Semester Final :)

Man’s Best Friend!

I had a lot of fun with this assignment. Over the past week and a half I have been gathering pictures of all the special people and animals in my life. I know in some of the pictures I went for high contrast and intense blacks despite the fact that the man who will be grading these does not like that affect, but I think it gives depth and life to the pictures. I was originally going to do portraits and when I began taking pictures of my mom (the picture bellow) our dog jumped in and I decided to go in a different direction. Just a heads up… I lost one of my contact sheets during the upload. I have been in Twitchell’s photography class for four years now and it is sad that this will be my last assignment to turn in to him. I had a great run though! (:

Originals

Contact Sheets

“It’s a Dog-Eat-Dog world out there.”

Buster

I got my inspiration to take pictures of my dog, Buster, from the following website: http://digital-photography-school.com/25-inspirational-dog-portrait-photographs. I just thought all of the images on the site were adorable and I wanted to try to create something just as cute.

Contact Sheets:

Greg’s Eleventh Birthday

Smiles All Around

This present was from our Grandma. She lives in Vancouver and was unable to watch him open her gifts. She was on the phone the whole time though, it was quite adorable.

Holly Jolly Season

This is a picture of a Christmas tree! I love the bokeh effect. I think it makes for quite a neat picture. I got the inspiration for this from http://www.slrphotographyguide.com/tips/bokeh-DOF.shtml.

Contact Sheet

A Look Inside

Bad To The Bone

What is that you may ask… its a Moose Skull! A slowly rotting moose skull. I took this image in Mrs. Frank’s room. She is the Forestry & Wildlife teacher at my school and one of my personal heros. The morbid aspect of this image very intriguing. This week’s inspirational sight was http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/fototech/htmls/depth.html. The last pictures on my contact sheet, the ones of the ring, I did using the poor man’s macro. I flipped my lens around. I’m going to do more with this next week.

Contact Sheets

Spice Up Your Life

All You Need Is Love

This is a photo of a leaf off the Poinsettia plant that my grandma got my mom for Thanksgiving. I was experimenting with my depth of field. The end result brings to my mind a heart. The shadows and creases in the leaf are quite beautiful.

Hall Of Mirrors

I was inspired to do some experimenting with light painting after my photography teacher, Bruce Twitchell, opened our class with some terrific examples of painting with light. Of course the images we saw mostly used an LED light to outline the subject or to add drawings to the image. I only had a flashlight at my disposal. I set my shutter speed for thirty seconds and shined the light on myself in a few different locations in my hallway. The end result is nice and eerie, though I may have to experiment with this some more.

On The Surface

I began this photo session whild tthe sun was rising. I wanted to get a beautiful sunrise shot, but it was much to cold out side and I was still in my pajamas. I ended up taking picture through my back door. That early in the morning there is a nice layer of dew on the inside of the window.

Wake Up And Smile

The inspiration for this picture came from http://www.graphicmania.net/stunning-conceptual-photography-ideas/. I was attempting to re-create an image from that website. Is this legal? Once I began I realized just how hard it was to make cereal into a smilie face. I think the image is cute. Though, the drop of milk off to the side off the bowl is quite distracting, I enjoy the color sceme of the image.

Contact Sheets

Avadon

 

Welcome to the Universe

Hello! This week I took my pictures at my boyfriend’s house. I got my inspiration for the water photography from the following site: http://www.popphoto.com/Features/How-to/You-Can-Do-It-How-to-Photograph-Water-Drops. Chris, my boyfriend, did the pouring for me. We made a little studio backdrop with a towel. The streams of water were originally vertical and there was only one in each shot. It took me a good amount of time in photoshop to erase around each one and blend them into the background. I was going for a gravity defying look. It brings to my mind an episode of The Universe in which they explain how multiple universes interact. All moving in wavelike motions sometimes bouncing off each other. It was quite difficult shooting because I only had a 1 gig memory card with me at Chris’ house and I was shooting at a very rapid shutter speed so I had to keep going through and erasing pictures. Before he helped me with the water shots I had taken a bunch of pictures of his pups. His oldest, Riley, had the most awesome spots around his eyes from old age. He is sort of blind so the flash made a crazy reflection in his pupils. I had also taken some still life pictures of his bamboo plant. I was sorry to have to erase so many of those. I love still life nature pictures. Overall, I’m happy with my results this week. (:

Variety

This week I tried a variety of things. I began with an attempt at using candle light. I used this sight for tips http://digital-photography-school.com/14-tips-for-great-candlelight-photography. The Buddha picture was done with candle light. The effect I was going for with the candle light never really materialized so I also attempted some fish tank photography. It was hard though because the inside of the tank was slimy so all my pictures looked hazy. Overall I am happy with my results for the week.

ShootOFF

Movie Week

 

I really enjoyed this week in our photography class. We spent the week watching videos on two very different photographers. The first of which was Joel Sartore. He is a photographer for National Geographic. He photographed in the areas of nature and photojournalism. The main focus of his video was to show the challenges of being a photojournalist. He, like many other photographers, had to spend long periods of time away from his family. This was very hard on his wife and kids. But his passion for photography prevailed. Despite the fact that he would sometimes be gone from home for so long that his family get used to him being gone, he still wanted to be out there taking pictures of parts of the world that not many get to see. Personally, I do not think I could do job quite like this one. I would love to travel to exotic locations around the world for my work like Sartore, but I want to have a family when I get older. I want to be able to watch my kids grow up. And as a photojournalist, I would not be able to do that. The second photographer we watched a video on was Richard Avedon. He started out his career as a fashion photographer but went on to specialize in portrait photography. Now, this man’s work can really be called art. The composition of his fashion work is beautiful and the emotion he captures in his portrait work is priceless. Avedon, to me, is quite the inspirational character. I do not have much to say about Avedon because there are not words to describe perfection. I have included in this post some of my favorite pictures by both Joel Sartore and Richard Avedon. Enjoy.