09/30 Photography HW

01. Take an image using good natural lighting.

02. Take an image in full sun.

day 269

Yep, I've missed a billion days. But who cares? I took a pic today. It was just a snapshot. With my phone.... but it was a picture! :) YAY FOR DANCE COSTUMES. I'm not sure which is my favorite costume we have... either our senior dance one, or our ballet one. Here's both :)

So excited! :)

Unofficial Senior Session #1: Jenna

So, Jenna and I are sort of unofficially taking each other's "senior" pictures... we're both getting professional ones done, but we figured we'd go ahead and have a few more photoshoots with both of us. so. :)

We went to downtown Madison this time, and didn't really get that many pictures... too busy trying to figure out all the poses we wanted to try for later. :P And dodging cars... you'd be amazed how busy those so-called deserted streets are.

09/23 Photography HW

Yeah, I know I'm lazy. I post once a week, and only for my photography homework... sorry :) at least I'm posting though!


1. Take an image that shows the flash fall off – indoors will work.

I actually already had a picture of this! :) I took this on a photo scavenger hunt. I'm not sure whether I was supposed to show a picture ruined by flash falloff, or just flash falloff... but oh well.

2.  Take an image that uses bounced flash.


This was my setup... (I put the piano under the desk so the flash could easily reflect off the top of the desk.)

With normal, unbounced flash.

Bounced flash! These are TOTALLY unedited pics, so you can see the white balance difference, because the desk is a reddish brown, so when the flash reflected off the underside of the desk, it turned the pic more red.

Edited, just for fun....

3. Take an image using fill flash technique.   Think in front of a window or with the sky.  You must have someone/something in the foreground that needs lighting as well as keeping the background somewhat correct exposure.

Yeah... I'm kind of ashamed to say I didn't go out and take a picture for this one. I found an old one. A very old one. 

James, don't kill me. I'm sorry. haha.

It works... sorta....... its just not what I envisioned :P I'll take one this week when I decide to be smart and not put off my photography homework till now. haha.

09/16 Photography Homework

This week's homework was to take a photo we hadn't edited, and edit it in a way I've never edited a picture before. I tried out a couple different sharpening features this week... I read an article about Smart Sharpening, but I couldn't find it on Photoshop Elements, so I tried:

1. Unsharp mask (Enhance --> Unsharp mask) 

2. High pass sharpening (creating a duplicate layer, making it a soft or hard light layer, and running a high pass filter on it). 

As it turns out, I liked the unsharp mask (75/2/3) on this photo. I pulled these values from the portrait row on this site http://www.photographyjam.com/blog/40/unsharp-mask-suggested-starting-values. Normally, I HATE sharpening, because it just adds more noise to the photo, but I figured I'd try it out anyways :)

Original RAW Image

Basic edits in Adobe Camera RAW

After sharpening, Fresh Color & Edge Burn actions by Pioneer Woman (opacities changed a TON), and Perfect Portrait action by CoffeeShop. Also, I did some extra sharpening on her eyes.

After Pioneer Woman's Soft & Faded action - final image!

Senior Session: Milena

I had so much fun taking Milena's senior pictures! She is absolutely gorgeous, and has just the right flair for portraits. :)

Westminster Vs Oakman Football Game!!

Well, guys... it's official.

I love football season. And I do mean, LOVE. :)

64 yard touchdown by Jordan Lake!

And... I didn't take this picture, Ben did, but who cares. I love these people :)

09/09 Photography HW

#1. Take a landscape photo using the rule of thirds with 2 elements in it at 2 different focal points.

Okay... my new title is "Worst Landscape Photographer Ever". I pulled an old photo for this, because I spent an HOUR wasting time and gas trying to find a good landscape picture, and found nothing. Well, I took 4-5 awesome shots in my head, but there was nowhere to safely or even semi-legally park to take them with my camera... -_-

Auburn's campus. It sort of follows the rule of thirds....

sort of.....ish... maybe.... -_- or not. Its also not straight, but SHH. I wanted my points to be Samford Hall (that gorgeous red building with the clock tower in the background) and whatever hall that is on the bottom right point. But I tried cropping it different ways, and it just didn't work out.

Also, in the above vintage-y edit, I lost a lot (okay, all) of the cloud details... which made me sad. Not sure how to fix that though.

#2. Take a photo making use of depth of field to pinpoint where you want your focus point to be, and make sure the focus point is following the rule of thirds.


I like this one... :) Can anyone say "really wide open aperture" and "awesome macro extension tubes"?

and it follows the rule of thirds beautifully! :)

#3. Take a photo employing unusual angles and a situation where the rule of thirds would not be helpful.


Okay... so I couldn't pick just one. I took the same picture in two different ways... and I couldn't decide which one to use. So here's both. :)

I unintentionally followed the rule of thirds with the picture below... my calculus book falls on one of the points, I believe. Oh well. :P

days 245, 248, 250

Seems to me like I'm good at posting weekly at least! Hey, its better than not posting at all, right? Right. -_-

day 245

my cake. it took me a LONG TIME. 6-8 hours. but it was sooo worth it :)

day 248
some of the cupcakes I decorated with Angie and Lauren for the school bake sale! :)

day 250
my lame attempt at landscape photography. As it turns out, I'm using a different picture for my photography homework... as long as buildings count as landscapes, that is. -_-

day 244; Photography homework!

Yeah, so I've slacked... but this is just practice for 2012, right? Right. :)

So, for my photography homework this week, I was supposed to play around with different ISO, shutter speed, and aperture settings... here's what I came up with:

Well, I thought the difference would be SUPER obvious where I used ISO 100, 400, and 1600... but I am blessed with a very steady hand, so even at shutter speed 1/5 of a second, I was able to hold it still enough to get a mostly-clear picture... and the grain isn't very obvious at a low resolution, but I PROMISE that the ISO 1600 pic is MUCH grainier than the rest! :)

Oh and I did edit these "DANCE" photos, but just a quick, basic edit - I'll post the final one I liked the best, fully edited, at the end of this post. :)

ISO 100 | F3.5 | ss 1/5

ISO 400 | F3.5 | ss 1/20

ISO 1600 | F3.5 | ss1/80

And now for some aperture changing-around.... I barely edited these pictures - just changed the white balance, because I can't figure out for the LIFE of me how to do it on-camera. So all these pics turned out quite orange.. but that's why I love Photoshop! :)

 ISO 1600 | F32.0 | ss 1.0

(Not sure if you'll be able to tell, but this picture is NOT perfectly in focus.)

ISO 1600 | F25.0 | ss 0.6

And don't ask me how I got this in focus... I really don't know....

ISO 1600 | F10.0 | ss 1/8

ISO 1600 | F4.5 | ss 1/20

And just for fun... I pulled out my 50mm F1.8 lens.

ISO 800 | F1.8 | ss 1/125

(I actually don't like this picture cause you can't see the converse clearly enough. But thats okay, this is just to demonstrate what aperture does.)

And also I should have used a slower shutter speed... but I didn't want to keep this pic anyways :)

And finally... my favorite edits of these two pictures:

day 244