"A Girls Just As Hot as the Clothes She Chooses": Hats and Scarves Monthly

Today we were assigned the task of find two different fonts to use on the cover of the imaginary Hats and Scarves Monthly and we were given a picture to go with it as well.

I downloaded Janda Curly-Girl from dafont.com because I thought that it had a nice swirly quality to it while still preserving legibility and without getting too stylized. I chose to make the "Hats and Scarves" in this typeface and I chose to make the color a grey to match the hat and scarf that the model is wearing. Because Janda Curly-Girl is a Serif font, I wanted to use a Sans Serif font for my contrasting font so I used a simpler Candara font for "Monthly." I think overall these fonts combine well to create a cover that could likely work for a magazine called Hats and Scarves Monthly.
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Title Credit: "Fashion" by Lady Gaga

"Filling the Darkness With Order and Light": Blending

Today in class we learned about layers and how to use textures to blend them into the original picture. I decided to use the Galileo picture I took on one of the first days of class. I used blurred color streaks.jpg and the Multiply blending feature at 56%. I then found a picture of a Black Hole with its surrounding stars from the NASA website, and used the Darken blending feature at 26%. This is my result. I am happy with it because the changes I made are significant to the content of the picture.
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Title Credit: Stars from the Broadway Musical "Les Miserables"

"All Around the World": Combining Images

Today we were tasked with Photoshopping a person from our portrait series onto a stock background. 

Here are the original pictures:

 I compiled these two pictures together and ended with this. I adjusted the brightness and contrast of both the subject and the background in order to make them fit together relatively well. 

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Title Credit: All Around the World, Red Hot Chili Peppers

"A Change Would Do You Good": Photoshop Part II

This week we were tasked with taking portraits and then editing them in Photoshop using the tools we've learned. This was interesting to me because it is amazing how different a picture can look just by doing simple edits.


Changing the Color 
For this assignment I used the following picture:

We were supposed to choose one part of our chosen picture and change the color of it, be it hair, clothes, or an object. I chose to turn the guitar a pink-purple color. I also adjusted the vibrancy.

Selecting And Editing Only Part of the Picture
For this part of the assignment we were supposed to choose a picture and change the background to black and white while leaving the rest of the picture in color. I chose to use this picture because I really like the colors on my subject and wanted to pop them.

This is my final product. After editing it, I realized that the bright colors in the background nicely complimented the colors on Libby, my model, and I actually prefer the original. I made Libby more vibrant in this edit and if I were to edit it again, in order to have the best picture possible, I would probably still make the original more vibrant but I wouldn't make the background black and white. 

Glamour Shot
We then learned about how to edit pictures of blemishes and other things that are done to pictures before they are printed in the magazine. This is the picture I chose to use for this part of the assignment.

Firstly, I chose to crop the picture so that the car and sign were no longer in the background, since it was a glamour shot. Then I removed some minimal blemishes from the model's face. I enhanced the color of her eyes in order to make them pop and then adjusted the vibrancy.
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Title Credit: "A Change Would Do You Good" by Sheryl Crow

"Today I Don't Feel Like Doing Anything": Photo Story Proposal

Our first major assignment in Mediated Communications will be to photograph a Photo Story. A Photo Story is, in essense a collection of varying pictures that portray a central idea. For the Honors Component we were told that our photo story topic should "capture something about life in this particular moment in history" much like the Farm Security Administration photo stories did in the 1930s.

As I thought about what my generation may be known for once we are considered history, I couldn't stop thinking about how lazy we have become due to technology. Although some people have argued that "laziness promotes innovation" I fear that this innovation may be our downfall; if we continue to turn to technology every time we want to cut a corner we may reach a point where we no longer need face-to-face communication or to even leave our apartment. This will be what my photo story will focus on. We don't think twice about using technology to cut corners but this photo story will demonstrate how a person can go an entire day without ever leaving their home.

My working headline for this photo story will be "An Indolent Truth" playing off of the famous Al Gore movie "An Inconvenient Truth". Indolent is a synonym of lazy.

I will shoot this photo story in either my own apartment or a friend's apartment in North College Terrace, depending on whom I choose to be my subject.

This photo story will present a few examples of this and then allow the viewer to draw their own conclusions as to how serious of a problem this topic is. I will not be presenting dramatized portrayals of how technology can make us lazy so as to avoid it becoming too editorial. This will, however, be more of a photo essay than a photo story because I will be portraying a point of view. Although you may not know one singular person who does every single thing I will photograph in one day. the scenes I will portray will not be unfamiliar to anyone who views my photo story. Compiling them together in a photo essay will provide the examples needed to provoke viewers to think about the issue at hand even without having a lengthy written argument.

The idea that I plan to capture for my lead photo is the fact that we can Google virtually anything. Information is literally at our finger tips so we don't have to work very hard to find an answer In order to portray this idea I want to take a picture that shows textbooks being rejected in favor of the internet. I have not yet worked out how this will be set up, but I am in the process of developing my ideas for this picture.

Altogether, I am pretty excited for this project. I think this is an idea that is very important in this day and age and I think it will be fun to photograph.
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Title Credit: Lazy Song by Bruno Mars

"A Change Would Do You Good": Photoshop

Today we learned about photo editing in class, specifically about using adjustment in Photoshop. We were given the assignment to edit two pictures, one realistically and one unrealistically. 

Realistic
Here is my original picture. I liked the lighting but I thought the shadows could be improved upon and that the subject of the picture was a little vague so cropping would help. 

This is my finished product after I edited it. I cropped it so that the subject, my friend Caitlin sitting on the swing, is highlighted using the Rule of Thirds because she is placed in the right third of the frame. Because this picture is a conveying a pleasant idea with a beautiful location I used the Brightness/Contrast adjustment to change the color of the picture to make it have a happier softer feel as opposed to the more intense shadows and colors of the original. I then used the Vibrance adjustment to make the flowers in the background a little brighter. 

Unrealistic

In this picture the Be Extraordinary sign is clearly the subject and because it is the subject, the picture could be used as a promotional material or adversitsement for HPU. Here is the original.

In this edited version I used the posterize tool as well as a few other adjustment editing techniques to make the colors extreme, bright, and unrealistic in a fun way. I lowered the Vibrance adjustment in order to make the picture have more black space and then used the Hue/Saturation adjustment to pull out some of the yellows. This all allowed the Be Extraordinary words to pop  which is good because it is the purpose of this picture. Because the purpose of this picture is the sign its okay that the rest of the picture is somewhat unrealistic.

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Title Credit: "A Change Would Do You Good" by Sheryl Crow

"This is Home"

This weekend we had the assignment to read about photo composition. Good photos aren't usually just taken. In fact, most of the time they are planned. Granted, an amazing photo can be accidentally snapped, but the best photographers look at the composition of a potential picture while snapping it. They consider simplicity, the Rule of Thirds, line, balance, framing, and avoiding mergers. All of the information about these concepts comes from Kodak Guidelines for Better Photographic Composition.

With this in mind, I decided that my subject of the pictures I'd take would be North College Terrace, where I am living this year. I took a lot of pictures and then chose the 4 pictures that I thought best represented four of the six principles above.

Simplicity
When you take a picture, you want to make sure that the background isn't too complicated. The more complicated the background is, the less the subject stands out. With this in mind, I took this picture. 

I took a few pictures of this Security Blue Light outside my building, but no matter where I took the picture from a tree, a gate or a building seemed to get in the way. I then decided to take it from a lower angle which allowed it to stand out against the plain blue sky and therefore appear as a more compelling, clear picture.

Rule of Thirds 
According to the Rule of Thirds when composing a picture you should divide it into thirds both horizontally as well as  vertically. The subject of the picture should then be aligned with one of the four intersections of lines. This makes a more dynamically compelling picture.

 In this picture, the Be Extraordinary sign is in the upper left intersection of lines. I chose to put it in this position so that the eye would take in the sign and then see the green grass and the pruned shrubs/bushes, which one may classify as extraordinary. The sign is still the focus, however, I also put the sign in the upper left of the picture because if it is in, say, the bottom right, the road and cars would distract even more than the single white car already slightly does.

Lines
Lines can be used in photo composition in a variety of different ways: diagonal lines create interesting composition, leading lines can be used to emphasize the subjects, S curves are compelling, and more. 

I like this picture because it uses the gentle S curves which is aesthetically interesting, and this S curve works as a diagonal line to lead to the subject of the picture, which is the sun in the upper right of the picture. The viewer's eye follows the road down the hill and is then caught by the diagonal rays of the sun.

Framing
Using things already in the scene to frame the subject is a very effective way to emphasize the subject and draw the viewers eye to it. Framing can be used to ensure that the viewer sees the part of the picture that you want them to see.

 The focus of this picture is the front porch and rocking chair of this town-home. The tree, which appears naturally in the scene, is used to frame the house and makes it obvious that this porch area is the subject. The light also hits in the right way to emphasize that this porch is the subject.

So there we go! Just four examples of photo composition principles found in the area surrounding my apartment complex. It really does show that by keeping good photo composition in mind, interesting photos can be created out of less than interesting subjects.
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Title Credit: "This is Home" by Switchfoot