On The Edge Image:
In this assignment we were told to take a photo with a subject placed on the edge of the framing. This was crucial to the assignment, it had to either be touching or be very close to the edge of the frame. The rest of the image was to be utilized to create a space directing eye movement and proper weighting to make the image not only aesthetic but naturally appealing. To accomplish this it was crucial to understand compositional elements.
Here are the edited and unedited photos I submitted respectively:
For this image I used the bike to guide the eye from the foreground to the background. The closest part of the bike, the front wheel, was placed close to the bottom right of the frame. This was meant to guide the eye along the bike creating a line that leads to the background, which is the school campus, specifically a walkway and some bike parking spaces. I used framing and lines to help guide the eye, as well as distinct foreground, mid ground, and background differences to help keep the image simple and digestible. The focal point of my image was the bike, this was because the setting was a spot for parking bikes, so I figured if I focused on one bike it would set the scene for the entire environment. One bike can be seen in the foreground clearly, followed by many similar silhouettes of bikes in the mid ground. This makes the image simple and helps the viewer easily understand the setting. I feel I achieved the drawing of the viewer's eye for my skill level. I am very new to photography but I am no stranger to composition as I have been drawing for a long time, and I know that this photo follows multiple tools of composition, most obviously lines and thirds. This bike and the way it is oriented clearly guides the viewers eye from the foreground to the background, which I find interesting, because many photos instead guide an eye across an X or Y axis, but this one achieves the Z, or depth. Problems with this photo was my setting, I had already taken lots of photos of this area so it is difficult to find something interesting. This is a very mundane scene, the outside of a campus building with many parked bikes, but I managed to make the image slightly appealing and aesthetic for something that was before rather boring. I could have made this more interesting I feel with some blur effects, although at this point in time I didn't know of shutter speed, other camera settings, and placement that would have helped me achieve this. Now we have covered this subject, so this would have further let me separate the foreground from the background. This would have been appropriate seeing that there isn't much going on in the background, so blurring it wouldn't have taken much away.
We were required to use black and white effects as well as some dodge and burn. I used the dodge and burn to help push the background further away with masking, which definitely improved the image. The black and white had the bike stand out with more obvious contrast.
HDRI Photo:
For this assignment we were told to take an HDR image with 3 exposures and improve this image with Photoshop tools.
Here are the edited and unedited photos respectively:
For this assignment we were supposed to take three photos with varying exposures and combine them digitally into one photo, this is meant to improve the definition overall. We were also supposed to practice image editing to improve the image.
With this image I wanted to guide the viewers eye from close up high definition brick to distant detailed building, to help the viewer notice the obvious surrealistic definition in the image. I used the walkway, perspective, and lines to help accomplish this guiding of the eyes. Naturally humans are built to follow lines, and there is many very distinct lines pointing to the same place, the center, in this image, so I think I sufficiently met this requirement. I wish I had access to a tripod for this assignment, I think the close up brick would have been in much higher detail if I did. I also think having a higher exposure difference would have helped achieve this, so that is what I would change if I could go back and take this image again. I used saturation to help improve the image because it is my favorite effect to use. The image was already relatively bland, and by making the edges of the image more saturated I think it made it a more interesting image as well as helped guide the viewer's eyes.
Things:
This assignment was focused on taking photos of things you don't think about very often. I took a photo of a toy dinosaur the professor let me borrow. I used my aperture to help blur the background to draw the viewers eye to the subject, which was the toy dinosaur. The first photo does not have any Photoshop filters, where the second one does. I just made some minor color adjustments to make the scenery seem more bright and colorful. I wanted to make sure you can see the details clearly on the foreground, like the dinosaur, the highlights on it, and the stone it sat on. This was important to emphasize the size of the toy. I like this image for how closely detailed it gets, I like to focus on smaller details and I got to use many techniques to make this photo emphasize that. The composition is also very simple making it easy for the viewer to distinguish the focus.
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