion of the blades moving inside and creating a white, blurry circle. It's also with that common image that people are just used to it and never actually take much time to actually look at the whole picture. When you do, however, there's a pretty appealing-to-the-eye photo.



ISO: 400
Fstop: f/2.6
Exposure: 1/10

Open Assignment: Food

This week, I chose to do an open assignment. My idea was to take pictures of food and make them look appealing to the viewer. To me, this assignment was decently easy, since my parents love to cook and know how to make things good, so over the break I would get up early with them to have breakfast and then take more pictures at dinner. The hardest and most annoying thing about the assignment, however, was not about taking the pictures, but more on how I had to take pictures before I could eat my breakfast/dinner.

My best photo in this set was hard to choose. I really liked three pictures, and I wish I could call them all my best, but I finally narrowed it down to the picture of a French pastry that is eaten for breakfast. It is dough that is fried, then a light sprinkling of powdered sugar. The reason why I prefer this picture is because it's clear, you can see the texture of the powdered sugar, a little bit of texture of the pastry, and I like the lighting in the picture. To me, it looks pretty tasty and I've made myself hungry, which I think is the main goal.



ISO: 400
Fstop: f/2.6
Shutter: 1/60

Motion Picture

For this assignment, we took pictures of Mr. Bush riding on his bicycle. Our goal was to have Mr. Bush still while the background was blurred. This was only a practice, however, so it was a mixture of skill and luck, but for this one it was more luck. For me, I continually tried, but the best I got had Mr. Bush blurry. One problem was that even though my camera hadn't warned me of it, my batteries were almost dead and ended up dying near the end of the session, so there wouldn't be time to head back, get batteries, and then take a few more shots. This picture isn't very good, but I feel pretty confident that if I tried again I'd be able to get a better shot.

Still Life

In this assignment, I took pictures of things against a black background, which I set up using my desk, some black fabric, a piece of plexiglas, a desk lamp, and a tripod. The most difficult part of this assignment was just setting up my desk, which took about a half an hour. Taking the pictures was just a matter of finding items to take pictures of and setting up. Though it was annoying with some items such as my iPod, which refused to stand up, and my white board markers, one of which kept rolling away. Needless to say, tape is an amazing tool.

My best picture was a picture of some Lindor Milk Chocolate Truffles, in which there is one in the front and then a bunch more scattered in the background. How I did this was I actually just dropped all the chocolates from above to get a scatter, and then I noticed how one just moved to the front all alone, and I decided to take a picture of that. I really like how there's that single one in the front showing the name, then the rest of them just randomly across the space in the background. It reminds me of an advertisement, and after asking a few friends what they think about it, they agree.



ISO: 400
Shutter: 1/8
f-Stop: f/2.6

Panoramic Scene

We were told to go out and take three pictures of a scene, and have 10% to 20% of each picture be the same as the one that follows. We then used Gimp to combine the photos together to make one panoramic scene. I personally thought this assignment was pretty easy, once I was given some guidance after seeing the demo. I'm pretty happy with the end product, though I am annoyed by a few things that I noticed don't quite match up. I tried to fix them, but I couldn't without needing to do a whole bunch of other stuff. They aren't too horrible and they're only things that someone would notice if they were looking at the photo closely, so oh well.

Potrait Assignment

In this assignment, we took two different types of portrait photos. The one on the left was taken using nothing but window light and a white colored board to reflect the light. The one on the right was taken in a studio setting. For me, taking the pictures for this assignment wasn't too hard, but the editing part got to me. As you can see, I eventually figured it out, but for a while I found myself doing the same thing over and over, trying to figure out to get them how I wanted. What my problem was I could get one photo onto its frame, but then the other photo would appear behind that frame. Eventually I figured out that you have to do one frame, then a photo, then a frame, then a photo with the way I was doing it. I'm kind of glad I kept messing up, however, because I now know what NOT to do. I'm also glad because it just felt all the more better to finally do it correctly.

Nature

For this week's assignment, I took pictures of nature. This assignment was one where I didn't have to go too far from home, for my backyard has many different plants, some of which still stand in the winter time. Since I know my backyard pretty well, I was able to know where to go to get a good picture, though I will admit I found some plants I wasn't expecting to find.
My best photo is of a small, single, orange leaf on the top of a small branch. I just love how there's that one single leaf hanging on alone, and how you can see all these other ones in the background all clustered together. I also love how you can see the difference in color between the vein of the leaf and the part in between the veins. The little bit of snow on top of the leaf also adds a small winter-time touch to it.



ISO: 200
F stop: f/3.5
Shutter speed: 1/80

Light Painting Assignment

For this assignment, I had to utilize a slow shutter speed and a medium aperture. I usually used a 6 second shutter speed for high lighting an object, 15 seconds for painting a picture, and a f5.6 aperture for both. I personally enjoy the type of light painting where pictures are drawn, though I also enjoy creating pictures with certain objects lighted up, as it looks really cool if done properly.

My main picture is of a picture frame holding a corsage I received at homecoming of last year that I pressed to preserve it. When I decided to do this assignment, the usage of this picture frame almost immediately popped into my mind. It by itself is a lovely picture, so why not present it in a way that would make it look even better?



Shutter Speed: 8 seconds
Aperture: f5.6
ISO: 100

Car Editing

For this assignment, we were given a photo of a car taken by a past student. What we had to do was edit the photo to make it more presentable and clean, instead of having all these imperfections in the photo, such as light spots on the car and things in the background. For me, this assignment was actually pretty fun. I don't know why, but I like editing photos, and seeing how much better they can look. It was also pretty easy once I got the hang of it and after I understood what I had to do to make the photo better.

Macro Assignment

This week, I chose to do the macro assignment, where I took pictures of things up close using the macro setting, which allowed the detail of the object to appear more clearly. Sometimes this detail can be one we don't even notice on a normal basis, but through a picture it's easier to see and is captured forever.
This photo is a picture of an ice cube up close. As I was taking pictures, my parents were cooking dinner and were watching me take pictures of all these things going on in the kitchen. My dad was then talking about how it would be cool if we had one of our weird ice cubes (where a piece of an ice cube actually ends up sticking out like a rod, as if it were a plant growing) for me to take a picture of. This caused me to take a few pictures of ice cubes, and this was one of the results. We all see ice cubes, but don't usually take the time to actually look at everything that's happening in the ice cube, from air bubbles to parts of the water that didn't settle.

Fstop - f/2.6
Exposure - 1/30 seconds
ISO - 100







From this assignment I learned how to combine the macro setting with some compositions of photography to create nice looking photographs. It also helped me increase my skill of making it so that what you want to be in focus is actually in focus, as I always seem to have problems with that. Overall, I now know more about the macro setting and how to use it more to my advantage than before.

Photo Assignment Using Gimp

For this photo assignment, we were told to create a type of picture created by Andy Warhol. We were told to use a paint program called Gimp, which I had only used partially before when it was recommended by a friend. I had never really gotten into Gimp and ended up deleting it since I was simply looking for a program to use with my tablet. Now that I've used it though, I really like Gimp and I think I'm going to download it back onto my computer at home. During this assignment, there were a few problems that I ran to, but after thinking about it for a minute or two I was able to solve the problem and get back on track with my work. I think my favorite part of the photo is my necklace, and all in all, it turned out well and I'm happy with it.

Composition Assignment

In this assignment, we had to take 11 photos, each one showing an example of composition. The 11 types of composition we used were rule of thirds, pattern, balance, color, depth of field, framing, perspective, space, symmetry, texture, and lines.

What I learned was how to find things in the everyday world that could make a good photo, then how to position the camera and object for a better photo. Before hand, I would just randomly take a bunch of pictures as I wanted, and then most would just be okay photos, and a few would actually look kind of decent. Looking at those photos, I now notice the types of compositions they have, which is why they look so appealing. I have also expanded my knowledge on how to properly use some features on my camera to make a better photo.

Photo Descriptions:
1st -Symmetry: Room is symmetrical, mainly chairs
2nd -Texture: Small holes in wall
3rd -Rule of Thirds: Frisbee on intersection point
4th -Balance: Dark and light Hershey Kisses
5th -Space: Candle with smoke surrounded by white
6th -Depth: Rose bush thorns
7th -Lines: Wood plank
8th -Perspective: Looking up at a wind chime
9th - Pattern: Rhombus holes caused by wooden planks
10th -Framing: Bridge though rhombus-shaped hole
11th -  Color: Bittersweet berries