Night and Lights

 1. Car lights: 11/10/2010; 10:52 PM; Rexburg; f/4; 10 sec; Sony A330; Tripod, Timer

 2.G: 11/10/2010; 10:08 PM; Rexburg; f/5; 5 sec; Sony A330; Tripod, Timer

3. Painting with my camera: 11/10/2010; 6:48 PM; Rexburg; f/14; 3.2 sec; Sony A330

My first time painting with light and capturing moving light was for this post. I really enjoyed it. My favorite was #3. We put our Christmas tree up that night, and I decided to see how the different colored lights would look. I started out taking the picture really close and stepped backwards quickly a few times before the 3.2 sec ran out. The effect was awesome. For #2 it took me a while to write anything that was legible. I used my husband's pen light. I tried different words and symbols and the G looked the best. For #1 I captured tail lights while breaks were on turning the corner. For all 3 pictures I did simple edits in camera raw.

Cutouts

 1.Deer: 9/29/2010; 7:08 PM; Bannack; f/5.6; 1/100; Sony A330

 2. This image was taken just outside of Bannack. We were headed home and 3 deer were near the road. I was sad because one jumped a fence and I barely missed capturing its jump. Anyway, to do my partial cutout I first selected the sky area and a little below it with my rectangular marquee tool. I hit shift ctrl N to put it on a new layer and then ctrl delete to fill it with white. Then I deselected the square and hid the layer. I went back to the image and quick selected the ground area and refined the edge. I feathered it and expanded it a bit. Then I hit ctrl J to put it on a new layer. I put that layer on top, I revealed the box, and I was done.

 3. Before I understood how to correctly do the partial cutout I simply quick selected the ground, chose inverse in the select drop down, and hit delete. Oh, and first I picked a pink color for the deleted section to be. I actually like this cut out better because it looks like the sky was a pretty pink. But, it was done differently.

 4.Sunflower: 9/17/2010; 7:26 PM; Rexburg; f/5.6; 1/80; Sony A330; Flash

5. Full cutout: I really liked the yellow of the sunflower contrasting with the black. I first toggled my colors so black would be the background when I hit delete. Then I quick selected the sunflower, refined the edge to add more feather, selected the inverse and hit delete. Done. The quick select tool worked great.

Large format print

 1. 18 by 24 final print: I really wanted a picture with my boys in it for my large print. I tried all semester to get something just right...but it is very hard to get a 2 year old to hold still and a 4 month old to smile in every picture. I ended up cheating a bit by taking elements from three different pictures and making them look like one. I'm pretty sure I used aperture priority for all three pictures. I first edited all of the images in raw. I adjusted the fill light, color balance, blacks, saturation, vibrance, and sharpened their eyes. I also tried to HDR the photos by the canal, but they ended up a little more pixely, so I smoothed the faces and clothes a bit with the paintbrush in photoshop. The background shot (of nature park) is flipped because I wanted to cover up a sun spot by placing the boys on top of it. Then I took Emmett's head from the picture he was smiling in, quick selected it, pulled it on top of his other head in the picture he wasn't smiling, and sized it correctly while holding shift. Next I color matched the three boys (now with Emmett's new head) to the photo of nature park. Then I quick selected the boys and the cement they were sitting on and pulled them on top of the photo of nature park. After I refined my edges with the paint brush (by painting with the black/white to get rid of extra edges that should have been left out), I was finally done. Then I made sure the size and resolution was correct (18 by 24 and 150 pixels). YAY! Below are the pictures I used to create the final image.

 2.Emmett Smiling: 11/3/2010; 9:16 AM; Rexburg; f/14; 1/60 sec; Sony A330

 3. Chase/Bridger smiling: 11/3/2010; 9:18 AM; Rexburg; f/14; 1/80; Sony A330

 4. Nature Park: 11/4/2010; 5:25 PM; Rexburg; f/18; 1/60; Sony A330

5. Flowers 12 by 36: 11/3/2010; 4:59 PM; Rexburg; f/13; 1/125; Sony A330
For both my pictures, when I printed the drafts they were much darker and bluer than on my screen. I realized that by switching them to print CMYK the change happened. I compared it on the screen to RGB and it looked a lot worse as CMYK. For the final large print I printed RGB and I was much happier. For this shot I actually got some flowers at Broulims. I love gerbera daisies and wanted some pretty ones (and of coures I couldn't find any outside in Rexburg right now). I took the photos outside with natural light on aperture priority mode, and I adjusted the settings a bit in camera raw (saturation, vibrance, clarity, fill light, blacks). But overall they were a pretty bright orange to begin with. Then I cropped them to the size I wanted and fixed the resolution. I think the resolution ended up being 107. The end.

Photolusion

1. Photolusion Blend

For the blend I cut out spiderman with the quick select tool, pulled him on top of the other picture (with the move tool) and reduced his opacity. Then with a hard brush and 100 percent opacity I cut through a mask that I added on spiderman to make the wood on the window appear on top of him. Other than that I did simple edits in camera raw. Bridger looked so curious in the window and I think it turned out great.

2. Spiderman: 10/21/2010; 4:11 PM; Rexburg; f/8; 1/100; Sony A330

3. Bridger window: 9/29/2010; 1:17 PM; Bannack; f/7.1; Sony A330

4. CHALLENGE: Single photolusion: I have long nails and a terrible crack in my windshield. I only did simple edits in camera raw.

a photo a day

To make this two-page spread I used the template and seven pictures below. I began with the template and would click on the square I wanted the picture to go in. Then I would drag the picture with the move tool onto the template. Since I was originally clicked on the box I wanted the picture to end up in, the was placed right above its destination on the layers menu. I then right clicked it in the layers menu and chose "clipping mask." A clipping mask placed the picture into the box so I could move it around freely. Next I held "shift" while I resized the image and placed it just how I wanted in th box. I did this for all the pictures. I changed the date from the template and took off the days of the week because I wanted my pictures in a different order than they were taken in. It was fairly quick and easy once I got the hang of it.

 1.Chef Bridger: 10/26/2010; 5:10 PM; Rexburg; f/4.5; 1/30; Sony A330

 2. Winter Flowers: 10/27/2010; 6:19 PM; Rexburg; f/5.6; 1/125; Sony A330

 3. Candle: 10/28/2010; 7:31 PM; Rexburg; f/7.1; 1/5; Sony A330

 4. Emmett Skunk: 10/30/2010; 5:50 PM; Rexburg; f/5.6; 1/80; Sony A330

 5. Flowers: 10/31/2010; 10:58 PM; Rexburg; f/5; 1/60; Sony A330

 6. Daisy: 11/1/2010; 12:10 PM; Rexburg; f/5.6; 1/1250; Sony A330

7. Halloween Candy: 10/30/2010; 7:53 PM; Rexburg; f/8/ 1/10; Sony A330

For all of the photos above I did simple edits in camera raw. Mostly I added vibrance, saturation, clarity, blacks and fill light. I chose most of the pictures because they reflected something about my day. The candy and costumes are from Halloween. Bridger is obsessed with candles lately. He helped me make cake batter cookies. Basically something from my day is in each of the pictures. It was a fun project (but easy to forget to take a picture. I forgot one day and I ended up setting an alarm the rest of the days to make sure I wouldn't miss a picture).
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