Arboretum

Aperture: f/7.9  ISO: 64  Shutter Speed: 1/500

This was one of the first pictures I took when we got to the arboretum. I liked how the sun was just peeking through the clouds and the branches. It was about 8:30am when we got there and at that time, the sun isn't very strong. This picture has a softer feel.

Aperture: f/3.5  ISO: 64  Shutter Speed: 1/100

I can't remember the exact name of these, but the little umbrella-shaped plants interested me. I chose to put this one up because I like how half of the plants are in the direct light and half are in the shadow of a tree behind it. I like how there are leaves left over from last fall, too, because it shows that remnants of the past can be left but there's still a chance to start over. That's why I love spring; it's a new beginning in nature, a time to be refreshed and start over.

Aperture: f/3.5  ISO: 64  Shutter Speed: 1/250

This is definitely one of my favorite pictures from that day. I love how the sun almost overpowers the picture on top, but still is important in creating the shadow of the tree. For this picture, I boosted up the color a bit from what it originally was to show off the beautiful spring greens that are popping up.

Aperture: f/3.9  ISO: 64  Shutter Speed: 1/40

I almost didn't take this picture, but I'm glad I did. I was just going to take a picture of the stream but then I saw the leaves and thought it would enhance the photo. With the green, the photo gets a more uplifted feeling to it than it would have had with just the water in the shot. I also like how you can see the tiny ripples in the water below. Overall I am happy with how this turned out.

Land of Giants

This is my Land of Giants project. I decided to make myself larger to kind of look like Godzilla towering over buildings and causing shenanigans. At first this was really hard, trying to select only myself so I could copy the part of the picture without having that pesky background junk to distract me. After that, it got pretty easy. I am kind of indecisive with how the shadows turned out, but I was running out of time to get it done so there ya go!

Light/Shadows

Aperture: f/3.5  ISO: 160  Shutter Speed: .03333

This picture was taken in the Round Barn Lodge in the pool area. I like the idea of light shining and reflections, and decided that this would be a neat picture. The blue of the pool makes the white reflection pop. This picture is a little blurry, but I still think it looks cool.

Aperture: f/3.5  ISO: 64  Shutter Speed: .016667

I went with the whole "reflection" idea again with this picture. You can see the heavy machinery in the background, but you can see the light bouncing off the windows and the other side of the street appears. I originally thought of putting this in the urban decay, but thought it could fit well into the light and shadows project.

Aperture: f/3.9  ISO: 320  Shutter Speed: 1/8

I took this picture in a restaurant that was very dimly lit. I didn't wanna look like a creep by taking pictures, so I quick took this one and it turned out great. I love how you can see the shadows on the boards on the ceiling. Overall I thought this picture was really cool, and one of my favorites.

Urban Decay

With the recent sunshine and beautiful weather, I was really excited for this project. I LOVE looking at old/decayed buildings, and there are a lot of them in Wisconsin.

I went on a little road trip to Spring Green this weekend, and when we went out to eat downtown, I thought it was the perfect time to take pictures of urban decay. I know that there are more than 3 pictures, but I was just so excited on how they looked! 

I found this door while walking through an alley (sketchy, I know) and thought it was a perfect setup with the shovel, weeds, and board. You can see the decay near the bottom right the most. I really liked this picture in color, but thought it looked better in black and white.

This picture is of an abandoned garage I found while wandering the town. I like how you can just barely see the letters of "GARAGE" in the middle of the building.

This was also at the abandoned garage. I loved the color contrast with the red and the washed off white color. You can tell that there has been decay. 

I found this building in the alley too, and loved the way the bricks looked. Some of them are blackened, and others are just faded away. I also liked the vines going up the side one the pole there. It really gives it a feel that nature has had its way with the building.

Crumbling brick. Yes. Very decay-ish! 

This was an old depot found in Oakdale, WI (as you can probably tell). You can see the weathered siding and the O on DEPOT is broken and hanging down.

Alphabet

At first, I thought this project was going to be horrible thinking, "where the heck am I gonna find all these letters??" It took me a while to actually get focused and look for the different letters in everyday life. I decided to take a walk around town and discovered that there's a lot more letters in everything than I thought. The hardest letters to fine were probably Q, R, and F. Overall I think this project turned out pretty well, I really like how it looks!

CD Jewel Case

Cover Page

Middle Page

        I thought this project was both challenging and easy. When I picked Contemporary Country as my music genre, I was flabberghasted! "Country?? My least favorite kind of music? Great." But once I looked in to what the album covers of Country artists looked like, I figured it would be pretty easy to find some content that could unleash my inner Country star. Right. SO for the cover page, I decided to do a collage of what  country was in my mind. You see things like an old car, a swing, a farm, and a cowboy hat (that last one was inevitable). For the middle page of the CD case, I chose the picture of an old building in downtown Neillsville. I thought the light was hitting it really nicely, and I just loved the general structure of the building. For the back page of the CD case, I used the farm picture from the front. I liked that picture because it gave me somewhat of a blank area to put the song titles, but still had a bit of interesting content in it. For the overall album, I used the "Antique" feature on iPhoto to give the pictures a more warm, Western-y type feel to them. 

Multi-view

For this multi-view project, I decided to take many pictures of one of my favorite pairs of shoes. On the tongue of the shoe, there's the small "for the <3" design, and I really thought It would look neat if I cut that almost in half. I used many filters and adjusted the saturation a lot. I really like the bright neon looking colors!

One Subject

For the One Subject project, I chose to take pictures of the playhouse in my yard. I remember my dad building the playhouse from scratch and me being so happy to help him (I only painted a wall or two from what I recall!) This playhouse has been in our yard since I was probably around 7 years old. I remember having my friends come over and we would play house and have so much fun playing on this HUGE playhouse. Eventually I grew too big to play in the playhouse, and my cat started taking refuge on the high level during the summers. I have so many good memories in this playhouse and I'm sure going to miss seeing this every day when I go to college.

Warmth

As we transition into spring everything becomes seemingly warmer, both physically and mentally. The sun is shining more and starts melting all the snow. For this assignment it was somewhat hard to take good pictures outside because all of the mud and puddles aren't very appealing to look at. 

Aperture: f/ 3.5 ISO: 320  Shutter Speed: 1/8

In this picture, my mother was just about to put in some potatoes for supper and I stopped to take a picture. I like this picture because you can see the hot coil on the bottom and almost feel the intense  heat coming from it. I also bumped up the "warmth" on this picture to give it a more heated feel.

Aperture: f/5.3  ISO: 64  Shutter Speed: 1/100

I took this picture on my way to Marshfield with my mom. I yelled at her to pull over because I didn't want to miss an opportunity for the picture. This was taken along Hewett Street in town. The people in this house are collecting sap from the trees in their front yard. You often don't see many people collecting sap in town like this, and I thought it was a good way to show that spring and warm weather is coming.

Aperture: f/4.6  ISO: 160  Shutter Speed: 1/20

Last weekend (the Saturday before Easter) I went with the Neillsville band to a Milwaukee Bucks game. We were able to come to the game early and play a pregame music session. Before playing, there was some time to kill so I decided to whip out my camera and shoot some of the players WARMing up. See what I did there? ;) I like how this picture has the (very tall) player getting ready for the big game ahead. You can see all kinds of players warming up and shooting free throws in the back.

Nature Shots From Last Spring

These are some pictures I took last Mother's Day when my parents and I went down to Milwaukee to see family. On the way back we stopped in the Dells and went on a boat tour to see the unique formations in the area.

Typical Day

This is what a typical day in the life of Julie looks like! In the first picture, I show that my alarm is set for 7:25am, but most days I tend to ignore it and wake up at 7:40am (oops!). I then proceed to get ready by gazing into my closet to put something on. If there's time, I straighten my hair too. Then I make sure that everything I need is packed up in my backpack and ready to go, and I drive myself to school. Early in the morning, the hallways are almost deserted and I like walking down the long, serene walkways by myself. I hang my backpack and coat up in my locker and get to class. Before lunch, I do some homework which requires me to read out of a horrible 1700 page English book ("Pocket Edition", my butt!) I also go to band and practice tunes for our upcoming concert/events. Being on a computer is also a large part of my day, since most of my classes require you to do online work. When I get off from school, I go home and do some leisurely reading before supper is made. After supper, I do some more homework and then get ready for bed.

For this collage type assignment, I chose to have the pictures overlapping and sharp instead of blurring the edges down so they connect together. To me, the sharp edges make it seem like the things in the pictures each have their own specific time slot.

Re-edited Photos

Before

After

I originally wanted to post this picture in black in white, but decided not to because of the interesting colors in the helmet and skates. I actually like it better in black and white now that I've adjusted it to have many different shades of black and gray.

Before

After

For this picture, I decided to crop it a little better. I feel like it has a nicer bold effect now that the distracting edge is gone. I also lightened the picture up a little to get it more of an uplifted feeling.

Before

After

For the icicle edit, I didn't do much to change it. I decided to crop it a bit to get the main focus more clear and have a little less distractions. I also used the auto fix on Photoshop which helped brighten up the picture a bit. I also sharpened the picture.

Skating

For this shooting assignment, we went into the Fieldhouse and took pictures of 6th graders while they skated. The skating unit in Phy. Ed. was always my favorite growing up, so I felt that this assignment would be somewhat nostalgic. However, I remember having more people falling in my class than what we saw while taking photos, and I thought my pictures would be boring with little pictures of kids falling. Nonetheless, I did manage to take some photos that were interesting (and not too blurry). These were the highlights.

Aperture: f/5.3  ISO: 640  Shutter Speed: 1/80

This is one of the first pictures I took upon entering the Fieldhouse. We came in right as the kids were putting their skates and gear on. I really like this picture because it has a good color and is nice and crisp. I tried to reduce the noise in the background, but after a while it looked too fake so I just decided to leave it.

Aperture: f/3.5  ISO: 640  Shutter Speed: 1/500

This next photo was one I took while standing in the middle of the gym. I would say that the main focus is probably the kid in the red, because your eyes automatically go to his bright outfit. It's not the best quality photo, but I love how the girl in gray and the boy in red have almost the exact body position.

Aperture: f/5.9  ISO: 320  Shutter Speed: 1/40

Of course there are going to be a few fallers! Mr. Kuhn had the kids stop with the breaks on their skates after he turned down the volume on the radio. Most of the kids did pretty well, but there were a few who fell every time. In this picture I really liked how the girl fell (I know, it's probably a bad thing to say!) and landed like this. Her body is in a unique position for someone who just fell!

Aperture: f/3.9  ISO: 160  Shutter Speed: 1/40

After the kids were done skating, they all sat in a line and took their skates and gear off. I took this time to snoop around and find this picture opportunity. I think that the kids the other day wore actual roller blades instead of roller skates. But I remember when I was their age that we had to wear the things shown above. The germ-infested bowling shoes with wheels stuck to the bottom!

Animal Morph

This was definitely my favorite assignment for photography so far. We were asked to take pictures of an animal and put our facial features on it using the Photoshop program. The first step to this assignment was to take a nice picture of an animal. I chose my cat Sandy since he's our only pet and I come into contact with him the most. Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a picture of a cat??? I must have taken about 20 pictures trying to get his face at just the right angle to work with! Eventually, I took the one shown above and called it good, seeing as there was no way I could get anything better. Then I took a picture of myself with almost the same angle of the camera and head position as the cat. Next I went to Photoshop and copy and pasted my eyes and mouth on to the cat's body. After a few minutes of erasing and editing, I ended up with the picture that is shown at the bottom. I am overall very pleased with this photo! It looks creepy, but just creepy enough to be believable. :)

Show and Tell

Lines in Nature

Tree Lines

Aperture: f/3.5  ISO: 64  Shutter Speed: 1/125

I really liked this picture because it shows many different types of lines. On the right side of the picture, you can see a straight-looking line in the form of a tree. If you glance around the rest of the picture you can see the different thickness and curvatures in the branches and trunks of the trees.

Large Icicle

Aperture: f/7.9  ISO: 64  Shutter Speed: 1/125

This is another picture I liked that represented lines in nature. The main focus is the large icicle near the middle of the shot. You can also see little icicle lines on the left of the larger one. Since there are tons of icicles hanging around lately, I thought it would be a good idea to represent a few of them.

"Colors Of The Wind"

Aperture: f/3.5  ISO: 320  Shutter Speed: 1/8

For this last picture, I chose something a bit different. We are working on a Pocahontas medley for the band concert coming up in a few weeks, and I found this song fitting. "Colors Of The Wind" is one of my favorite parts of the compilation of different songs from Pocahontas. I thought this picture would be somewhat fitting because the title of the song is telling a story about wind, which is part of the natural world, and you can see the many lines of the music sheet.

Replace a Sky #2

I thought this picture looked very bland and boring, so I decided to replace the sky. I used the sky below, because I like how it looks with the cloud patterns and more blue sky.

The editing of this photo seemed to work out very well. The lighting shown coming in from the left side seems to match where I dropped the background image perfectly, and I feel that the extra bit of color makes the picture more interesting and nice to look at. I am very pleased with this edit, and it took me less than 5 minutes to make.