Landscape & Macro

Reflection

I really enjoyed this weeks assignment. I have always had a very strong admiration for manipulating images in Photoshop. I also truly enjoy macro photography, I just wish I had a macro lens so that I could really get closer to my subjects and amplify the details resulting in much better photographs. I do however feel I could have spent a bit more time searching for landscapes to capture which in my opinion happens to be one of my weakest forms of photography. When I was getting my images ready to be submitted, I realized I did not have as many landscape photographs as I had initially thought. Using selective color and adding text to my images was fun, yet time consuming. Last week within my reflection I spoke about how I would rather look at black and white images as apposed to the process in editing them and this week I ended up with more black and white images than I did color images. I guess I don't mind the process at all as I really enjoyed comparing each technique used within a single photo and choosing which one I felt looked the best. I'm happy with the images I was able to produce this week and I'm excited to continue building upon my ability to create images others may find interesting or praise worthy.

Two Best Photos

As I stated in my reflection, I really enjoyed the manipulating process and the time spent editing images for this weeks assignment. The images I chose this week to represent my two best photos were both edited with selective color in mind. I was really surprised with the outcome of the first image as I did not expect the clouds to be so powerful after converting them to black and white and playing around with the RGB levels a bit. I made a few different images using selective color techniques using this photograph and this is the one I liked the most. The second image of the butterfly was made using the pen tool. I wanted to leave the colors visible of both the flower and the butterfly so that is why I chose this technique. The pen tool is always time consuming when cutting such intricate shapes, but it was worth it in the end.

Two Not-So-Good Photos

I say this quite possibly every week, that I don't really feel like these are bad photos, but they stick out in my mind when I think of my worst images because they were disappointing to me in some way. The flower with its vibrant colors and striking curves was so beautiful in person, but in the end seemed a bit out of focus to me. The black and white landscape photo of the man fishing could have easily been one of my favorites. Instead, the horizon line turned out a bit crooked, and I felt the exposure was slightly off which made the image a little too dark. I could have brightened it up a bit in PhotoShop, but the problem I ran into with that was the distortion that was occurring in the clouds.