Individual Photos included in Photo Story

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Photo Story: Winter Wildlife in Vermont

Winter Wildlife in Vermont

1. Sunrise scene
a. Brightness/Contrast: Brightness 40
b. Watermark
c. I didn’t want to change too much of this photo in order to preserve its natural beauty.
2. Deer eating under gazebo
a. Color Balance: Color Levels 50 50 50
b. Brightness/Contrast: Brightness 20 Contrast 0
c. Watermark
3. Deer just starting to cross road
a. Crop Tool: I cropped this image in order to get rid of a lot of the background. The deer wasn’t in the center of the image so by cropping I think I helped the deer to be center stage. In the original photo the deer was also hard to see because of its colors matching the background so well. So I think this helped a lot!
b. Brightness/Contrast: Brightness 35 Contrast 70
c. Filter: “Crosshatch” Stroke Length 9, Sharpness 6, Strength 1
d. Watermark
4. Deer in the middle of road
a. Crop Tool: Same explanation as the previous photo.
b. Brightness/Contrast: Brightness 35 Contrast 70
c. Filter: “Crosshatch” Stroke Length 9, Sharpness 6, Strength 1
d. Watermark
5. Deer across the road
a. Crop Tool: Same explanation as the previous photo.
b. Brightness/Contrast: Brightness -10 Contrast 60
c. Filter: “Crosshatch” Stroke Length 9, Sharpness 6, Strength 1
d. Watermark
e. In each photo of the deer crossing the road; I tried to keep my changes relatively the same so each one would flow being next to each other in the slideshow. It didn’t flow well at all when I made completely different changes to each.
6. Individual light brown horse
a. Clone Tool: Used to get rid of an orange ribbon on the barbed wire fence. The color was very distracting.
b. Brush Tool: Painted in the section of the fence that I lost when I got rid of the orange ribbon.
c. Blur Tool: Blurred the area surrounding the horse just a little bit to make him stand out more.
d. Burn Tool: Brush 65px 100% hardness Range- Highlights Exposure- 30% Also used this around the horse just a little bit to make him stand out a little better.
e. Filter: “Smudge Stick” Didn’t adjust anything because it gave the horse a great glow!
f. Watermark
7. Individual dark brown horse
a. Dodge Tool: Lightened up the horse’s face just a little bit.
b. Brightness/Contrast: Brightness 40 Contrast 30
c. Clone Tool: Used to get rid of an orange ribbon that was on the barbed wire fence.
d. Brush Tool: Painted in a section of the fence that I got rid of when removing the orange ribbon.
e. Watermark
8. Both horses, rubbing in snow
a. Blur Tool: Used around the snow the light brown horse is kicking up. And also around the brown horse to try and put more focus on the light brown horse.
b. Brightness/Contrast: Brightness 30 Contrast 40
c. Watermark
9. Beaver Dam
a. Brightness/Contrast: Brightness 50 Contrast 50
b. Filter: “Mosaic” Tile Size 12, Grout Width 3, Lighten Grout 9
c. Watermark
10. Owl in tree
a. Smudge Tool: Mode- Normal Strength- 50% Brush Size- 100px Hardness- 100
b. Watermark
11. Sunset scene
a. Brightness/Contrast: Brightness 50- This brightened up the beautiful sky colors.
b. Watermark
c. I didn’t want to change too much of this photo in order to preserve its natural beauty.

Portraits

Portrait #1: In this portrait I tried using props. This photo is very simple. She is sitting with her "special" blankie behind her and "Bobby" bear in between her legs. I don't think that these props take away from Cassidy as the subject, but maybe they don't stand out quite enough.

Portrait #2: In this portrait I wanted to play with facial expressions. I decided to take a close up of Cassidy's face. I used the macro setting on my camera. I tried getting her to make an interesting face!

Portrait #3: I tried altering the perspective of this portrait and played with facial expressions as well. I decided to take another close up of Cassidy using the macro setting, but I also changed the perspective a bit. I was positioned above Cassidy looking down on her. Like the tutorials say, this can give a photo the WOW factor!

Portrait #4: In this portrait, I wanted to play with backgrounds and camera angles. I put a comforter on the floor to give the photo a neat looking background. Then I told Cassidy to play around! As soon as I saw this shot I angled my camera a bit and took it! I think it looks neat angled in this way!

After I read through the portrait tutorials, I decided on a few different ideas that I wanted to try. The ones that stood out to me was different angles, backgrounds, facial expressions, props and perspectives. I really enjoyed taking these photos and experimenting with different ideas. My portrait shoot went really great and I didn't end up running into any problems. Now if Cassidy hadn't been so well behaved then it could've been a bit difficult, but she was great, very patient. I look forward to trying more of the ideas I learned from the tutorials in future.

Painting

This is the photo I decided to use. It's my daughter Cassidy's school pic from last fall! I decided to color her shirt!

I know this isn't to big of a change, but I really tried to make it look nice so I didn't want to alter it to much. This is one thing I am noticing with everything we are learning on Photoshop and that is sometimes its not good to completely alter something. Try and keep the photo the same as much as possible. Personally I think things look more life-like like this.

To turn Cassidy's shirt a slight green I decided to use the "color replacement tool." I decided to set the color from the stems on the mums. I chose a brush that was fairly big because the shirt in the photo is pretty big. Then I was careful to stay within the lines!

Text

I was so very happy that we had an assignment where I could use this photo! This owl around noon everyday for the past few days has been on the edge of the woodline out back of my house. Well I had gone out hoping to catch a shot of him because he's just beautiful and finally yesterday I did it!!! And I got a pretty good close up too! I'm hoping he'll sick around a bit longer and maybe I would be able to get a shot of him flying because his wing span is long!

So I just decided to do a watermark with a copyright symbol and my name on this photo. I have been wondering how to do this for a while so it was great to learn. I am sorry if it isn't that visible from my blog. It looks a lot bigger in Photoshop and I noticed if you click on the photo it will enlarge as well.

To do this watermark I first decided to place it in the middle of the photo. Normally I would probably do it in the right or left hand bottom corner but I wanted it to be nice and visible for the class to see. I typed in the copyright symbol then my name. Then I chose a color for the text that was pretty close to the colors in the photo. I then chose to play with the "blending options" for this. I lowered the opacity some because I wanted to lighten up the watermark so it didn't take away from the photo, but almost looks like it goes with it.

Cloning

This is the image I chose to use. I decided to use this one because of the colors and what I wanted to hide. I found that its not good to try and clone to hide something that is large or that doesn't have a pretty plain background!

So I decided to cover up the two sheep in this photo. I thought it came out pretty good! I really like the cloning stamp, but I did notice that you can't use it on everything. If you are trying to hide something that is not to big it will work great. Or if you are trying to hide something big, but the area you are going to clone is a pretty solid color then it will work. But it really all depends on the photo and the background!

I know we were only supposed to do one photo but I wanted to upload this one that I did too! This photo I think sort of shows what I was talking about with above photo I cloned.

In this photo I took out the horse's head that was on the right side of the photo. I think it came out "alright." But I don't think this is the greatest photo to be cloning because of what the background is. I think it was hard cloning the trees. I originally tried to get rid of the white horse also, but this horse was way to big to clone over using the trees because you could completely tell that the photo was cloned! But I thought this would just be a good example!

Filters

This is the first photo that I decided to use! It is a picture of a horse that I always see down the road from my house!

I love filters! They are amazing! In this photo I used the charcoal and chalk filter. I adjusted the charcoal area a bit to darken things up and to make the photo more sharp looking. I didn't really adjust anything else because it looked perfect this way and when I did experiment a bit I noticed it made things look a bit distorted!

This is the second photo I decided to use! It's a photo of my dog Bruno!

In this photo the first thing I decided to do was some cropping. I wanted to photo to be strictly of Bruno and not so much of the porch or the swimming pool you can see a little towards the right of the photo. The filter I used here was photocopy. I did adjust the detail and darkness of the photo quite a bit. Originally the photo seemed a bit light when I first applied the filter. So I decided to darken it up quite a bit. The detail I also adjusted a bit higer to give the photo more definition.

I really enjoyed using these filters this week! I must've tried every filter just to see they way they would change my photos. Its amazing what Photoshop can do! As you can see I really the black/white filters. I just think black/white photos give lots of character!

Dodge and Burn

This is the photo I decided to use. It definitely seems a bit bright so my plan was to burn it to bring the brightness down as much as I could just in some areas. I didn't want to take away from the plant either because that is the subject. This is my photo after it has been burned. This was very difficult for me to do to get the right shades in the right area. I tried to bring down the brightness of the background of the photo (everywhere but the plant). Then I tried to tone down the brightness in just a few different areas of the plant. I did want the plant to stay bright because it is the subject of the photo though. There are some spots on the leaves of the plant around the edges that seem to bright but I had a real hard time toning those down!

Image Manipulation

This is my finish product! I really think that this image is lacking though. These pictures are of my daughter and of course I love them, but I really don't think this came out the way I thought it would. I really wanted a beautiful background with pictures of her face all over it, but I realized that I just didn't have the photos that I needed and because I wanted this to have a "summer theme" I just couldn't go out and get the photos I needed. So I did the best I could!

This is the photo that I used for the background of my finish image!

This is one of the photos that I used to crop Cassidy's face out of!

And this is the other photo that I used to crop Cassidy's face out of!

To get my finished image I chose a background. Then I chose two photos in which I could use Cassidy's face. When I found those two photos I changed the image size and cropped them both. Then I used the rectangular marquee tool to cut them out. Then I used the move tool to place them both where I wanted them on my background.

I did enjoy this assignment, but it was highly frustrating at times. The frustration was simply coming from the fact that I didn't know exactly what I was doing and the PhotoShop CS5 I have wasn't doing what I wanted it to do! I think practice makes perfect in this case! I know that more I use this program and the more experience I get with it the easier things will become for me!

Landscapes

Landscapes...How exciting! I really enjoy taking these types of photos! Below are the 5 best photos that I took this week. I gave a short explanation of each one and then wrapped everything up at the end.

I took this photo while on a hike out back of my house a couple of days ago. I was a bit surprised to actually see water in this little brook, but it has been on the warmer side the past few days in my area.

This photo was taken at the same time as the previous picture while out on my hike! This was also taken very close to the previous picture as well. I just love how this brook is in the shape of a horse shoe! I was hoping to get a clearer shot of the vast field behind the brook, but there were two many small trees blocking the view!

This photo I took while out on a drive. When I looked over and noticed this spot I pulled right over, got out and snapped the shot! I really like how this looks. The river is still froze, but melting. It helps me to think that Spring will actually make it here!

Since we were allowed to post up to 2 photos from a previous shoot for variety I decided to take advantage of it! This photo I took last summer as the sun went down. This is my most favorite landscape photo that I've ever taken. It was taken just down the road from my house. And that is a barn and silo in the background.

This was the second photo I decided to post from a previous shoot. This was also taken last summer. It was taken of the same barn and silo as above, but was taken from a slightly different angle. And the sun didn't give off as much color going down on that particular day! But I love how the sun is centered right behind the silo and is lighting everything else up around it!

I really enjoyed taking these landscape photos. I had so many others that I would've liked to have shared too! I didn't really use a process for finding the "perfect" area to photograph. While hiking and driving around I just opened my eyes to the areas around me. I was actually surprised because in some spots that I drive past everyday I actually noticed things I hadn't before. It just completely amazes me that I can drive by an area at least once a day and never ever notice certain things about the landscape!

Color Schemes

This photo is the one I decided to take to show a monochromatic color scheme. All of the trees are the same color, but the hue might be slighty different on some compared to others.

This photo is the one I decided to take to show a complementary color scheme. The colors green and red are exactly opposite of each other on the color wheel. This photo is my favorite! I really like how the light is focused on the red rose. It really makes the bright color pop!

Farm Collage

*Click on Collage to Enlarge it!*

For my collage, I decided to get out of the house and head across the street to the farm that my fiance works on. These photos were taken in the calf barn, which is the barn my fiance actually works in. I really enjoyed this assignment because I was able to get out and put my camera to good use!

These photos are of the little calves, tractors, grain, hay, etc. and I also included a shot of one of the barn cats we have there too! I found it to be extremely difficult taking pictures of the calves mainly because of the lag time on my camera. I would line up a perfect shot, hit the capture button, then the calf would move a bit and that was it...a blurry shot! It took me quite a few photos to get the best ones, but I didn't give up!

My Point-Of-View

I chose to photograph one of my decorative wine glasses. Below are two of my favorite photos!

The angle at which this photo was taken was from the top of the wine glass. I chose the "flower" setting on my camera so that I would be able to get really close up and still achieve a clear picture. To take the photo I put my camera above the wine glass and got so close up that my lens was literally inside the glass. Then I just snapped the shot!

This photo was taken down low looking up at the wine glass. I also chose the "flower" setting for this photo as well so I could get a little closer without producing a blurry photo. To take the photo I set my camera down, tipped it back a little bit and then snapped the shot!

Out of these two photos, my favorite is the one I took of the inside of the glass. I like this one best because it looks very interesting! Just looking at this photo you probably wouldn't have known this was a wine glass unless I said it. While completing this assignment I realized how important point-of-view actually is. It amazes me that taking a picture from a different point-of-view can make the object look completely different. It can make for a totally different affect/impact and picture!

Digital Photography Has Begun!

This semester has begun and is in full force! I can't wait to get into taking photos and posting them. It will be really great to learn more about my camera and what it can really do. As well as learning to manipulate the photos I take! There are so many things that I am excited to learn this semester and can't wait!