Weekly Post | Portraits

Once again, a project that was incredibly challenging and endlessly rewarding.  All of my pictures were taken hand-held and with only available and natural light.  I found that some of my pictures that were taken on a whim in a shutter-clicking frenzy turned out to be my favorites.  I took each of the photos into camera raw for some basic editing, and then moved the ones that required a little extra help into photoshop.  I found that by processing ALL of the photos in raw before taking them into photoshop gave my eyes a break and I decided on several that they didn't need more help.

Please click each photo and view it larger.  The optimizing that my blog seems to do to each one of my photos makes them all look pretty terrible in this view.

Jenn | 5.20.2011 | 6:30 pm | Idaho Falls ID | f/4.5 1/50 | Pentax K-x
Vignette added, sats on eyes, subtle airbrushing.

Keauna | 5.17.2011 2:00 pm | Rexburg ID | f/4.5 1/50 | Pentax K-x
Vignette added.

Sam | 5.23.11 7:00 pm | Rigby ID | f/4 1/3200 | Pentax K-x
Vignette Added. Sats on eyes, subtle airbrushing.

Sammus | 5.23.2011 6:00 pm | Rigby ID | f/4 1/1250 | Pentax K-x
Vignette added, blur enhanced, sats on eyes.

Sisters | 5.23.2011 6:30 pm | Rigby ID | f/4 1/6000 | Pentax K-x
Color removed except cyans, magentas, vignette added.

The Crazies | 5.23.2011 7:00 pm | Rigby, ID | f/9 1/500 | Pentax - K-x
Vignette added, sats on setting.

The Director | 5.17.2011 8:20 pm | Rexburg ID | f/4.5 1/100 | Pentax K-x
Exposed, vignette added.

Weekly Edit | Camera Raw

Come and Get It | 5.14.2011 10:00 am | f/10 1/800 | Pentax K-x



The Mann | 5.13.2011 9:00 pm | f/5.6 1/200 | Pentax K-x



This project was a lot of fun!  I really enjoyed bringing these photos to life.  I am learning a lot about using raw.  The top photo had some issues with out of balance exposure, so I corrected that and did some fun things with saturation.  The second set was trickier, because as I exposed and saturated it, the colors went all wrong.  I did some adjusting with the temperature and the hue to make it look right.

Weekly Post | Panorama

Sky Mountain | 5.14.2011 7:30 am | f/29 1/40 | Pentax K-x
Tripod used. Saturation +, Exposure +/-, Hue +

 

This caused a lot of stress for me.  If I had to do it again, I would reduce the file size significantly on the images when shooting for a pano.  I had trouple making the computer merge the photos, and then there was a lot of stair-stepping, and the computer didn't seem to have enough ram to process the CA for that many pixels all at once.  In the end, I broke the CA fill selections into about five smaller chunks.  Overall, I am very happy with the end product.  I did very little cropping to the end panorama.

Weekly Edit | Adjustment Layers

I used three adjustment layers for this editing process.  First, I exposed everything but the snow and the sky.  I then bumped up the brightness and contrast on the snow.  I then saturated the sky, the buffalo, and the water.  I really like how this turned out.  I have been familiar with using adjustment layers for a while now, but watching the demo in class gave me some good ideas for how to deal with snow.

Grazing Buffalo | 4.22.2011 4:00 pm | f/11 1/800 | Pentax K-x

Weekly Post | Flora and Fauna

I really got lucky on this assignment.  I already had the buffalo picture from a previous week.  It was literally snapped in program mode as we drove by.  The flower picture was acquired by laying on my stomach in the dirt.  I am finding that I spend a lot of extra time in the dirt since I started taking this class.  The duck was just a lucky spot in the gardens.  He seemed a little offended that people were taking pictures, but I managed to get a few good shots.

Westward Ho | 4.22.2011 8:00 pm | f/4 1/100 | Pentax K-x
Saturation +, Exposure +, Curves -, Brightness/contrast +

Early Bloomer | 5.4.2011 6:00 pm | f/5.6 1/1000 | Pentax K-x
Clarity +, Saturation +, Vignette added.

Garden Duck | 5.4.2011 6:30 pm | f/5.6 1/320 | Pentax K-x
Saturation +, Vignette Added.

Weekly Edit | Blends and Type

This temple picture was an absolute miracle.  I happened to finally figure out how to set my camera at the perfect moment when the light peeked through the clouds and I caught a nice HDR.  I then moved my pictures into photoshop and used the overlay blending mode to blend in a picture of river water that I had taken last week.  I masked around the temple to make it more visible.  At first, I had the mask clipped right around the temple, but opted to fade it into the edges, which gave it a crystalized look.  The text was created using a text mask with outer glow and a linear burn blending mode.

Rexburg Temple | 5.1.2011 6:35 pm | f/32 1/15 | Pentax K-x
Tripod. Automatic In-Camera HDR Programming.



River Water | 4.24.2011 6:00 pm | f/5.8 1/6000 | Pentax K-x
No Edits.  



Weekly Post | Color Study

For my color study this week, I was thinking about how much I love the color gray.  As an automotive junky, I love things that are all chromed out.  I decided to take my color study one step further and focus on things that are chrome.  It turned out to be a challenge, because I wanted to make sure I was photographing true chrome and not silver or stainless steel.  I wanted my pictures to have lots of light, so I utilized the automotive labs for some of the pictures, because I liked the look of the garage door in the background.

Line Wrenches | 5.1.2011 6:12 pm | f/5.6 1/640 | Pentax K-x
Cropped

Handles | 5.1.2011 6:16 pm | f/5.6 1/400 | Pentax K-x
No edits

Alternative Lighting | 5.1.2011 7:08 pm | f/5.6 1/15 | Pentax K-x
Cropped

Let The Good Times Roll | 5.2.2011 8:14 am | f/5.6 1/100 | Pentax K-x
Sharpened