My photostory

So I have made up my photostory and I am hoping that this link will take you to a proper view of it as a slideshow. Please let me know if you are able to access the presentation.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DneudvKMYGcAWfFJ_VFJf4nXpTRqx3U7qD6BunOFvFk/edit?usp=sharing

So here are the edits that I have made to each photo.

Slide 2 (Hide and Seek): crop, burn and added a border

Slide 3 (close up): color curves, levels, burn and dodge tools to fix complexion, smudge to smooth burn and dodge, and the heal tool

Slide 4 (finger painting): Desaturated and then erased to add color only to his painting

Slide 5 (Christmas star): Desaturated. There wasn't much for me to do with this photo because previous edits have been done but this is one of my all time favorite photos of him.

Slide 6 (train ride): Cropped, Cloned parts of the image to remove a reflection of someone's head in the glass, desaturated, added reflected light to the eye.

Slide 7 (beach bum): Clone tool and smudge to remove my niece's shoulder and head from the lower corner of the photo.

Slide 8 (digging in the yard): Cropped, desaturated, cloned to remove areas of missing grass, clone and heal to remove barcode sticker from the shovel.

Slide 9 (water gun fight): heal tool to fix small blemishes, dodge tool to whiten teeth.

Slide 10 (pumpkin carving): Burned the background to get rid of distractions, healed minor spots.

Slide 11 (Crayola Factory): Cropped, straightened lines, healed some spots in the wall colors, dodged under the eyes to remove puffy circles.

Slide 12 (Monster Jam Cake): Used blur to eliminate the cluttered background.

Slide 13 (Football): color curves to brighten the shadows, clone and blend and heal to remove stain on pants and spots on helmet, arbitrary rotation to level out the shadow line, and crop.

Slide 14 (Camping): Crop and burn tool to add a vignette.

Slide 15 (Big brother): Crop and rotation tool to level out the slats on the fort.

Slide 16 (Mommy and Mason): I just used the dodge tool to brighten the shadow on the right side of the photo. I didn't want to crop in because this is a shot of us at Howe's Cavern, NY so I wanted to scenery in the photo.

Portraits

So I had a little time over at my nieces so my daughter and my niece put together their look so I could do a photo shoot. I have come to realize that my daughter is great a many things, but being photogenic is not one of them. My niece on the other hand is a total ham. So here are some photos from our mini shoot while it was pouring outside. I really didn't like the lighting that they had at their house but I tried my best. I even used one of her mirrors to be a reflector for some fill lighting. I did do touch ups so I will include both versions.

Photo 1

For this photo I took some of the shine off of her face (although I see a bit of a dark spot above her eyebrow which I didn't see until uploading this). I would go back in and fix that. But I cropped the photo. I also tried to eliminate a little bit her stray hairs that were popping out. I found the orange tie to be too distracting so I just cloned over it to take it out of the picture. I dodged her teeth to whiten them but I think it may have been a little too much. I think if I adjust the exposure to the tool it would help tone it down a little bit. 

 Photo 2

This one was originally too dark so I played with the color curves to brighten the photo and to take some of the green and blue hue out. I loved the curtain but the flash wasn't coming on for some of the photos so I did what I could and then switched to a new area. I also helped get rid of the bit of my daughter's bangs that were sticking up. I took away the dark circles under her eyes and I patched up her hole for her earring because it was funny to have the hole but no earring. 

 Photo 3

So I really liked this curtain in my niece's room but she wasn't quite tall enough for it. If it had gone full-length I would've been in heaven. Instead we decided to just do a head shot for this one. For this one I cropped to get rid of the black on the right. I also touched up a little bit of the shine on her face and she had a bug bite spot on her chest that was red so I touched that up. I did whiten her teeth a little bit and I think this time it looks more natural. I did notice that there were some sequin reflections on her upper arm so I used the clone or patch tool to take away those reflections and then the smudge tool to blend it a little bit more. 

Photo 4

So my niece really wanted to take a picture in this super comfy chair. She also loved the super fuzzy blanket so I decided to put the two together. We laid the blanket over the chair and took some pictures. The problem was that there were no good background places in this apartment so I really didn't like how her head is half in the blue blanket and half in the white wall. I cloned the blanket to bring the color up top but then the lines were too obvious so I then used the smudge tool to blend it all in. I know that made it look like an unrealistic background but I thought it kind of worked like the school portrait backgrounds they use. Another whitening of the teeth and I used the patch tool to get rid of her tan lines. I wish the photo was a little bit more in focus but considering I didn't think I would end up using this set of shots, I really like how it turned out. 

Paint, text, and more.

With this photo I used the clone tool to get rid of the white streak left by a plane. I also used the clone tool to fix any odd spots in the sky. I also added a watermark just to start trying it out.

This is a photo of my daughter backstage waiting for her turn at her ballet recital. She was all dolled up but there was not great place to take photos. All the clutter in the back really takes away from the photo. I used the paint tool to paint out the background and then the text tool to add some words to explain the moment. 

I think with more practice I could get the edges to look a little more realistic but not too bad for a first try. 

I was playing with my camera at the fireworks one night. I wanted to see how the different settings worked for fireworks. This was one of my favorite images but I thought the bright light in the top right corner was distracting. I used the clone tool to erase the light from the image and then I added some text. 

Preview to my Photo Story

So my son just turned 11 this past Wednesday and I figured I would put together a picture story of how he has grown over the years. It was fun to go back through old pictures. I did realize though that I didn't have a digital camera when he was first born so I think I may have to did out the old photos and scan some pictures in so that I can use them. This is just a snip it of what I have. I admit that I am a picture junky when it comes to my kids.

So my intention would to be to have the photos go in chronological order to show how he has changed over the years. I love the thought of taken these older pictures and applying my new editing skills to them. 

Burn and Dodge and Filters

For this I used the dodge and burn tools. I burned the background a little bit to take emphasis off the background. I found that you have to be careful not to burn too much or it makes it too unrealistic. I used the dodge tool to brighten my father's face and also to whiten the teeth of the kids. I also used the select, copy, and blur tools to take out the little tuft of hair sticking up on my father's head. I did crop in on the photo right at the beginning.

To create this blurred dotted effect I used the oilfy filter and played around with the adjustments to find a setting that created the small dots rather than blending them too much. 

For this photo I used the old fashioned filter. I did end up playing with the brightness and contrast after the filter was applied just to help the eye see the image a little bit better. 

Color Adjustments

I was trying to capture a nice sunset on this day but it was too hazy and the sun wasn't setting yet so the picture came out quite blah. I did some color adjustments to try to make a pretty sky.

                     


I've been spending the last two days at the hospital while my father had open heart surgery. When we were able to go in and visit him as he was waking, I couldn't pass up this moment. I ended up using just my phone camera for this shot but I thought it really captured the love between my parents. What the photo can't tell is that even in my dad's medicated haze and while still intubated, he lifted his hand so that he could hold my mother's hand better. Not much of a color change but I went to black and white and used the vignette technique to blur the background more.

Beginning with Gimp

Well first off, I was very frustrated because I really like the looks of the Photoshop program and I tried to download the trial but when I did, it would only open up the program but then it would lock up before I could even touch my photo. After watching the tutorials, I was considering actually paying for the program but I don't want to pay for the program if I won't be able to use it. So that led me to work with Gimp this week. 

I found Gimp to be a bit difficult to use. There are just so many steps for each edit you want to do to a photo. I actually kept the tutorial videos going and pausing for that step while I worked on my photo. Or I wrote down all the steps to each process that way I could reference the paper while I did the edit. I would hope that it would become easier to use once I use it more but I was really bumming about Photoshop. 

So here are my results. I made the photos bigger than I normally would for a blog so that you can see the detail better.

Before

After

        With this photo my daughter is actually posing with a cardboard image of Isabelle at the American Girl Doll store. First I straightened the photo which you can tell by the window panes. I also cropped the photo to get rid of the extra that wasn't part of the scene on the right.

         If you look closely you can see that there is a bit of white around the cardboard girl (look at her finger and the side of her head) so I used the tools to get rid of the white. My daughter also had some stray hair going down her face that I got rid of. I used the selection tools to copy and paste the brick wall and part of my daughter's dress in the bottom left corner. I know that the dress is not perfect but I couldn't seem to make that part any better and on a smaller scale you don't see it as bad. I wanted to get rid of that purple sign behind her. 

Before

After

       Here I merged these two photos together. I took out the wire that ran across the photo just above the rock wall and I had to fiddle with the size of the horse in order to make it fit the photo. The tail and the bottom of the legs are bugging me but I don't think it was too bad for a first try. Oh, I also took out some of the tree branches so that they wouldn't be touching the horse.

Before

After

With this one I had to play around with the selection tools to copy and add layers. I also added a border to this one to make it look more complete. 

Landscapes

I did some extra research on landscape photography to find more tips about how to take landscape photos. I found it a bit difficult to come up with ideas about what to photograph but I think I may have gotten a few shots. I did find that it was very hazy today when I went out to photograph and I was really bummed that all of my scenery shots seem out of focus because of the haze.

One tip I found was to find a focal point and to think about where you place the focal point in the frame. As I was coming back off the mountain I hiked today, I found this one lone birch among all the other darker trees. I couldn't help but keep thinking, "Why be the same when you can be beautiful?"

Another tip was to use the Golden Hours to shoot during. This are the hours right around dawn and dusk. I traveled around like crazy, using about a 1/4 tank of gas chasing the sunset. This one turned out a bit darker than I would've like.

This one caught my eye because of the color and lighting. I also captured it because last week I had read about how pictures are more interesting when the subject is odd in number. So these trees had the odd number factor down.

I like the following photo because of the quilt like pattern of the fields. It took a bit of editing to try to fix the colors and hide the haze but it was still an interesting photo.

Another tip was to capture movement. The first place I stopped to take photos was this little waterfall that I pass by on the way to pick up my son from school. I would've liked to get a better angle without the leaves in the way but that would've meant traveling onto someone else's property. So this was the best angle I could get out of many attempts.

This was quite a challenging assignment this week. I left my house around 3:00 and got back about 8:30. I hiked a mountain, traveled through at least 7 towns, went to the now empty lot of land that I grew up on, and got lost chasing the sunset! But it was a great day getting out into nature and having some photos to share.

Backgrounds

I decided to focus on how to get better backgrounds in photos. I feel that backgrounds can really make or break a photo. I found this great article about how to capture better backgrounds here http://digital-photography-school.com/getting-backgrounds-right/

Some basic ideas of getting better backgrounds are:
1) Look at the background before you even take the picture. It seems simple but you really need to look at the whole picture before taking it to see if there are any disturbances behind your subject.
2) You can use your camera's settings to create a blurred background which will help focus on your subject instead of anything behind it.
3) If you have a photo that has problems in the background, you may be able to use a photo editing program to fix the issue after. I did this with a photo I took of a horse because there was a branch in the way.

4) You may need to change how you are taking the picture if there is something in the background. You could try changing the angle of the camera, moving your subject, or filling the frame with more of your subject. 

5) Use a background that is off in the distance rather than closer if you want to keep the focus on your subject.

I also found this article to be useful in looking for things to avoid http://www.beyondmegapixels.com/2012/05/composition-background/

Some things to be careful about in the background:
1) Items looking as though they are coming out of your subject (like a tree growing from a head).
2) Making sure that the background doesn't clash with the feel of your photo. If you are trying to take photos of a rustic themed wedding, you wouldn't want to take a picture with the DJ stand in the background.
3) Make sure there are not busy distractions in the background. I love this photo of my son and his friend holding hands at their preschool graduation but the ball and toy kitchen in the back really are ugly in the photo.

I think the biggest key is to really look at the whole picture (great words to consider with anything) and if there are distractions, try to eliminate them. Sometimes we don't have the option of eliminating the distractions and hopefully we can learn more about photo editing to help correct those issues.

Framing

This week we looked at framing a subject for a photo. This is to use the surrounding image to draw the viewer's eye and attention to the main subject that is within the "frame."

This is one of the horse that I have been trying to capture with my camera. I thought that the bushes just in front helped add a bottom frame while the darker trees added a top frame. I did turn the photo to black and white and added a vignette for a different effect.

I started out trying to use two trees as a frame for my daughter on a swing but I liked how the ropes of the swing actually act like a frame for this photo while being able to get in close enough to see her.

Of course my youngest wanted his photo taken as well so I thought we would use the play structure at Grammy's to focus in on him.

My parents have an apple tree that has naturally curved over creating this tunnel/passageway. It found it very tricky to work with this framing technique because I am use to zooming in to really focus on my subject. In my opinion, you can't really see the children well but I really liked the archway that the tree formed. If I had zoomed in anymore to get a better look at them, I would've lost the frame effect though.

I decided to go back to the covered bridge and take some photos looking out the diamond shaped windows. I chose this one in particular because there are a couple layers of wood and while the interior of the bridge remains dark, it makes the natural light of the scene outside pop more.