Digital Photography I - Final Project

When I heard on the police scanner that there were flames showing through the roof of the All Fired Up Tavern in the heart of Barre City I grabbed my camera and headed down the hill. I arrived shortly after the first firetruck and stayed on scene for over four hours. It was hard to breathe for the next few days but I'm very happy with the photos I took.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

More Portraits

Didn't want to leave my son out! I have been really frustrated at times in the past because as I am out shooting portraits for strangers, my girlfriend is taking our son to a "professional" to have his photos taken for school. I finally convinced her that I was capable ;-) Hope she thinks I was right.

Portraits

Here are a couple of examples of my portrait work. The first was a young lady who asked me to shoot her Senior Portraits. She wanted them taken at a cemetery close to her home where she spends a lot of time writing....so I tried to capture a result which felt peaceful and reflective. Not the best photo ever taken, but I think it worked well for her.



When shooting her photos, I tried to use Aperture Priority Mode and found that difficult. I am very used to shooting in Shutter Speed Priority Mode (primarily due to the number of sporting events I shoot). I really need to practice AP more so that I would have better control over DoF.

The next photo is of my daughter. My biggest problem in shooting her Senior Portraits was that it was hard to see her that grown up! Technically it wasn't much of a challenge as we had a great location with good light.



Next is a portrait that falls into that "maybe not a great photo but it works anyway" category. My girlfriend grew up with this waterfall behind her house...so I convinced her (not an easy task) to let me take her portrait there. She hates having her photo taken and to capture the water I way I wanted to it required a number of attempts (as well as a Neutral-Density Filter, tripod, etc). I could get rid of some of the noise I'm sure....but I like the result just like it came out of the camera.

Watermark

Unfortunately, I had a number of my photos used without my permission and without acknowledgment during the 2008 football season. So....I created a tradename (Rock Bottom Studio) and logo that I can place on all of my photos before I upload them. Will it stop folks from "stealing" them? No.....but it could be helpful in litigation. Here is a photo that I took during the big fire at All Fired Up in Barre City back in October of 2008.

cloning

here's a little piece I put together for a friend when I shot her Senior Portraits. i'll upload the original, full fame shots and the final result so you can see what I did.

clone and paint

hopefully this is acceptable this week. fighting off a nasty case of the flu and not spending too much time in front of a computer. For my first example, I took a photo of country music singer Aaron Tippin that I took last summer. I really wanted to emphasize his guitar....so left that in color and changed the rest to black and white. kind of painting I think....painting with the eraser. i uploaded the original and the edit.

A personal note

This has been a really tough week for me....my good friend passed away from a cardiac arrest on Wednesday morning at the age of 32. His Mother gave me a place to stay when I was 14 and he was 7....and he was really like a little brother to me. We had grown apart over the last few years as I "grew up" and moved away from the bar scene that he still clung so tightly to. I mention this not for your sympathy....but as a reminder that we just never know when the last thing we said to someone may be the last chance we have to convey how we feel. Don't live to regret not saying or doing something...there are no guarantees that you'll have another chance.

Dodge Tool

Even though I have been using Photoshop for a number of years, I really have hardly ever much of its' potential and tools. My first try using the Dodge Tool with brighten the back of this archway so that the date would become visible. A person more experienced editing photos could also erase the car and totally change the photo. I tried but the result wasn't very good.

Filters

The first filter that I played with this week was called "Glowing Edges". I thought this shot from a car show of an old street rod with a flame paint job would make an interesting subject....and I think that I was right!



So...then I wanted to find a shot that might look cool using the Mosaic Tile filter. I settled on this waterfall but I'm not sure that it works as well as I would have liked. Since we had talked about mosaics last week, I stuck with it anyway.

More editing fun

I take a TON of photos, but I've always been a little afraid to do much more than crop them. Had some fun this week playing with some of the editing options in Photoshop CS2....not sure how often I'd use them, but it was fun to try them out! First....here's an edit of a shot I took a long time ago while taking the ferry across Lake Champlain. I like the original well enough....but I played with it a little and really liked the result I got using the "Neon Glow" option.



Next is a portrait I took of my son Cody....I still don't really know how I got the White Balance so wrong. I use a tool called the Expodisc to help set custom WB before every series of shots in changing lighting conditions. Apparently I got something wrong this time. And.....I didn't shoot in RAW even though I could have. DAMN!! Well, all I could do was play with the RGB levels and get it close to acceptable. Still not good enough to print I don't think, but it gives an idea of what can be done by hand....even by a hack.




Then I wanted to try something a little more challenging. I shot a John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band (the guys that did the soundtrack for the Eddie & The Cruisers movies) concert this summer and got a few really good shots. I liked this shot of Michael "Tunes" Antunes, Cafferty's sax player. Last week I posted a couple examples where I cut a player from one background and posted it onto another. So.....for this shot, I wanted to really make the person stand out on the same background I had cut him from. I found a cool way to do that, using the Artistic/Plastic Wrap option in CS2. I created a duplicate copy of the original and then applied the Plastic Wrap.. then I cut "Tunes" from the background using the eraser tool. Once I had that done cleanly, I dragged him back on to the original and covered his original position. Whatcha think?

Combining photos

I have served as "Official Team Photographer" for the Vermont Ravens semi-pro football team for the past two seasons and this is an example of the individual collages that I did for each player (hopefully this is acceptable for the assignment). I used the team photo for the background by fading it so that it didn't compete with the player I was making it for. I took a photo of each player and cut them out using the lasso tool and erasing the background of the original. Then I copied the cut out player to a new layer on top of the team photo and added the player name and number. The players seemed to like them.

A contrast in Capitols

Spent Sunday in Manchester, New Hampshire with my football team and went in to Concord after to take a few shots of the Capitol Building, in the rain unfortunately. So... went to Montpelier today to have something to compare them to. Not for any assignment...just because....

Landscapes

By definition, landscape photos are an expanse of scenery visible in one capture (or something close to that). With that in mind, here are a few of mine. The top photo is a capture of Camel's Hump at sunset. I tried to follow the rule of thirds, while allowing a little more silhouette. The waterfall photo was shot using a Neutral Density filter (these act like really strong sunglasses and cut down the light significantly, allowing the use of slower shutter speeds). I like the angle of the tree limb and think that it adds a lot of depth to the shot. The photo of the fog I tried to create a diagonal in the viewers mind between the trees because of the angle and how that affected their positioning.

I am hopeful that I can get out tomorrow and shoot a couple more...will update my blog if I can.

Framing slideshow

Have seen TONS of awesome examples in my classmates work of nature's little frames. Decided to focus most of my effort on finding man-made examples and then threw in one that Mother Nature made for us.

Rule of Thirds....by example

My goal was to highlight the tree in relation to the rest of the cemetery. In the first shot, I centered the tree like we all grew up doing....I think we did it that way because with film cameras, there was no "delete" button....we only got one chance to capture the subject. Put it in the middle of the viewfinder and we were more likely to get it. Not very artisitc...but effective.

In an effort to bring a little more life to the shot, I changed my angle a little and allowed the expanse of the area to show up a little more. By moving the tree over the left third of the photo, I've created a much larger scene.

Composition - The Diagonal Rule

The "Diagonal Rule" says that diagonal elements or lines generally make a photo more dynamic. Be creative - use roads, tree branches, river banks etc. When shooting cool subjects, I always try to play with this idea and have ended up with some interesting results. Here's a photo of Alan Jackson in a little different way than he is usually seen.

Color Schemes

"Think" that these two fit the assignment. Wanted to capture two very similar things using different color scheme techniques. I shoot a lot of car shows....and never thought much about the differences in the flames on the cars I see. Think that these photos demonstrate them. The photo marked "Analgous" shows a paint scheme where the flames goes from yellow-orange-red and the photo marked "Complimentary" shows a flame outlined in orange on a blue background.

Week 4: Lighting Effects

Kept waiting for decent weather...realized I better just make do. So....here are four photos of the same object taken in different lighting conditions. Each is labeled but here's a little more information. I make reference to my "light-tent" often....here's a video thing I made to show how I made my tent. I started a group on Flickr a few years ago and made this video for that, but thought you might find it useful as well. Sorry if I swear in it (can't remember, but probably). Light tent construction

So...in the first example, I set up the light tent as I normally would but then had my flourescent light shine through a red screen to add a little bit of color to my subject. For the 2nd photo, I used the light tent without the colored screen. In the 3rd photo, I used the light tent but shot it using a Gary Fong Lightsphere Cloud Diffuser I love this thing for portraits....and anytime you really need clean light and control of shadows. For my 4th photo, I took my subject out on the porch and shot it in natural light. Not big changes in how I shot them.....but some pretty noticeable differences in the results!

Week 3: Macros

No theme in particular....

Compare & Contrast

I took this photo using my Canon PowerShot A580 point & shoot camera. I used Automatic settings in front of a background that I made for my light-tent. I only set up the light-tent because that's the only way that I could hang the background. The camera chose a 1/60th of a second shutter speed, ISO 80 and Aperture of 7.1










This photo was taken with my Canon Rebel XTi on a tripod using ambient light with no flash. I shot it with a shutter speed of 30 seconds, ISO 400 and Aperture of f18. Couldn't figure out the source of the weird fog-like lighting on the bowl and left cheek. These photos are both taken using the same background.

And so it begins.....

I am returning to college after fifteen years away from the classroom...what in Hell am I thinking?!? I have been inspired to take this step by my daughter, as she steps into a college classroom for the first time this week. Many times throughout her High School career I doubted her desire and feared that she would quit. I know that most parents feel a sense of pride as they watch their child cross the stage to receive their diploma....I felt awestruck and humbled. So... here I am. I owe her the same effort that she showed me. And so it begins.....