My Outdoor Portrait Series at CSUSM 4-25-16

 

Last week during the Digital Photo Sketchbook course, we went out to take some outdoor portraits. After we took our outdoor portraits as we began to edit them, we were told to show the class some of the photos we came up with so far. I was amazed by a couple of photos that were done by a couple of my classmates and those photos  urged me to edit my own photos into really neat portraits as well. So, I continued to experiment with Photoshop by trying out some more adjustments the latest version has to offer. I also used the adjustments and features from Lightroom and Color Efex Pro to edit at least some of my portraits from the series. Out of the three programs I mainly used to edit not just these portraits, but pretty much all the photos I took  throughout this course, I feel that Photoshop gives me the most freedom and control on how I want to adjust my photos. The reason is that Photoshop contains plenty of adjustments to work with, the ability to use multiple layers to apply those adjustments, and the option to use layer masks that give me plenty of control on how and where I would like to make those adjustments. I also got to try out the HDR adjustment in Lightroom and see what it can do. When I tried this adjustment on one of my outdoor portraits (which is the seventh photo of the portraits featured in this blog), I took a copy I adjusted in Photoshop along with another copy or two without those adjustments and the result was that the photo ended up looking like a painting. I think that I would like to keep trying out the HDR adjustment and I would love to continue to work with Lightroom, Photoshop and at least work with Color Efex Pro from the Google Nik collection to make adjustments to my future photos. Whether I use one or two or all of the three programs would depend on which photo I feel works best with which one.

My Portrait Series for this week 4-19-16

For this week’s photography project, I first took portraits of one of my sister’s close friends inside my house. I then went out to meet with one of my close friends to take outdoor portraits of her as we went for a walk in her development. While I was assigned to take portraits, I had to look up a portrait photographer and I chose Cindy Sherman to be my inspiration for this project. I had my project focus on poses and props instead of make-up and costumes, but the main reason I chose Sherman for my inspiration was that when I was looking at her photos, I noticed that some of them have colorful backgrounds in various forms. This source of inspiration gave me the opportunity to try out the technique of incorporating edits from Photoshop into my photos like I’ve been wanting to do during the Digital Photo Sketchbook course. I got to work with the various filters and adjustments, create masks that give me control on where I would like to apply certain adjustments to, and use the blending option on how I want to blend those adjustments as I make them in multiple layers. However, the way I wanted to experiment with Photoshop was time consuming and I did not have much time to work on my series of portraits as of today, so I was only able to edit a few photos from my indoor portraits collection for this week. I would like to continue to edit this series of portraits I took, especially since I am going to dedicate one of the chapters in my final book project to the editing technique in Photoshop.

Outdoor Photos captured with a Mobile Phone 4-5-16

Last week for the Digital Photo Sketchbook course, I was assigned a project that allowed me to use a cellphone, or in my case, an iPhone, to capture a series of photographs. I chose to focus this cellphone photo series on outdoor photographs again and mainly dedicate the series to images of the sky during the hour of sunset and/or landscapes. When I was on break during my Digital Photo Sketchbook class just after this project was assigned, there was a formation of clouds with the sun shining its light in the opening of the formation. This neat looking cloud formation with the sun made me want grab my iPhone to capture it and motivated me to start this project right away. Along with the cloud formation, I ended up capturing another cloud formation during sunset with light shining through and landscapes that were either outside class at my university, outside my current house or at the site of my new house. As for using features that came with the camera programmed on my iPhone, the only feature I worked with was the setting on whether or not to shoot in HDR.

During the editing process of my photos, I was inspired by the images shown on the Mobile Masters video, a video on Vimeo that features artists such as Karen Divine who capture and/or create images using mobile devices, and decided to work with Color Efex Pro and Analog Efex Pro from the Google Nik Collection. I wanted to experiment with many of the features Color Efex Pro and Analog Efex Pro has to offer. I was told that the Google Nik Collection was free to download so I took advantage of this opportunity by installing the plug-ins onto my laptop although this was not my first time using those plug-ins. The other day after we presented our photographs of food, Prof. Small had the class try out the Google Nik plug-ins. I managed to create a couple of good photos where one was edited using Silver Efex Pro, one was made with Analog Efex Pro involved, while the rest was made with Color Efex Pro. When I was working on a couple of my photos using Color Efex Pro, the fact that my birthday is approaching was on my mind and it pretty much gave me the urge to use my favorite color red.

Overall, I thought that this project was a good experience. I came up with another photo that I consider to be a personal favorite of mine since the photo of the red plant at the San Diego Botanic Garden (which I’m using as a screensaver for my laptop). It’s the photo of a bunch of flowers where I used one of the Bi-Color filters to add tan and red onto the image. I believe that the photo would look nice in my future bedroom at my new home since the colors I added are part of my color scheme and I’m planning on painting my walls tan and red. I would work with Color Efex Pro and Analog Efex Pro again and after reading the plans for next week on the course’s syllabus, I’m looking forward to editing some of the photos from this series using Photoshop. I would like to maybe incorporate some filters to make those photos feel like I’ve been using multiple types of art material that kind of remind me of the Visual Arts Fundamentals and/or Beginning Painting course I’ve taken a couple of semesters ago.

Photos taken during the Magic Hour of Sunset 3-28-16

Another photography project I was assigned to work on over Spring Break was to create a series of photos that capture light during the hours of sunrise and/or sunset and I wanted to focus on creating my series of photos during the sunset hours. The reason why I chose to capture images during the hour/hours of sunset is that I enjoy seeing formations of clouds with bright colors cast upon them by the light as I look out the window of my bedroom. I’m also not the type of person who likes to get up early in the morning. (Last semester in one of the courses I took, one of my classmates asked me to take a survey of his that asks participants what time of day are they. One of the questions from the survey had me put down a couple of enjoyable, memorable moments of my life I can think of and then put down what time of those moments have occurred. After writing down my memorable moments, I figured that I was an evening person and thinking about it now, I would still consider evenings to be my time of the day, although I’m not into going out and/or throwing parties late at night.)

For my series of sunset photos, I ended up taking them in multiple places that were either near my current house or near my new home. I managed to come up with some great photos, from the composition, to the colors, to the lighting, that I feel very pleased to submit in this blog.

My Series of Photos taken during Spring Break 3-24-16

For my own series of photos I had to take over Spring Break from my current college semester, I chose to take outdoor photographs again. This time, I took my outdoor photographs during a trip to a fair that was going on in my hometown. My family and I  made plans to go to the fair on the weekend during the beginning of my Spring Break and I considered this a good opportunity to get some neat outdoor shots in color (and really play around with the color on at least some of the photos like I usually do) to come up with my series of Spring Break photographs. I also thought I’d take those photos using some of the settings on the DSLR camera I’ve been using, such as a low ISO and an f-stop that lets in less amount of light, Professor Small suggested that I should use when I take photographs during the “magic hours”, which happens to be the theme of another project I was assigned to work on during Spring Break as well.

My Best Outdoor Photo Shoots at Cal State San Marcos – Part 2 – 2-21-16

This is the second part of my outdoor photography project at California State University San Marcos and I have managed to come up with eight more good photos after going through all of the photos in Lightroom that I have taken. I decided to have my outdoor photography project be mainly about landscapes because I find them to be such fascinating settings to look at and capture. Also, when I was heading up the pathway to the third floor of the Arts Building, I thought I’d capture some photos of the streetlights that were looking over from the pathway above and include a virtual copy of one of them within the blogs I’ve been writing on this project as well. Seeing those images of the streetlights has led me to begin believing that streetlights go great with serene green landscapes on scenic routes and roads. The reason is that this takes me back to several of my childhood memories of my mom driving through the scenic routes of my hometown throughout the years whenever we had to go somewhere. As my mom was driving through those routes, I would look up or down the roads we pass and spot streetlights that would seem to look back at me from the end of the roads if there were any. I find those type of streetlights to stand out the most and if one becomes involved in at least one very good/fascinating memory that I would develop in my mind, I would consider it to be a significant landmark. As a matter of fact, last semester when I had to create my own Google Map for an Art and Web Design course I took, I came up with a map of my hometown that marks the locations of some of the most fascinating streetlights looking down the roads that I’ve seen. On the markers that indicate the locations of those streetlights, my descriptions explain what makes them so fascinating to see and include stories of some of the fond memories that associate to each one.

My outdoor photos also contain color since I like to work with color as well. Sometimes, I like to go crazy with color whenever I’m editing photos in Lightroom or Photoshop and sometimes, whenever I find photos containing colors that look good on them, I would enhance the colors to be a significant part of their respective images.