Digital Photography Assignment Color and Light Photo #2

This is the first of the two photos I combined.

This is the second of the two photos that I combined.



For this I used the lasso selection tool to select the iris of the eye and copied and pasted it twice on the second photo. I moved one of the copies out of the way and used the tools under the Edit tab in Transform. I changed the opacity, gave it an inner shadow, put it to scale, and rotated it. I then went into the Image tab in Adjustments and utilized the hue & saturation. I chose to adjust the colors by using the color selections under the Master selection. I also used adjustments under Exposure. I did the same for both eyes but used different parameters.

My Photo of The Day October 30th, 2010

My youngest daughter really wanted one of the hermit crabs to come out of their shell while she was holding it. So she dug under the hermit crab in the sand. Because there was sand all over her hand the hermit crab came out and I captured it as it was about to walk on her hand.

My Photo of The Day October 29th, 2010

My youngest daughter patiently posing during the summer and wearing a winter coat, because I wanted a hood to be pulled up around her face. I liked this one because it is a little spooky or mysterious. Kind of has a comic book feel to it.

My Photo of The Day October 28th, 2010

This was taken because of a Daily Challenge on soaphoto.com. We had to show something about how we viewed the world. I used my glasses (I didn't think my contacts would work as well :)) on our marble chess board. 

My Photo of The Day October 27th, 2010

This was taken in the Brandon Gap last fall. I loved all the yellow grass, dead trees and winding stream.

My Photo of The Day October 26th, 2010

I found this guy posing on just the right colors after a cool, misty night. I really liked the way the colors of the fly were also in the bush it was standing on.

My Photo of The Day October 25th, 2010

I love the ocean. This is a panoramic of a part of Wells Beach in Maine.

My Photo of The Day October 24th, 2010

Helicopters. I can remember as a kid picking these off the tree and throwing them up in the air so I could watch them 'helicopter' down.

Digital Photography Week 7 Assignment - Cropping, Selecting, Moving #2

I had some more time to play so I did a couple more. One tool I used in some of work is the arbitrary rotation to straighten my photos. With these two projects I also used more of the layer style - blending options.

My Photo of The Day October 23rd, 2010

I belong to the local artist guild and there was a gallery showing for all of the guild. This is a spoon that my friend made and is displaying it on a Jeep hub assembly and piece of glass.

Digital Photography Week 7 Assignment - Cropping, Selecting, Moving

I did lots of things to the layer of my daughter's face in order to get it close to where I wanted it. After unlocking layers and using the lasso selection tool, I 'played' with it in transform and image - adjustments. I also selected and copied some of the inner flower pieces so that I could overlap them on the face to make it more believable.

I used the lasso selection tool again to select the pumpkin vines. I used transform, image - adjustment, and the eraser tool.

The lasso selection tool was once again used to select my daughter's face. And once again it was time to play with the different tools; transform, layer style, image - adjustment.
There were definitely times that I got a little frustrated because a layer that I was working on would all of the sudden disappear or my finger would go too far over on my laptop and the lasso tool would scroll down tot the bottom of the page and I would have to go through and delete all the little markers that I didn't want. However, beyond the frustration is the excitement of finally starting to learn how to use my editing program.

My Photo of The Day October 22nd, 2010

Its a ladybug :) My daughter has no issues with holding and studying bugs. I actually spent most of one summer convincing her that slugs were not good things to hold (I had to do this after I found out that slug slime does not like to wash out of clothes). I did this photo for her.

My Photo of The Day October 21st, 2010

My husband and I lived around this area but this view wasn't available until the people who lived across the road bought and clear cut enough to open this view up.

My Photo of The Day October 20th, 2010

What a strange looking beetle. And I would swear that only a few days before this photo was taken that it was all shade of brown. I saw several a few days before on this same bush. They were nothing but brown. I came out after a couple of frosty mornings to find that the boring brown beetles had turned into these.

My Photo of The Day October 19th, 2010

This shot was taken in the lighthouse at the Shelburne Museum. I loved the steep, spiraling staircase.

My Photo of The Day October 18th, 2010

Another eye picture. I edited it so that it looked like fire for the color of the eye and I put a blue tinge on the skin so that the oranges in the eye would show up even more.

Landscapes for Digital Photography

These are the ones I liked the best from what I took this week. I wasn't particularly pleased with any of them except maybe the ancient cemetery ones. I like landscapes but prefer to have some other subject in the foreground like in the cemetery shots. Without the subject I am slightly bored with it as far as looking at it like a work of art. If I were looking to put together a calender or a photo book about Vermont it would be different. For me to be happy with a landscape I shoot it needs to hold a kind of tension or conflict. It should push or pull at the viewer, but maybe it is me being too picky.

My Photo of The Day October 17th, 2010

I was walking in the woods behind our house and came across this deer skull. The bugs and weather had cleaned it off. I soaked in a bucket of bleach water for 24 hours and then let it dry in the sun. It now resides with my cactus plant in a cobalt blue clay pot.

My Photo of The Day October 16th, 2010

This was an experiment in Pop Art. My youngest daughter was posing for me and it happened to be perfect for turning into this kind of shot.

My Photo of The Day October 15th, 2010

It had been raining for what seemed like forever last summer. The rain had finally taken a break and I went right outside to see what there was to take some shots of. I caught this crab apple shedding the built up water.

My Photo of The Day October 14th, 2010

This was taken on a summer night. It was lightly raining and very buggy. My daughter was very good about not swatting at the mosquitoes all the time and just let the rain fall on her without wiping it away. I edited it to be very high in contrast and darkened it to get this effect.

My Photo of The Day October 13th, 2010

I took this photo for our Digital Photography collage assignment. I really like the textures and the colors. Its great colors for this time of year too :)

My Photo of The Day October 12th, 2010

I got bored one day and started taking pictures of ordinary things and this was one of them. It is an energy saver light bulb. I darkened it so that the space around it was without detail and bumped the contrast a little.

My Photo of The Day October 11th, 2010

This photo was taken at Wells Beach, Maine. It is of some seaweed on one of the many rocks scattered across the beach. When I turned the photo black and white I also turned it upside down. I thought that the 'movement' through the photo worked better this way.

My Photo of The Day October 10th, 2010

I took this yesterday morning for fun. It is an antique chair, and a vintage suitcase and scarf. I liked the light that was being filter through the trees and the colors of the scarf.

Digital Photography Assignment Composition

My daughter has been hauling out her room and made the decision that this doll could go. I wasn’t sure if I would like any of the photos with her, but with a little editing I decided it worked. The photos are a little creepy (great for the upcoming holiday) and a little sad.

The centered one is not as interesting. It takes away from the air of being abandoned or forgotten. To me because it is center, it feels too thought out, too controlled. The off center photo adds to the feeling of being abandoned or forgotten. Because it is slightly off it gives it a feel of carelessness or like it was an afterthought.

I have to say that I had to stop thinking about the rule of thirds in order to get the rule of thirds shot. When I thought it out and planned it for hitting one of those lines, to me it looked too methodical in the shot too. But then again I was probably just over thinking it :)

Digital Photography Assignment Framed Slideshow

My Photo of The Day October 9th, 2010

This is a photo of my husband's eye. I used my old editing program to turn everything, but the colored part of the eye, black and white. I then selected just the colored part and increased the contrast and darkened it.

My Photo of The Day October 8th, 2010

 I used to do a lot on a photography website, http://www.soaphoto.com/, and one of the daily challenges was a photo with lines. I set up the rice paper umbrella that is in the photo with a clamp light behind it. It was then turned black and white and tinted to give it an antique look. It was fun to try and think of different ways to get lines in a photo and make it look interesting.

My Photo of The Day October 7th, 2010

Another macro. This one is of a woodland brush leaf. The texture on this one is great. It makes me want to reach out and see if I can feel it :)

My Photo of The Day October 6th, 2010

This was something I did with my previous editing program, Microsoft Picture It! Premium. This took a lot of layers and lots of patience. I would have absolutely no idea how to do it with Photoshop which is what I have now. The face under the wings is the same daughter in the first Digital Photography assignment. The wings are from a photo I took of a Monarch butterfly.

Composition and the Rule of Thirds

There is a great deal of information out there about both of these subjects. I found some good information and some possible tips to help anyone who is looking for it at http://www.colorpilot.com/comp_rules.html . I have to agree that in most cases using the rule of thirds does help to make a piece of art more interesting. However, there are time when I feel being in the center just 'works'. I have never consciously used the rule of thirds, but for the upcoming assignment I am going to see what happens when I keep forefront in my photography process.
To be honest I almost always take a shot of the subject with it centered and many at other arrangements. Later I generally crop it to look more interesting if that is the shot that had the best clarity to it.

As far as aesthetics goes, well it is hard to fully define. Here is a piece of an article taken from http://paulford.com/what-is-aesthetics/ :

'In a more general sense, aesthetics, as a philosophy refers to the study of sensory values. This means, the judgment or evaluation by the senses and, through time, has come to refer to critical or philosophical thought about art, culture and/or nature. A subfield of axiology, the philosophy of art – aesthetics is interested in ways of seeing, and sensing the world. As a field of study, aesthetics involves ways of seeing and perceiving the world, as well as new and novel interpretations.'

For me balancing out a photo and sometimes naturally using the rule of three, is more something I 'feel'. The photo just feels right when I arrange it that way. I don't think about it as I do it.

My Photo of The Day October 5th, 2010

This was taken last fall. I thought that the weathered bench with the red flaking paint looked really nice against the green grass. I also think it had a slightly surreal quality to it.