Katie's
/ PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO
ASSIGNMENT 5 - SPOOKY STORIES
"The old victorian style building that stood before us was only a section of the campus."
"The old marble floor resonated with our boots to create a not so quiet dull thud."
"The three of us nodded and headed out. Jason walked toward the left wing, Adam took the right, and I inspected the center."
"Jason walked around, pointing his flashlight at whatever he could and called out, "Seth?!" over and over."
"Right as Jason turned around, he saw a shadow move." "He was abruptly cut off by a sharp black spike piercing his calf,"
"Just then, a pair of black hands emerged from the wall and grab Adam's head."
My spooky story was "A Horror Story" by Sandyn, Drew, and Nicholas. For this story, I chose to focus on 6 sentences that would be easy to replicate in picture form. In the first photo, I took a photo of the old highschool and placed it on top of a scary, inverted sky background. I then erased the words "Somerset High School" to add to the idea that this is actually a haunted hospital. In the second photo, which is my favorite of the set, is a photo of a pair of boots on top of a marble floor, which pretty much fit exactly the description in the story. I put on the aperature setting to put more of a focus on the boots then the background. Then, to add more contrast and drama, I changed it to black and white and added multiple contrast filters. In the 3rd photo, I took a photo I had from the old school and inverted it to create the spooky, scary effect of an abandoned building. I didn't like how the school wall's had lockers on them, so I cut out a photo of my garage door and wharped it to fit into the photo like walls. I added more contrast and darkness to make it blend better, and got the cool spooky hallway effect to come out pretty good. In the fourth photo, I just took a photo of a flashlight lying on a cement floor in my dark basement. Not much was done to this picture other than the switch to black and white and an increase in contrast. In the fifth photo, I had actually gotten completely by accident. I was standing taking other photos in the basement when I noticed my shadow reflected really nicely off of the concrete wall. I grabbed a knife, to help tie it in to the story, and snapped a photo. In photoshop, I added a lot of wharp effects to give the shadow more fuzziness and less contrast. I then added an effect that changed the wall into a brick-like texture, which I thought made the photo a lot more interesting. The final photo began with a picture of my basement and my hands. I took the basement floor shot and changed it to black and white. I then cut out my hands from other photos, and changed them to black and white. To make it more ghostly, I added a really intense shaky filter. To top it off, I erased at a half opacity to make them see through. Overall, I think my photos really do go along with the story, and with the consistent black and white, contrast effect, they all look pretty spooky and unified!
ASSIGNMENT 6 - STILL LIFES
ASSIGNMENT 7 - PAINTING WITH LIGHT
ASSIGNMENT 8 - SHADOWS/REFLECTIONS
I tried to get the background as close to white as I possibly could without too severely altering the colors of the apples. Once I was satisfied with my color balancing, I added contrast, saturation, and played with the levels on each until I was happy with the final result! Overall, I think each one of these images, although similar, each have their own interesting qualities, creating a set of very dynamic still-life photographs.
For the final 4 found photos in my still life set, I decided to take some images of my dad's AnnaLee doll display and some leftover ornaments from our Christmas tree. The lighting in my dining room (where the dolls were) was already very well lit, so I didn't have to alter the exposure or color balance much at all. I set my camera to its aperature function, and I believe it was set to an F-Stop of around 3 (my camera doesn't offer a wide range of F-Stop's, so even though it gave me some slight blur in the backdrop, the image is still pretty clear as are the objects in the background.) I tried to angle the shots so that the backgrounds were full, instead of just having my dining room wall/windows being shown (I felt that it made it look less like a proper still life). After taking the images, I brought all of them into photoshop and just adjusted some of the basics, like contrast, saturation, and shadows/highlights. Overall, I like my apples a lot better, but I think these are really great found still lives, too, considering that I did nothing whatsoever to set them up for the pictures. I photographed simply what was already there.
These photographs are all shutter-speed images of captured light! All of these were taken during school inside of the distance learning center. The lights were shut off, and our group chose a few select strings of light to play with in our images. To take these photos, we started by setting the camera's on tripods to make sure that the photos would come out clear during the long shutter speeds. Throughout the picture taking process, the amount of time the shutter speed was set to continued to change, based on what effect we wanted to achieve! In the first photo, we swung around random string lights in different orders and it ended up turning out into this really cool scattered color image. The third photo closely replicates it, except we purposely zig-zagged the stirng lights back and fourth to create the wavy, lined design. The second photo if my favorite out of all of them. It's the most unique and dynamic, even though the amount of color is pretty minimal compared to the others. In this photo, we wrapped the string lights around me and spun in tight circles while the picture was being taken on a slow shutter. I kept spinning the entire time, and the end result was this awesome photo! Each one of the photos has movement, light, action, and color, which make them all really great pictures. Although the original photos looked very colorful and great on there own, I did alter all 3 in photoshop to make the colors stand out that much more. I cranked up the saturation and the vibrance, while also added contrast and darkening the shadows. I wanted the lights to really be the stand outs, and I think my edits achieved that.
For this assignment, we had to capture images that included shadows and/or reflections! I tried to capture a wide range of subject material for this assignment, from natural shots, to manmade shadows, to self reflections, and even to images of my own hand! I actually had taken so many more photos that would've fit perfectly for this assignment, but I wanted to stick to photos that looked better in black and white in order to keep a unified set. I think black and white effects really work for this type of assignment because the shadows are able to be emphasized without anything to distract from them. They become the focal point.
In the first photo I took, I put my hand down on my desk in front of my lamp and angled it to create a shadow underneath. I tried many posistionings, with this one ultimately winning as my favorite. I captured the photo with the camera in my other hand. In photoshop, I added an extreme amount of contrast to this shot to make the shadow and the hand really stick out. I also wanted to make my hand appear almost like a full silhouette, to add to a mysterious and dark feeling the picture has. I almost wanted the shadow to blend right in, and I think I achieved exactly the look I was going for. In the second photo, I was outside in a parking lot when I noticed the tree's shadow reflecting down onto the ground. I angled my camera in such a way that I was able to capture the tree stalks and their shadow, along with some sunlight to help reflect and emphasize the darkness. In photoshop, I changed this photo to black and white and added a lot of contrast to make the real trees seem like a silhouette. Once again, I wanted the trees to almost blend in with the shadow, almost so that the shadow is just an extension of them! I think this photo is very dynamic and has a lot of great negative space due to the gaps in the trees that are filled with the bright white reflections. In the third photo, I took a photo of the bottom of my curtains, which had some very cool angled shadows. I changed this to black and white and then cropped it to a size that I thought emphasized the shadows and not the curtain. In the fourth image, I took a picture of myself taking a picture in the reflection of my IPad. I wanted to get a cool, cloudy effect that reveals to people that this camera isn't actually there in the photo, but yet it's only a reflection. I think it also has some really cool dullness and highlights that the black and white effect really brought out.
In the fifth photo, I took a photo of the lamp that was sitting on a desk in my living room. The sun was going down, leaving a really cool shadow against the wall. I chose to angle the camera from a bit of a side view so that it was a bit more interesting, and then I changed it to black and white in photoshop to emphasize the positive and negative colors. In the sixth photo, I took an up close shot of the reflection the blinds were making on their curtain. I changed it to black and white and attempted to contrast as much as I could. I think this photo really stands out from the rest of my sense in the sense that it really doesn't have any dark, sharp black colors. It's a majority whitish grey image, with the shadow only being a dark grey color. Even with this lack of color contrast, I still feel like it's a very cool reflection piece. The blinds almost seem to continue on to the curtain, creating a triangular motion in the image that leads the eye to the center. In the seventh photo, I stood up my tv remote in front of my desk lamp and took a picture of its length shadow. This photo is very minimilistic and simple, which is why I like it so much. Theres white, theres dark, and thats it. The photo is cut up and divided very evenly between the dark areas and the light- it's sharp and clean cut. I think the black and white effect and the contrast I added really helped to emphasize the shadow that was being created! In the final photo, I took a shot of the reflection on my pool. The tree's were just behind, and because of where the sun was, they were being pefectly reflected onto the shallow surface. When in photoshop, I upped the contrast a LOT in order to really make those tree branch reflections look like they were actually in that water. At first glance it almost doesn't even seem like a reflection, which adds a lot of interest, mystery, and dynamics to the photo. Overall, I'm extremely happy with this set of photographs. The contrasts are so strong in this set, with the blacks and whites really standing out amongst each other. Every photo here is dynamic and had a lot of thought put into it in order to perfectly emphasize shadow and reflection.
ASSIGNMENT 9 - MULTIPLE EXPOSURES
For this assigment we had to create multiple exposure images by combining multiple images in photoshop! This process is done by first setting up a tripod in order to ensure the background stays consistent. Then, multiple photos with that same background can be taken and overlayed to create an effect that makes 1 person or object seem like multiples! In the first image, I decided to do a multiple exposure of me jumping on a mini trampoline. I started by setting the camera/tripod on the ground so that only my legs and feet would be visible. Then I set the timer to 10 seconds so that I could go posistion myself before the photo was taken. I started by crouching in front of the trampoline, then progressed to be on it. I finished with my feet up in the air to add some movement. I tried to get a shot of myself mid air jumping but the timing was too dificult to get. Every photo was either blurry or incorrectly spaced. I took all these photos into photoshop, overlayed them over each other, did some erasings to reveal all the legs, merged some layers, and then added some contrast and saturation to make the photo a bit more vibrant. In the second image, I played around with the idea of my legs and feet again, but this time I made the shot very straightforward. I put my camera/tripod down on my kitchen floor and set it to the timer again. I posistioned myself, using the tiles as a reference guide, as if I was jumping across my kitchen floor. I succesfully managed to get a mid air jump shot of myself! I posed myself in different crouches to try and make it realistically look like the shape of landing, and I think it looks pretty acurate. The only negative about this photo is the fact that the far right leg is so much darker than the others. My kitchen had a shadow coming down that happened to interfere with my final shot. However, I still think this photo shows a lot of great motion and it's really interesting. Finally, I changed it to black and white in order to emphasize the positive and negative differences between the bright white flooring and my dark black leggings and boots. It adds really nice contrast and made the photo brighter than it had been in regular color. Overall, I think that, although these photos are visually nothing too amazing, they have a lot of interesting technical aspects that make them great images!
For this assignment, we were asked to take still life photography! We had the choice of either working on it in class or working on it at home. I chose to do it at home because I had an idea I really wanted to work with - apples! I honestly have no idea where this idea came from, but I guess it stemmed from picturing all the different photographs and art pieces that focused on fruit. I also always have lots of fruit in my house, so bonus- it wasn't hard to execute!
I started by picking out my apples. I wanted a variety of color shades to add interest to the pictures, so I chose red, orangey-yellow, and green! I laid the apples out on my table in my room and angled my desk lamp to create shadows off of the apple. Based on the shadows, you can see that the light source was coming from the upper right hand side. I thought the angle of the shadows going to the left was interesting looking, and it created the most elongated shadow possible, so that's why I went with that angle. Once all my shadows and placements were set, I photographed on normal settings from straight above. I wanted a solid background and for the shadows to be visible, so shooting from above made the most sense. I tried arranging the apples in all different formations, even photographing one solely by itself, to add some differences between the images. I was also curious how dynamic each placement could make the photos! In the first of the 3 photos, I got a little more playful and creative and threw my IPhone into the mix, because technically, it too is an apple. It's kind of a funny balance between natural, colorful objects and then this silver, mechanical, man-made thing. It makes the photo a lot more complex than just some apples on a table. After taking all of the photos, I brought them into photoshop. Because of my desk lamp having an orange tint, I had to color balance each of the images.