Thursday, February 17, 2011

white balance

Durring this assignment we used different white balances to get as true of a white as possible in out pictures. In order to do this we would first take a picture using auto and if our whites seemed to be orange or yellow tinted we would choose a shade or cloudy white balance setting to balance it out with a blue filter. If the whites using auto originally appeared blue tinted we would use a tungsten or daylight white balance setting to add a yellow or orange filter to it in order to balance out the white. Different editing techniques we used were with different color adjustments again just like last assignment, black and white (finding the right black and white for your photo, not just the auto setting), creating a vignette with the marquee and layering tool, and also worked with the clone stamp to get rid of or add something to your photo.





This picture was taken with a "shade" white balance to get rid of the yellow tinted whites. It was also edited with a vignette and boosted colors and saturation.








This picture was taken with an "auto" white balance. I also boosted the colors, created higher contrast, and added a vignette to it.





Overall I feel this assignment was very successful. I enjoyed being able to take photos of what ever subjects we liked, I feel it game me more of a chance to create better photos because it was more open. I also liked adding the vignette because it helps direct your eyes on the subject by creating a darker edge. The only thing that was difficult for me was the clone stamp. I got the hang of it after a while, but at first it was hard for me to blend the right colors in to make it look as natural as possible.

Friday, February 4, 2011

a day in the life

technique description

During the assignment "A Day in the Life" we learned about how different ISO's affect your picture, and took different pictures from an average day in the life of a person or an object of your choice. My assignment was of pictures taken from a day in the life of myself (an average sophomore), showing all the different things I do throughout the day. These pictures in the collage were all taken with different ISO's to balance out the light and edited in photoshop to bring out the best qualities about them.
In photoshop under "Image" on the menu I used auto tone, color and contrast and also under "adjustments" I used vibrance, hue/saturation, brightness/contrast and levels. When I used all these adjustments I was trying to brighten the whites and get rid of blue or yellow toned whites and also brighten up the highlights in order to make the photo still look realistic but with stronger highlights and qualities. Using the vibrance, contrast, and saturation tools were my favorite because I feel they brightened up the colors and made the pictures look so much better and alive. Something that was a little frustrating was that when my original photo started off really dark with a lot of shadows, it was hard to brighten it up really well without losing the quality of colors in it. I noticed that the colors would start to drain and that was a little frustrating at times.