Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Moi

I wish I had some photos of people to post but I just haven't had any shoots. I do have a lot of ideas in mind that I'm super excited about and I'm hoping they get planned out, though. I'll keep them a secret for now but once this weather turns nice, get pumped. :) 

For now, you'll have to deal with pictures of me. Randomly, I'll be sitting on my bed doing nothing on Facebook or Twitter and I just have this longing to take pictures. Lately, it's been too cold to set my tripod up outside and take pictures of myself, so the other day I settled with my room. Haha. I set up my tripod, got my remote out, and just took a few pictures of myself. I did actually use flash in the photo I'm about to share but for some reason I liked it a lot. I usually HATE flash. But yesterday after I uploaded those photos, I imported my favorite one to Photoshop and played around. I LOVE teaching myself about Photoshop. It gets complicated at times but when I do something with a picture that I've never seen done before on any other picture, I get excited. This took me about three hours. Haha. It wasn't that hard at all but I had to keep restarting. So I'm proud to share this creation of mine. As usual, the original is the first photo and the Photoshopped one is the second.


Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Preferences

I have my preferences. I personally prefer shooting digitally over film. Film is absolutely gorgeous, don't get me wrong. Film photography has a special look to it that digital cameras don't exactly capture, but as I figured out today, it's VERY hard to engage in a conversation with your model when you're shooting film. Or maybe it's just hard for me. Haha.

Today in my Photo class, I had to photograph my friend Danielle in the classroom. We had a backdrop, lights, and a few props. Using different lighting situations and poses, I took 24 pictures of Danielle with my incredibly old film camera, with the whole entire class watching. It was quite the experience. If you're shooting with film, don't get in a hurry. Hahaha. I didn't have a huge amount of time to shoot and the space was very limited. AND it's really hard to tell when my camera is focused. Danielle did a perfect job, but it was hard for me. There are so many things that you have to do when shooting film. The most inconvenient one probably being focusing. I do not like focusing. I think it's because I have OCD and my pictures have to be really sharp for me to be pleased. Hehe. I loooove shooting digitally because I get the chance to shoot manually, but I focus with a click of a button. I would MUCH rather be talking to the person I'm photographing and making them feel comfortable rather than spending a minute per photo focusing. Hahaha. I'm sure it takes practice, like anything else, but as I've learned from taking pictures of my friends, people want to be told they're gorgeous and that they're doing a good job. Sooo, what has today's awkward experience with film photography taught me? Well, it's taught me that I shouldn't shoot people with film. Haha. That's not for me. I'll stick to digital for portraits and spend my hours upon hours of free time shooting film outside in my yard. =D 

And all this leads us to some of the film photographs I took this past weekend and yesterday. I had to finish out the roll of film in my camera before I shot today in class so I went out in my yard throughout the weekend, shooting random shenanigans. I was very excited about these after they were developed because I noticed I'm slowly getting better. Every time I shoot film, more pictures come out the way I had planned. Points for me. :)


Saturday, March 26, 2011

Photoshop: Clone Stamp Tool

I was driving with my friend Kylie yesterday on the way to a Young Life banquet and we just kept admiring how gorgeous the sky was. Light was peeking through the clouds all the way across the sky. I took out my camera to take a quick picture through the windshield and obviously, it wasn't a great picture, but I wanted to capture the beauty of the sky. My photo does it NO justice. You just had to see it yourself to understand. Buuuuut, I tried and I wanted to share it. Since I was unhappy with all the distractions in the picture taking away from the sky, I decided I'd use the clone stamp tool to take it out. Hahaha. That's kind of cheating, but I do what I want. :) Photoshop is fun.

My discovery of the clone stamp tool has made my life better. Forreal. It can work magic. If you don't know what the clone stamp tool is, it's a tool in Phototshop where you can duplicate colors and the texture of a part of your picture on a little brush and make things disappear and whatnot. It's COOL, yo. I don't know if that was the best explanation but you'll see when I show you my pictures. Basically, on a Mac, you choose the clone stamp tool on the left side and then you hold down Option and click what color/texture you want to duplicate. It will select that and you can color over something you want to rid of. It takes a lot of getting used to because you have to change the opacity and size of brush a lot, but if you play around with it, you'll get used to it. And since I fail at explaining things, I just want to share my masterpiece that took me about three hours. I'm realllllllly excited. =D This was all done in Photoshop with the clone stamp tool. The top photo is the before and the bottom is the after. 




Friday, March 25, 2011

Strolls In the Park

This school year has been fantastic, but one thing that's not so fantastic is the fact that I don't have close friends in most of my classes. Especially this semester. I have a couple classes with people I know, but it's nothing like it was in middle school when I had every class with people I knew. I miss that. And I miss the fact that this year I NEVER see my friends that go to Governor's School. :( Before this get together, I hadn't seen my friend Sarah in about two months. I seriously hadn't even seen her in the halls at school. Haha. TERRIBLE. Soooo, Scout's family cooked dinner and we went over to spend some time together. =D We went outside in the beautiful warm weather, and took a walk on a gorgeous path near the park. Thankfully, I had my camera and snapped a few pictures. Some smiley ones and some crazy ones. Hehe. I love both of you and I'm so glad we finally got to see each other!


Monday, March 21, 2011

Beauty

As I sit here and type in between obnoxious sneezes from spring allergies, I thank the Lord for this beautiful day. I thank him for giving me legs to run, giving me a love for music, blessing me with amazing friends, and filling me with joy when I take pictures and capture different things he designed and created. In Campaigners last night, we talked about everyone having different gifts that they praise the Lord through. Some people praise God on the soccer field, some people praise him through music, some praise him through photography. I fall into the latter. 

Today is heavenly. I got out early from school today and almost started crying when I walked outside. HAHA. Our school is about 65 degrees and I shiver in class ALL day long. Walking outside was pure happiness. I came home and sat on the sidewalk while I helped mom figure out where to put some bushes. I admired the incredibly gorgeous cherry tree that never fails to make me smile. It blooms around this time every year and draws the attention of all our neighbors. People walk by and tell my mom how awesome it is. Every year for the past four years, I've taken a picture of the whole tree in bloom. Since last spring when I really got into photography, I have worked on my creativity and seeing things differently. This year, instead of taking a picture of the whole tree, I immediately wanted to get out my macro lens and capture the individual blooms. So that's what I did. Not that that's too creative, but it's something other than just a picture of a tree. 

I took pictures of the blooms and various other things around the yard. It was just what I needed. Laying on the cold grass, staining my white sweater, confusing the neighbors, and getting sweet pictures.