My Photostory

I decided to change my pictures and hope you enjoy the story it portrays!!!

http://smilebox.com/playBlog/4d7a59304d4449334d6a673d0d0a&blogview=true

 Sorry these are so late!!! My family and I were traveling home to Maryland and when we arrived I found that my in-laws do not have internet. L Anyways here are the pictures I have so far and plan to add a few more this week taken I can capture some on a sunny day.

These pictures are of a special place that my family has visited for years. Before moving to the North Country we would vacation and always visit Beaver Brook Falls in Colebrook, New Hampshire. Below are some pictures I have taken over the years and also pictures I have taken over this winter. 

Portraits

This first picture is of my daughter posing in a as she calls it "Cinderella dress" I love the the expression this photo captures. It was originally taken in color but I changed it to black and white because I felt it gave the photo a simple feeling. 

This photo is of my nephew and was taken on Easter. I absolutely love his expression and feel it is a very natural photo.                                          

These bottom two pictures were taken last summer but I felt they were also good examples of portraits so I thought I would share them. I really like the angle of the first picture. The bottom picture is really neat because of the different directions the girls are looking in. 

Clone Stamp and Adding Text

During our annual Easter egg hunt (my first in the snow) captured these pictures. When editing these pictures I used the clone stamp tool and added text. It was fun to add the second set of kids.When adding the font I changed the color and applied an outer glow in from the layer styles menu.

 I had my first experience at a sugar house this weekend and had so much fun. In this picture I added vertical text and changed the color to red.

 This is one of my family's favorite place to go in the summer and relax. In fact before we moved here we would vacation here and always visit this spot. This weekend we noticed the ice had melted so I stopped to snapped some pictures. I decided to use the clone stamp to remove the bigger rocks in the middle of the brook. This was a really neat tool to play around with.

Dodge and Burn

So this is my attempt at the dodge and burn feature. I think its a pretty nifty way to make your photos look more vibrant. I enjoyed this!

Filters

 I had fun with this picture. I used the one of the blur filters. I really like how this filter blocks out the background.

 This too was a fun picture to play around with. I really like the colors that the photo below is now. I used two different filters on this one.

 For this image I simply applied the solarize filter. I think it looks kinda neat.

Colors and Lighting

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 Above is the original of a sunset on the lake. Below is the photo I adjusted. First I changed the levels. I then played a little with the hue/saturation. I really liked the way the photo looked when I adjusted the red hues.

 When working with this photo I forgot to make a copy. :(  So you can't see the original image. In the original there was no color other that white and brown. While playing with the hues adjustment I was able to make the green in the trees show up. I really like there color against the bland colors of the rest of the trees.

 So, my daughter thinks out cat is one of her baby dolls. I captured this picture when she was pushing her around in her doll stroller. Amazing enough I think the cat enjoys it. This top picture is the original.

 In this lower picture I first darken the background using the levels option in Photoshop. I then cropped the photo. I wanted to make the colors more vibrant so I adjusted them in the hue/saturation option. I lessen the red hue, increased the saturation and darken it a bit. I like how the colors really pop in this picture now.

 

Photoshop

This weeks assignment was difficult yet fun and very informing. I had never used Photoshop and was very overwhelmed at first. Once I watched the videos provided and searched for more videos I really started to understand the program a bit more. These pictures I've posted are very amateur but I had a lot of fun working on them.

In this picture I used the selection tools to out line the tree and inverted the color. I then used the tie-dyed impression stamp to make the strings of color on the tree. After that I used the shape stamp to apply the star. 

This picture was so much fun to work with. I went out on the frozen lake in front of my house and took a picture of the sun setting. Once I began learning more about Photoshop I thought it would be fun to add a picture of a polar bear to this photo. I found the polar bear picture on Google images. Once I opened it up in Photoshop I used changed the image size. I then used the selection tool to outline the polar bear figure in the photo. I adjusted the color and brightness of the picture. After that I used the clone stamp to move the polar bear into the image of the lake. I enjoyed putting this picture together.

Landscapes

I had a lot of fun this week deciding what I wanted to photograph. While I love the snow I wish I could use some pictures of the lake from this past summer. Anyways here were my favorites from this week.

 This is one of my favorites. I have been watching this formation all winter and I have loved to watch the different shades of blue it has become. I felt that this was a good example of landscape because it shows how nature is always changing.

 I really like this photo and how the fell on the tree. I was excited to capture this one!

 I saw this driving down the road the other day. I really love way the melting snow looks on the ground. My favorite part is the flag in the middle.

This picture looks very mysterious to me and I really like it. Looking down the river and the different formations the ice and snow have created makes this very intriguing to me. I think this is a great example of landscape photography.

Slideshow

So I had trouble with creating this slideshow so please click the link below to view my slideshow. 

https://plus.google.com/photos/114816138298385215081/albums/5847975632350017345

Assignment #2

So these are the two photos I chose to compare. I really like the look of this old barn. I also like how different the barn can be perceived when it is not centered in the picture. Each picture gives a nice look of the barn, however I really like the the picture with the barn to the left. With the picture to the side you are able to see more of the landscape that surrounds the barn and I feel it gives the picture a little more character.

What is Aesthetics?

After doing some research I found some information on what aesthetics means. What I perceived from the various articles is that aesthetics is how people usually characterize beauty in a photo. I also discovered that there are various definitions and that they vary based on the person and how they perceive a photo. The viewpoint of the audience is what determines what effect the photo will have on them. The following link gives some insight to this topic.

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~wangz/project/imsearch/Aesthetics/ECCV06/datta.pdf

I took these pictures at different times of the day. It was hard to get the exact shot each time. However, the lighting change is very noticeable. In the top picture compared to the bottom two the color of little sapling changes a lot due to the changes of natural lighting.

Color

I think this photo displays the monochrome color scheme. The different shades of brown are a good example  of the one hue required for this color scheme.

I really like this picture. I think it portrays an example of a complementary color scheme. Since blue and the pinkish/orange are opposite on the color wheel I think the colors complement each other.

This assignment was fun. I found myself everywhere I went this week looking for examples of the different color schemes.