Photo Midterm- Self evaluation

       I am extremely proud of my work and application of new techniques. I think my biggest challenge was trying not to go over board with color saturation, because I have been trained to always use high saturation so images can be seen on stage and with lights. Considering I do not own a fancy camera and most of my pictures were actually taken years ago, I think I came up with some good pieces. I am particularly proud of my work with the gradient mask and meticulous selections. These were two techniques that I had no exposure to until this class and I found them to be a bit more challenging.

      If I had more time, I may have tried to improve the continuity of lighting in documentation 6 with they guy's arms and hands, perhaps ever scrapping it and starting over. But at least now I have a conscious eye for details such as this which will only help me in the future.

Photo Midterm- Documentation 6

So definitely a neat place, but the lighting is inconsistent as the sky and building were very naturally saturated, and there was minimal exposure on the person's face.

This is just the selection of the area I needed to brighten. The trouble was, his face was really burnt and the increase of saturation only enhanced this

As you can see, this does put light on the face, but it is almost entirely desaturated.

Here I offset the color balance on just the selected areas, getting rid of all red hues and taking it closer to yellows. The result was good although I'm not thrilled with the difference between his upper arm and hand.

Photo midterm- Documentation 1

This honestly was a neat shot to begin with, but it was a pretty rough and pixelated  image. Here we see the use of a noise filter and reducing JPEG artifacts:

Original

Reduced Noise- increased Saturation

I then decided to try out gradients on this picture, maybe to emphasize the red flower. So I first put a transparent layer mask on the background. I did not use black and white but rather played around with a very light beige and a darker tan, to mimic how light might actually hit the ruins.

With a transparent gradient mask

Photo Midterm- proposal

         Five of the six photos for this midterm portfolio were taken on my spring break these past few years.  This was a particular challenge because these photos were not initially intended to be higher quality or corrected later on, and it's not like I can go back to Greece or Paris to capture more. In addition, it was a nice treat to use these images because at the time a had little control over the weather or lighting and this offers a chance for me to add a sense of perfection to the shot which may have been dim and off center previously. Perhaps my biggest challenge, especially with my background as a set designer, with correcting then became not to take it too far and make it seem unrealistic.
        My goal is to focus on a particular technique which I have learned to apply during the course for each picture. Obviously there is overlap, but as a general overview, I applied color correction using the curves to an extremely dim church in Cordoba, I cropped a plaza in Paris to adhere to The Rule of Thirds, I corrected a shadow cast of my friend's face in the Bahamas, looked to erase signs of JPEG pixels and add a gradient from Delphi, and apply a composite of many structures and scenery from Greece. The reason I would not categorize this as a project with a common underlying theme is that my sixth was a complex composite of many images to create a scene from the Hunger Games books. However, I am very proud with its result and therefore it is part of the portfolio.

Photo Midterm-Documentation 4

This was a picture in Cordoba Spain, in a church with considerably poor lighting (plus my crap camera). I'll take you through my layers of adjustments.

Original

Increasing the level of brightness and color saturation

Balancing the reds with increased blues and greens/ using sharpen tool and reducing noise

Photo Midterm- Documentation 2 and 3

This week I applied the Rule of Thirds to two different compositions, the first was a street in Paris in which the grid line mainly helped me crop the photo so the thing that looks like the Washington Monument and the sidewalk edge fell just right.

The next was a scene from one of the Hunger Games books haha. If you've read them you'll appreciate it. If not, it probably looks really strange. But every component came from a different picture of mine, its not supposed to look realistic, but a testament about how the proper selections and adjustments can create the fantastical scene that could never exist naturally.

recognize it?

ocean water that has been saturated

I also put a glass filter on the clock after selecting it

Photo Midterm-Documentation 5

So for my second try, I used pictures that I took in Greece three years ago. You may notice that these layer come from all over the country;  the edifices are from two different angles of the Erectheum in Athens. The hill top is from Delphi, and the background mountains and sky were taken while on a bus passing through Corinth.