Mason the Reverse Centaur - Journal 5

I took this picture with my cellphone of my brother Mason. I wanted to capture one of the things I love most about my brothers, and that is there ability to be unique and crazily awesome individuals. I think the horse mask represented this very well and I'm satisfied with my goal of trying to capture emotion. I know its personal and you all might just think I'm crazy but I'm blogging about it anyways.

Bridge - Line

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 1/200

ISO: 3200

This photo of a covered bridge represents line. I had my ISO set on high 1 or 3200 because daylight was fading and I couldn't get an even exposure with anything under it. The photo is a little grainy because of the high ISO and low light levels, so I decided to apply a grey scale to it. I brightened up the photo a little and added more sharpness and clarity to it to offset the high ISO and crappy lighting.

The element of line was present in all my photos but this photo captured many different examples of line. There are the literally lines of the beams leading your through the bridge, diagonal lines creating the diamond windows, horizontal support beams. The "light at the end of the tunnel" effect also draws your attention through the bridge along all the lines.

Dominos - Pattern

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 1/30

ISO: 1600

This photo represents pattern. I took it in my basement on top of my ping-pong table. I moved a white canvas that was laying around behind my shoot so I could have a whole color as my background. I used a low f-stop of 3.5 so I could focus in on just the middle part of the dominos. I had my ISO at 1600 before I had the idea of resting the camera on the table and forgot to turn it down to a lower setting. This would have removed some of the grain present in the photo but I am still happy with the overall outcome.

I edited this photo to give it a whiter background. The lighting of my basement gave everything a yellow tint and by using the white balance tool it automatically correct it. I then played with the clarity and highlights till the dominos were bright and shiny but also fuzzy in the foreground and background. I made sure that the reflections of light in the closest domino looked as cool as I could make them because they add a really nice element to the photo.

There are multiple patterns captured in this photo. There is a simple black line splitting the dominos which draws your attention through the line of dominos. The bottom halves of the dominos count from 1 upwards and the top halves have a repeating number of 7. There is also a constant theme of shape that has been captured because the circles on the dominos are uniform throughout.

Unintentionally the last domino is flipped upside down. I had been moving the dominos a lot between shoots and stop paying attention enough to the details of their order. Even though this was unintentionally I liked the outcome of it because it breaks up the hard patterns and adds a nice amount of irregularity to the photo. If I could go back and change it, I would have flipped one of the dominos in the middle upside down so it was more clear that I had intentionally added this element.

Lanterns - Shape

F-Stop: f/10.0

Shutter Speed: 0.8

ISO: 400

I took this photo of lanterns in my kitchen to represent shape. I turned off the lights in the kitchen and the surrounding rooms so the only light was from the string of lanterns. I used a high f-stop for this picture because I wanted to capture all of the lights in full detail with a large depth of field. Because of the high aperture setting I had to have a almost second long shutter speed. I put a cutting board on top of the cabinets and rested the camera on that so I'd have a steady shot.

Whilst editing I enhanced the glow and yellow color of the lanterns. I faded out and blackened the photo on the left side to add some contrast between the two halves of the photo.  This photo represents shape because all the little lanterns are little spheres. It also incorporates pattern and line because the string of lights draws your eyes back along the repeating arrangement of lanterns. I also liked the addition of the star hanging in the border of light and dark because it added another shape to the photo.

Gourd - Gourd

F-Stop: f/3.5

Shutter Speed: 0.3

ISO: 400

This photo of a gourd represents texture. I remembered that shadows and interesting light settings can help create more texture for a photo so I turned off all the lights in the kitchen and grabbed a flashlight. I would make sure I had a somewhat long shutter speed as to capture the most of the random light patterns I could create. By spasming the light all across the gourd and the table and take multiple pictures I created very unique light patterns on this gourd. This was my favorite of about a dozen pictures.

After I decided on this as my final picture for texture I edited. By shifting the blacks and shadows I made the background almost completely disappear. There was quite a bit of clipping and loss of detail but it was desirable because I was trying to make the background fade out. During the shoot I used a aperture setting of 3.5 to just focus on the gourd and blur out the background. This made my job editing a lot easier. Using all of the settings I increased the shades of the individual bumps on the gourd and made them stick out more. The final product came out very well and captures the texture of the gourd very well.

Glowing Tree - Journal 4

I took this photo this weekend at a pizza place. They had Christmas lights outside on a tree and I loved how it looked. I fooled around with my cell phones settings till I could get a picture were mostly just the lights showed. It was dark out and my idea was to just capture the lights so they would look like they were suspended in mid air. You can still see the outline of the tree but it is really dark and just looks like the shadow of a shape.

Rain Drops - Journal 3

 
I took these two photos last weekend. It had just rained and I wanted to capture that without leaving the house because that required getting dressed completely. I moved the top and bottom halves of the windows to the middle so I could have different layers. The two layers of clear glass with rain drops on them are transparent so it created a 3D depth effect. I really liked how they came out because I absolutely love how the rain drops in the foreground are suspended in space. I could have improved this by playing with the angles a little more. I was having difficulties with no getting my reflection in the picture as well because it tended to ruin it.

Bubble Portrait - Journal 2

I took this picture this weekend on Saturday. My brother, Mason, was washing his hands and called me in to take a look a the bubbles he was making. I took many pictures of him and his fabulous bubbles but this was by far my favorite. My phone's camera decided to focus on his face entirely, leaving the bubble to be a blurry sphere in the foreground. I loved this effect and I also thought the rainbow and reflection of the lights captured in the bubble looked pretty cool. If I could change anything about this photo I would have wanted the background to be different and I would have liked a larger depth of field to capture more of his hand reaching out to hold the bubble.

Hummingbird - Journal 1

This photograph is of a hummingbird drinking from a bird feeder. I took this photo at my grandparents house in northern Vermont near the beginning of August. If I could change one thing about this photo it would be the angle at which I took it. The frames of the windows got in the way of the shot and added distracting, though cool, reflections.

The photo was hard to take because the hummingbirds always got scared away by seeing me in the window. The odd angle was due to me trying to hide around the edge of the window as to not scare away the birds.