Katie's
/ PHOTOGRAPHY PORTFOLIO
ASSIGNMENT 13 - PORTRAIT NARRATIVE
For my portrait narrative, I decided to take photos of my brother during his futsal tournament in Wildwood, New Jersey over February break. I took shots of him throughout the day in many different areas and poses. I thought this would be a really great subject to capture considering that this is basically my brothers entire life, and it's even starting to really become part of mine too. We spend every weekend doing this, and it's all my brother ever does.
I started out by taking shots of him getting ready for the day. I took a picture of him putting his cleats on (photo 2) to show a unique perspective on the sport. It was a small yet important detail of the day. I also decided to take an upclose shot of him before we left the hotel. I positioned him in front of a window to add some dramatic lighting, and then zoomed in to put the focus on just his face. This photo I took with every intention of making it black and white- I thought it would look really cool and contrasting with the way I set up the photo. After taking this photo, my brother went across the street to the convention center to start the tournament. The rest of my photoset was taken there. Lucky for me, the center had one wall that was entirely glass, so the lighting worked out really well for me. I took one photo of the court, to show where he was playing. I took another photo of him sitting on the bench with his team, choosing a picture where his facial expression seemed really set on the game so that the photo was natural and unposed. I took an action shot of him playing as he ran across the court. For this photo, it was really hard to avoid getting the blur because futsal is such a fast moving sport. Unlike soccer where I can usually get a clear shot of him moving, futsal just always comes out blurry. But, I played around with different blurs and effects in photoshop to try and make it more subtle, and I think I did a pretty okay job. The final photo I took was of his team huddled around the coach before one of their games. This showed the aspect of who he was playing with. Due to how much I had to zoom in to capture this photo, it is slightly blurry, but I played with different contrasts to once again try and make the blur more subtle.
All the photos were changed to black and white because I think it unified the set and made it more dynamic. The in-color photos just weren't as strong. The players blended in with their surroundings too much to stand out, and the colors weren't unified over the set due to the bright orange, green, and reds that were present in the convention center. Also, I wanted the photoset to match the final up close photo I took of my brother, and I was unwilling to make that anything but black and white. Ultimately I think it's a pretty accurate portrait narrative of a day in the soccer life of my younger brother.
ASSIGNMENT 14 - PORTRAITS
ASSIGNMENT 15 - PORTRAIT EXPOSURES IN SCHOOL
For this assignment, I took multiple portrait shots of other students in our class. All the photos were taken in the art gallery in front of various backdrops: white, black, and grey. It was midday so the lighting coming in was natural, but to emphasize the people in the images we used lights. The lights were pointed at various angles to create different effects on each picture.
In the first photo, I took a shot of Hannah against the black backdrop. She was looking down to the bottom right, which is where the light source had been placed. This lit up and emphasized her face, helping it to really stand out. When I edited this photo, I upped the contrast a LOT in order to get the black backdrop to be 100% black (there had been some slight discolorments beforehand). I then went in using the spot healing brush and the eyedropper tool to perfect Hannah's skin coloring. I got rid of any spots that were overexposed. I think that this photo is great because theres a lot of contrast and there aren't any spots that are too overexposed or unnaturally colored. In the 2nd photo, I took a photo of Cassie sitting on a stool against a grey backdrop. This was the most difficult photo to edit out of the set because the lighting was slightly off and didn't compliment the color of the backdrop. I had to mess with the levels, brightness, and contrast until I got the colors to sort of balance out. I also changed it to black and white because I thought that helped to fix the problems with the lighting and color. I also personally prefer portraits in black and white - it makes them a lot more dramatic and interesting. In the final photo, I took a photo of Corrine against the blak backdrop. This photo is the most serious and composistionally interesting, in my opinion. The lighting is the most dynamic in this shot, as it's really highlighting her face in a very unique way. You can only see a small part of her face and the rest is in shadows, which I thought looked really cool. When I went to edit this photo I did all the usual- contrast, levels, spot healing brush, adjust the black background, etc. Although this isn't my favorite photo in the set, I do think that it's the most interesting and has the most emotion in it. Her facial expression matches up really well with what the lighting is doing, creating a mysterous, somber feeling. Overall, I like how these portraits came out. I see a huge difference between my portraits this year and the ones that I took last year. These have been edited much better, and composed in ways that are just overall much more interesting and professional.
For this assignment we had to create portrait exposures by layering multiple images together and playing with the opacities and layers! I chose 3 random portraits that I took in the last assignment and started to overlay them with various other photos that I thought would mesh well. In the first image, I merged together two pictures of Corrine. I chose the photos based on the similarity in expressions and the strong contrasts in the lighting. I thought it would be interesting if I made one copy of her faded in the background, kind of looking over her shoulder. I erased the parts of the right hand image of her that overlapped with the left hand image of her, and then dropped the layer opacity down so that it faded into the blackness. In the second photo, I merged a textural image over Cassie. I took a black and white photo that I had of a piece of wood and overlayed it into the background, erasing the parts that were covering her. Then, I went into her face and added another black and white image of decaying concrete, fading it into her face so that her features were still visible but the texture was noticeable. I think this one is my favorite out of the 3 because the textures make the photo so interesting. In the final photo, I took a smiling picture of Corrine and overlayed a picture of the high school track onto it. I arranged the stripes so that all the different colors and textures fell over her. I erased the surrounding image so that it was only overlaying her, but one thing that I didn't erase was the grassy texture on the left side. I wanted to add texture and some 3d-ism to the photo, so I kept pieces of grass sticking up to look like it's coming off of her rather than just overlaying her. Overall, I think all the exposures came out really cool and took a lot of effort with the erasing and choosing the right opacities.
ASSIGNMENT 16 - CONTORTED REACTIONS
For this photoset, we had to take photos of people doing quick actions mid air in order to get contorted body shapes and faces. These photos were taken to aid Ms.Borge's drawing class! For my pictures, I ended up choosing 3 photos of Corrine as she was jumping around. I set the camera on different shutter speeds to figure out what would capture her movements best. The hard part wasn't taking these photos- the hard part was editing them. Once in photoshop, I had to completely cut Corrine out of the picture so that I could place her on an all white background. To do this, I couldn't just use the magic wand tool, as she was wearing a white shirt against a whitish-greyish background. So, I had to zoom in extremely close and erase the background around her. I used different sized brushes for different sized crevises as I erased, and had to go back and undo erases many times because I had cut into her too much or not made my erasing even. This was a very tedious, long process but in the end it worked out really well and the cut-outs look very clean. After cutting out the background, I changed the pictures to black and white, as that was part of the project and I thought it looked better and blended her in with the all white background. Ultimately I think that these contorted reaction shots came out really well, and the one that was printed out (the 1st in the set) ended up coming out great!