We were only human, this at least we'e learned.

uninspired... sharpening images

This is my dog Schmar before and after sharpening the image. Above, sharpened, seems to lose the contrast. I think that was the difficulty of picking a black subject. I like it sharpened though because there is so much detail in his fur. You can see how curly his hair is rather than in the picture below when you can see how black he is, but see no detail.

you're now allergic to the rumble and noise

The first picture is an unedited photo of my fiance Burke. While I sure love him, this picture is probably not the best (sorry Burke). The next picture is one that I edited in a standard way that I might using photoshop. I adjusted some of the levels. In the final picture I whitened Burke's teeth by selecting them and decreasing the yellow and red saturation. Then I created a copy of the image and applied a heavy gaussian blur, from which I erased Burke's body. This created the illusion of a greater depth of field, making him a stronger focus of the picture. The last thing I did was increase the contrast so his black jacket looked more black. If the picture were a little better, I would definitely like it a lot.

And I hope the rumors will break your fall

After poking around on Dr. Jenny's blog on Zenfolio, there are some definitite things that I like about the site. I am fascinated by the ability to leave a comment on a picture. On blogger you have to leave a comment on the post, not even a specific picture; however on Zenfolio you can not only pick a particular image, but you can select a part of an image to comment on.

I liked the ability to add an entire gallery to my shopping cart. I also liked the option of purchasing each image as a different object. I was specifically interested in the wall mounts, but I thought they were quite expensive.

Also intriguing was the ability to password protect entire galleries. Although I thought this was an unusual concept for a professional photographer to employ, it does seem rather necessary.

The only part of the website I am not especially a fan of is the slideshow function. I usually think they are too slow for me- even if the speed is adjustable clicking through is much more functional.

Stand back! Expansion is what we do the best

Julie and I took pictures all over HAL and outside, but this is my favorite lighting situation by far. We first tried HAL 211, then outside, then we used the spotlight in an open room, but this light came from the sun while we were inside. I thought this light had the warmest glow without washing out her face. I was in manual mode without a flash and I had the aperture open as far as it would go. The iso was 100 and I had the white balance set to sunlight. I would like it if there was more of a catch light in her eyes, but I think what there is is quite acceptable.

Here's a toast to now

The Station
This is one of my favorite photos I took. I didn't see anyone else photographing this cement block with exposed wires and bolts, but I thought it was very interesting. I took several pictures of it and this is one of my favorites. I had an aperture of 4.5 and a shutter of 250. I also like the picture below this one. I think it also captures the essence of the station.

Macro/ Up Close
This was a picture I took of the actual rail road track when we first got to the station. I really like the frost on the metal. The aperture was 5.6 and the shutter was 125. The picture below is another close up picture I took inside the building Aperture of 4.5 shutter of 15.
Flash/Slow Sync
I'm not a huge fan of this picture, mostly because I loved shooting outside and inside was a little less exciting. Also, I could have picked a more interesting subject, but I guess it's okay. It took me several attempts to even get a good picture that wasn't blurred.
EXIF data for this image is aperture of 3/5 and shutter of 1.6seconds. I had the ISO set to 100.

when all i want, all i want/ is a state of hope

The flash on my Canon EOS Rebel has a built in flash with several options. It fires automatically in low light and backlit conditions in most of the basic modes. The flash has to be manually turned on when using the camera in a creative zone (Program, Tv, Av, M, and A-DEP). When using Av, the main subject is captured with the flash and the background is captured with a long exposure using a slow shutter speed.

Red eye reduction can also be turned on in most modes of the camera. There is also a Red Eye Reduction lamp indicator which can help to adjust the effectiveness of red-eye reduction. It is most effective in indoor areas and when the subject is near the camera.

Flash Exposure lock is the last option with the camera. It works in the creative zones.

Fascinate, fascinate, fascinated...

This first image was captured with a point and shoot. I was impressed at how close it was able to focus, however, it was a little grainy. I think it was a Canon Powershot, but I could be wrong. The picture was taken with the close up option, the flower. This next image was taken with a Nikon D60 (again, no promises). I like the colors in this image better than the ones from my own camera and I'm wondering if it is because of the flash. I didn't know how to turn off the flash so I just kept it on. I used aperture priority on the Nikon.

This final image is one that I took with my own camera in manual mode. I used the lightbox and think it looks okay. I would have liked to have taken more time, but there was a line in the box so I didn't.

oh c'est la vie please don't go and abandon me

This assignment was about learning to use selection tools to replace things from one picture and put them in another. The top is an example of replacing an image in the picture and the bottom is replacing the sky in a picture. This first picture is my dog, Shmo. He is in Ohio.This second picture is America's favorite donkey, Perry, from Shrek. He lives in California.

This final picture is when Perry and Shmo get to meet via Photoshop.



This first picture is one of my favorites of my fiance and me. We are in San Francisco on a bike ride, but as you often may find, the sky is very overcast. (Note the lack of clarity in the buildings in the background.)


Main Fountain at Stanford University. Love it.
Combined it was hard to get to look good first because of the trees. Then it was hard once I had somewhat overcome the trees because the background buildings were so cloudy. So I selected all of the background and did levels on them twice and tried to get some of the saturation to come out. Not great, but I think it looks okay.

If you are a teacher I am a vessel, oh So carry on, carry on, carry on...

The assignment for this entry was to create a photo video using Photo Story, a free program downloadable by Microsoft. Instead of using a program, I asked Dr. Jenny if I could create my own video using Adobe After Effects, because it is my goal to learn how to use the program this semester. These are a series of pictures I took while I was in San Francisco over short spring break.

Raise some question to the rule who says you'd have to lose a love to find one

I'm over all pretty happy with these pictures I took at Leesburgh Falls today. I wish that I had taken more pictures with super fast shutter speed, I didn't really realize that they were only partially frozen water droplets. Anyhow, the above picture was taken with a 1/400 shutter speed and an aperture of 3.5.
I really like the picture below with a slower shutter speed. The aperture was f/22 and the shutter speed was 1.3 seconds. I like it.

We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?

This is the Columbus skyline from the Confluence Park Restaurant. It is where I am getting married this summer. It will be very beautiful when it's green. I used a tripod and rotated the camera to capture ten different shots. The pictures looked the best on auto white balance. I recreated the corners using the clone tool in Photoshop, it wasn't very fun. I had an aperture of f/14 and a shutter speed of 1/100. I probably should have used a smaller aperture and slower shutter speed to capture more detail.

I found my friends in the forest of loves

Mercer, PA
These are a few random shots I took in Mercer, PA. This first was taken in the anitique store next to the courthouse. I used an aperture of 3.5 and a shutter speed of 1s film speed 100. This is another one of my favorite random pictures of the town of Mercer. Pretend like you know who James D. Kathar is and the shot is a lot more exciting. Aperture 5.0 Shutter 1/160 film speed 100.

These next three were taken with exposure compensation. This first one is where the camera said it should be. Below is three stops over exposed and below that is three stops under exposed. The picture that I thought was best was one stop under exposed. The aperture in each picture is f5 and the shutter speeds are 1/160, 1/80, 1/ 320, respectively.

I'm not wild about this picture, I wanted to use the above pictures as my courthouse picture, but I didn't have another good example of exposure compensation so I used it as that instead. I think this picture is very simple and rather plain but overall okay nonetheless. I used an aperture of 5.0 and a shutter of 1/500. I'm not sure why I didn't just shrink the aperture and have a slower shutter, but that's the way I did it.

The first thought is fear, and brother, it emits a crippling bend

This picture is one that I took the night we went to DTGC. After almost two cold hours of picture taking downtown, I apparently still hadn't gotten enough because when I was walking back the fog struck me as photo-worthy so I snapped a few. As I was mid picture of a slow shuttered picture, the fog started to rise and really almost completely went away in a thirty second time period. It was pretty cool to see, and I think made a pretty good picture as well. Below is the original in color. I liked the green of the grass, but I don't miss the colors of the picture overall too badly.
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This is the original image that I took. It is of some roses that my boyfriend gave me for Valentine's Day courtesy of my sorority's annual rose fundraiser benefiting Relay for Life. I like this picure because of the way I successfully focused on the second rose and none of the others. My biggest criticism of the picture is the white ledge below the roses, although it adds to the line that your eyes follow with the roses, I think it is overall kind of distracting. I did take several others from a lower angle, but this is the one that I edited for our purposes. Below you will see the picture edited by adjusting curves in Photoshop. I messed around with the levels on my own for a while and then clicked the options button and this is what it gave me. I like how bright it made the second flower and how radiant the green of the stems are, but I do not like that the focus is now even more on the white ledge below the roses. If i use this picture for anything I will certainly crop it out. I do not think the rose the most in the foreground will be missed too much since it is not the one in focus anyway. Below the picture you can see the curves and the Options pane that opened up.

And this is sure to misspell disaster

I took two pictures like this. I really like this one to look at because of the way the light hits the different surfaces and makes everything look different, but my favorite thing is actually how it looks convincingly black and white, but it isn't. I used a big aperture to keep the focus on just the wall and ice and I wanted to see if it would throw part of the frame out of focus. It didn't really but I'm ok with that. Looking at the picture I think it appears black and white, but by looking at the histogram (which I learned about this week), I can see that there are some colors in the picture.








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This is a picture from Downtown Grove City. I took many pictures of the Guthrie theater from the street and wasn't very impressed with them. I also took a lot of pictures of the church next to the Guthrie, also unimpressive. Then I went to the alley where some of the most interesting backdrops are in DTGC. I liked this picture of the Guthrie from the alleyway for several reasons, mostly the lights. I liked how the lights shone off the wet bricks lining the alley as well as the ice lining the ground and even the pavement itself. The shutter speed was relatively long for the amount of light in the picture and it was because I used a small aperture to get the detail of the sign as well as the bricks lining the path. I would have preferred if the lights were less blurred, I'm not sure if I used the self timer on this picture, if I didn't I should have. Although, I kind of like that "Guthrie" is the only legible word in the frame. I also wish the people in the picture were not there.





Note: I do not recommend being in dark alleys late at night, even in dtgc it can be quite unnerving.

the rules that never ever multiply

This assignment was to take a picture with all of the white balance settings on our cameras. There were some pretty drastic differences between several of the pictures, but I had a hard time actually choosing which one I thought looked the best.

This picture was taken with the daylight setting.
It was at about 5pm so a pretty good time to take pictures.
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This picture is auto white balance. Its not really that pretty.
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This one was interesting because the sky pops since it is so bright blue,
but then you realize it's because the rest of the picture is also blue.

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This picture is the fluorescent white balance setting.

And I, I am a passenger tonight/I watch the world, from inside

This is a picture I took in Chinatown a couple of weeks ago. I would have liked to have had a tripod not only to make the lighting better, but to catch the lights of the cars going by.








The EXIF data shows that I took the picture without really knowing what I was doing. I should have used a higher number aperture and ideally if I had had a tripod I would have used a much longer shutter speed. I don't remember if it was in a mode.




The levels show that it was clipped on both ends. The sky was too dark and made it completely black, and the lightest parts of the highlights were completely lost. When editing this image, I boosted the highlights to 100% so that there was a little bit more detail in the overexposed sections. What I thought made the biggest difference was when I selected a neutral white/gray for the tint and it removed the very orange glow that the picture had. In conjunction with the tint, I also increased the color temperature.




This is the final image post-adjustments. A tripod still would have been preferable, but I do think these adjustments improve the quality of the picture. The white highlights are still distracting, but perhaps less so. The only thing I think got a little worse was the lights on the building at the top. Otherwise, I think it was a moderately successful edit.

Wincing the Night Away

While not overly impressive, this is my first ever picture of a series taken with a tripod; therefore, I am quite proud. I like Orion's belt in the top left. I like in this series of pictures the lights emanating from behind the trees to the left. I do not like the intensity of the light that I tried to cut out of the picture, I liked it even less when it was in the pictures. I also do not like banality of the image.










I was unable to get the shutter speed below 4.5 for some reason, but I was also told that it's better not to shoot at the maximum, so I suppose it is acceptable. My 25 second shutter speed was the longest I have dealt with, and I forgot to check the ISO when taking the pictures, but that is where I would have put it if I had remembered.

in a world of make believe

This is the first picture from a tripod that I took in HAL. It was taken with a large aperture and relatively quick shutter speed.











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This picture was taken with a great depth of field down the HAL hallway with a very long exposure.












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This picture is the picture I took of the hallway in HAL without a tripod.