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.

Melting

Icy Staircase

Aperture: f/3.5   ISO: 75 Shutter Speed: 0.0333

Earlier in the year, I had taken a picture that was very similar to this one to depict the freezing water on the side of the wall. I chose to shoot this area again because it shows more of the melting and freezing that snow goes through during the winter. On this picture, you can see the icicles on the side of the wall as well as hanging from the staircase. This could've been a better picture if the gray box wasn't in the way, but I felt that cropping it out would take too much away from the original picture.

Cinnamon Melting

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

I took this picture to represent the melting of wax when you light a candle. Having an abundance of candles in my home, this was an easy way to catch the melted state of a candle. I like the way there are contrasting colors of the red wax; the darker melted stuff in the middle and the untouched cherry red on the sides. The flame from the candle is almost being put out by drowning in the liquid. I like this picture because it shows a different kind of melting than just the liquids outside.

Water Droplets

Aperture:f/3.5  ISO: 64  Shutter Speed: 1/40

 Coming home from school yesterday, I noticed this by our front door. I looked and thought "that would make a great picture!" I quickly grabbed my camera and took some shots. These are water droplets that have frozen after falling off the roof of our house. With the constant melting and freezing, the droplets don't know what to do! I like how they maintained their circular shape and piled up to make this look interesting.

Replace a Sky

This is my "Replace a Sky" project. I was assigned to take pictures of different skies and mold them together with photoshop. I took the two photos (shown together above and separately to the right and bottom) on Grandad's Bluff in La Crosse. It was a beautiful sunny day, which made for beautiful blue skies.

The original sky to the right was cloudless and less interesting than the one shown below. I like how the one shown below has a sort of design in the clouds with the remnants of a jet engine line. I thought that putting these together would create a nicer, more interesting picture. I am very happy with how the end result turned out.