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!