Week 8 - Adjustments

So I have to admit I took this assignment a bit too far and got in a little over my head. When looking through images to adjust, I found one that had shadows and aimed to replace them imperfectly. My first attempt was enough to feel I could ask my wife for a handful of pointers and try again. My second and third were not much better, but I felt I was on to something. Now after try four (by which I mean starting from scratch each time) I'm willing to admit I was attempting something that neither matched our week's requirement nor my skill level. I only present these to show I was doing something this week.

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I guess I aimed too high because I felt I had enough experience with level adjustments to look for a bigger challenge. For example, I've scanned hundreds of images using both a slide and normal scanner and often these require level adjustments. But in the end I decided to make my task easier and chose the following three images to adjust - original first:

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Brightness +65, Contrast -50, Saturation +20, Lightness +8

then
Brightness -50, Contrast +88, Saturation +18, magic tool wand sky and brightness -35, contrast -50

then
Saturation +46, then I adjusted Brightness and Contrast but I don't have specifics

Week 8 - Photomosaic

Let me first point out that I'm a big fan of Photomosaics. Besides having seen posters (like the American dollar bill made out of currency from around the world), I first fell in love with the art when I found a Photomosaic puzzle of the Earth at a yard sale. After completing it (this took months and many backaches to finish it) my wife and I purchased and completed the Starry Starry Night puzzle. We next purchased the La Grande Jatte Photomosaic puzzle, but have not started it yet. Although this may seem like an odd way to become familiar with the art, when completing a puzzle one must analyze every piece; however, when it comes to a Photomosaic puzzle, one must analyze every picture (often up to six) that appears on every piece. This hobby really made me appreciate all the images that make up the final Photomosaic picture.

Lastly, I was excited to realize that Apple's new operating system, Leopard, has a Photomosaic option for one's screen saver. After selecting a picture folder, the screen saver will first display a single image then zoom out to expose adjacent images until they all join together to form a single, different picture - that's the best I can describe it.

All that said, here is a self Photomosaic portrait made from my newly scanned Appalachian Trail photo collection. My first attempt (although much truer to the original photo's colors) appeared bland, rotated images 90 degrees, and seemed to allow too many duplicates. So, for this second one, I set the tiles to 2000, limited duplicates to 50 times, unchecked the rotate option, and... I think that's about it. In contrast to my first attempt, this image appears to have used more green in my "blue" t-shirt because I set these limitations.

Week 7 - Compositing

So I was going through a collection of the pictures I've shared with this class and came up with three designs I'd like to share.

In this first one, I simply used the magnetic lasso tool in order to select the red eft from one picture so I could drag it over to a second picture. I then used the Rectangular Marquee tool in order to erase part of the eft's torso so it appeared to be coming from behind the left hand wall. I tried to work its tail in, but in the end I just hid the layer. Lastly, I used the clone stamp tool to round out its face.

In this second picture I wanted to play around with filling in the center of a sunflower. First I used the Elliptical Marquee tool to clear of the flower's center. Next, I once again used the magnetic lasso to trace the flower's outline. Then I dragged the petal outline over to the arrow hole of Doune Castle in Scotland. However, this one move left the castle wall filling in the borders of the picture, so I used the clone stamp tool to expand the the countryside and white sky to the photo's outer corners. It still looked pretty bland, so next I copied the sunset from my Oregon beach picture and the clouds from over Franconia Ridge in NH. It's not the greatest, but two countries and three states are represented.

This final idea came at the last minute and I was too impressed with the result not to include it in this week's post. I came across this picture I have of a statue near Buckingham Palace in London. In the original, the form is so dark that it's essentially a silhouette, so I used the magic wand tool to select the negative (black) space and deleted it's contents. Next I moved in the image of the hazy trees and placed it behind the first layer. Very simple creation, but I feel it's very effective.

Two things I'd like to point out: for each of these I created a new background layer and in a few instances I drew a selection area and then used Select/Inverse in order to protect my selected area from changes.

Week 6 - Landscapes

I haven't been making too many trips lately, but not only do I have a lot of landscape shots I've also taken many over this past summer. In fact, I might I think I'll just embed another slideshow:



I'll add descriptions to each photo to calm everyone's curiosity.

The landscape site was a little too romantic and poetic for me, but I appreciated their passion for the perfect photo. Landscapes to me are an expanse of natural land (I just realized the site defines a landscape as "an expanse of natural scenery" but this would have been my answer anyway so I'll keep it). They can include man made objects, but distance should be displayed through various levels of scenery.

I think that often the largest contributor to getting the perfect landscape photo is perspective, which means that one must be in the perfect spot to get the shot. One must also be able to recognize depth; for instance, one might photograph a collection of trees, but they should also be aware of what's behind the trees and set their angle to take advantage of the scene's multiple levels.

One thing I enjoyed from the site was a reference to the passage of time in one's landscape photo.

Week 5 - Composition and Aesthetics Research

For this week’s research assignment on composition and aesthetics, I used our Hartness Library’s Academic OneFile article search engine and found a piece written by Chong Ho Yu from the August 2003 PSA Journal titled On Symmetrical Composition (Aesthetics of Photography).

In this article, Ho Yu discusses how the rules of vertical and horizontal composition differ from one another. He explains how, when a large subject (such as a tree) is centered vertically, it divides a photo into two equal parts thereby making the photo less interesting. However, either moving the subject into one of the two rule of thirds’ quadrants or including another subject that only appears on the left or right side can alter the photo’s symmetry making the it more pleasing.

Interestingly, Ho Yu explains that the same is not true for horizontal symmetry. The example used in the article is the original tree, only this time the shot includes the sidewalk in front of the tree where it casts its shadow. The photo is divided into two sections (top and bottom) but now the shot is more appealing because the two sides are not symmetrical.

The last point made is that people universally view an item from top to bottom, not left to right (left to right perception varies by culture). A horizontally centered dam, road, or bridge can work as long as one’s focus isn’t drawn to something above it. Additionally, he warns a person not to place their main subject in the bottom of their photo unless they purposely steer a viewer’s eye away from the top by raising the horizontal line up.

Week 5 - Framing Slideshow

Again, I felt I've used the framing technique enough to scrounge through my photos to fins a handful to share. I tried to find a number of different ways to frame a picture and limited my set to eight, which already took some discipline. Here's what I found:



I was especially happy with the ones taken in Great Britain (the alleyways and the arrow shooting holes) and Oregon (the beach caves). I just love fitting more and more objects into a shot, whether it be shadows, backgrounds, or frames.

Week 5 - Rule of Thirds

I've been playing with the art of off-center photography for some time and thought it would be fun to look through my collection and pick out ones that I thought exhibited this technique. Only problem was, I had to find subjects I photographed both centered and using the rule of thirds. Here's what I came up with.
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In this first sunset shot, the sun itself is the subject and center-focus of the picture. However, in the second shot I was aiming for more distance and depth, therefore making the horizon, with sun moved into the upper third and its wavy reflection in the bottom third, centered.

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In this second set, the left hand photo shows a Jack-in-the-pulpit left of center in an attempt to capture both flower and leaf. In the right-hand photo, the flower itself is the center focus.

It's funny how often photographers like to both center their subject and capture it completely, but if one begins to either align using the rule of thirds or focus on a particular aspect of the subject (like a child's eye or a sunflower's petal) the picture begins to take on a unique essence. This is why digital photography is so great; this technology gives people today the impetus to photograph a subject from limitless angles and perspectives without concern over cost or lack of film.