Photography Final

              

Overall, going to the Botanic Gardens for my photo walk was a really memorable experience that forced me to not just see the world around me, but observe it. I also went to places in the Gardens that I'd never been to before, like the tree top viewing gallery, which lead to me to take some interesting photos that I otherwise wouldn't of captured. Another success was that I took a wide variety of photos ranging from closer-up shots of flowers, long photos of paths with deep depth of fields, and birds-eye view photos from up above. However, going to the Botanic Gardens wasn't my first photo walk. Initially, I decided to go a wet market near my house and capture a few photos of the stalls, workers, and goods being sold. But when I returned to my house to look at the photos that I had captured, I realised that I hadn't really captured a wide range of photos that were interesting to look at. In addition, because the lighting in the wet market wasn't great, my photos had a slightly yellow hue to them which I didn't like. Although, I loved going to the wet market and interacting with the workers there, I wanted to go on a second photo walk but in a different location. Therefore, this was one of the biggest challenges that I faced. A smaller challenge was that in the Botanic Gardens, at first, I found it difficult to capture photos that weren't typical as I wanted my viewer to be intrigued. Fortunately, going to places in the Gardens that I'd never been to before solved this problem for me.

I didn't use much peer feedback in this project, but when choosing my final photo, I was debating between the close-up photo of the pink flowers and the sunset photo surrounded by plants. To help me decide, I asked my friend, Camilla, which photo she thought was better. She chose the sunset photo which I realised was the better choice, so that ended up being my final photo. In terms of the post-processing techniques, I did some light editing on a few of my photos since I enjoy editing. I put most of my time into editing the final photo, though. Like I said in my presentation, I increased the exposure, darkened the shadows, increased the blacks, and slightly increased the highlights and whites. I also warmed the temperature of the photo so that it had a more orangey glow to it. To further intensify this, I saturated the photo slightly and made it a bit more vibrant. In addition, I darkened the green hues of the leaves so that it looked like shadows were cast upon them, and increased the yellow hue of the sun to make it more yellow and orange.

This photo walk personally impacted me in a great way because it forced me to go outside and capture small details that would otherwise seem insignificant. Especially since this is finals month, this photo walk provided me with a reason to step outside and enjoy nature. Throughout this semester, I have realised that my favourite photos to capture are those of nature and portraits. Within nature, I love taking photos from different angles and with different depths of field. Therefore, I want to carry this knowledge with me as I go into Advanced Photography as I will already have a sense of the photos that I enjoy taking.

Composite Images

Introduction:

For the Composite Project, we were asked to create four final photos using Photoshop editing techniques. We had the freedom to choose any photo that we wanted and could create whatever effect that we desired, however we had to ensure that we used the editing techniques of different blending modes, a filter gallery, layer masks, and transform tools somewhere among our final photos.

Digital Contact Prints: 

Above is my digital contact print containing the original four images that I edited as my final photos. This print helps show the effect of the editing techniques that I used as you can see the "before" of my edited photos. 

This digital contact print contains my four final photos. Using various Photoshop videos, I edited these photos using different editing techniques to achieve the specific look that I wanted. Below, I will go further in-depth into each photo. 

Final Photos: 

Polar Bear by apgroner, Desert by wstera2, Eagle by Andy Morffew

This was the first photo that I edited in Photoshop so I didn't do anything too dramatic. I began by putting the black desert photo as my background. While, I liked how the photo looked, I wanted to give it some motion so I searched through the filter gallery until I settled down on the filter: Angled Strokes. I chose this filter to make the sand look like it was being swept by the wind which you can see if you zoom in. Next, I inserted a polar bear photo. Using the quick selection tool, I cropped out the polar bear from it's background and placed it the way that I wanted onto the sand. Finally, I found an eagle photo and, once again, used the quick selection tool to remove it from its background. I wanted the eagle to look somewhat like a silhouette so that it wouldn't be too distracting. I did this by using the black and white tool to desaturate it and and the Angled Strokes filter to make it blend better into the background. The photo above is the final product of this. 

Along the way, I realised that the message of this photo was about global warming and its impact on life. When I learnt that I could send a powerful message through my photo, I continued to stick with plain shades of white, grey, and black to represent how in a sense, climate change is taking away the "colour" or diversity out of our world. The stance of the polar bear also gives the feeling that the bear is crying out for help and the emptiness of the desert shows how isolated it is. Therefore, the tone that I was trying to convey was a sad, lonely one that called for attention. 

Taken by MAT + KAT

To edit this photo I used a Photoshop tutorial linked by Mr. Lawrence. I began by using the quick selection tool and select and mask tool to pull Troye Sivan (the person in the photo) away from the background. Next. I created a layer below the one of Troye Sivan and filled it with black, effectively making the background black. Then, I used the levels tool to darken the photo and copied and pasted the lyrics of the song, BLUE, which is sung by him. After that, I made a copy of the layer and chose the adjustment of gradient. Lastly, I chose the blend mode of overlay which let me toggle around with this rainbow filter until I settled on this. 

This photo was more for me than to send a message, however I still purposefully made the editing choices that I did. To begin with, I chose a photo of Troye Sivan covering his heart to give a comforting tone. This fit well with the lyrics that I selected since the song is about being there for someone. In addition, the song has a lot of colour imagery so I painted Troye Sivan with a rainbow. He is also an openly gay artist so the colour choice was also to represent the LGBTQ+ community. 

Owned by WallpaperCave

To edit this photo, I followed a Photoshop tutorial that I found on YouTube. I began by desatuturing the photo of Billie Eilish, the person in the photo above, so that it was black and white. Next, I went into the blending options and unchecked the red channel. Then, using the transform tool, I shifted my photo more to the left and resized it to reveal the red-blue filter. After that, I created the lines in the background by choosing the new adjustment layer: solid colour. I filled the background with white and then chose the pattern overlay tool to create the lines. Finally, I selected the rectangle marque tool, clicked free transform, highlighted the box over an area and dragged it to the side. This created the box effects that you see in the photo above. 

The idea that I was trying to portray in this photo was that there was a glitch. I wanted to create the tone that this snapshot was happening on an old television, hence the lines in the background, and that there was a glitch in the system causing Billie Eilish to appear the way that she is. I also specifically chose a photo of Billie Eilish because her music style is more solemn and creepy which I thought fit the mood. She is also known for not smiling in her photos which is why I thought that this picture made sense for this effect. 

Credit for Troye Sivan photo goes to Press. Galaxy by Unsplash.

To edit this photo I used the editing technique called double exposure. Below, I will run through the steps that I took to edit this photo. 

Editing Process:

Above are the two original photos that I used for this technique. This gives an idea of what the images looked like when I began so that the progress is clear when you see my final photo. 

I began by dragging this picture of Troye Sivan into Photoshop and doing some minor edits on it. I used the Levels tool to increase the exposure and highlights, and used the Hue/Saturation tool to brighten the colours and add more vibrance. When I was happy with the overall picture, I moved onto the actual technique of double exposure. 

Next, I dragged the galaxy photo into Photoshop and resized it. Then, I unchecked the view button and focused on the layer with Troye Sivan on it. I used the quick selection tool to pull Troye Sivan away from the background and the select and mask tool to make a more detailed selection. Next, I clicked on the visibility of the galaxy photo and clicked the layer mask tool to reveal the galaxy in the shape of Troye Sivan. To move the galaxy photo so that the part with the most stars was shown, I removed the link between the galaxy photo and layer mask and used the move tool to move it. Then, I went into the layer option, scrolled over the layer style option, and chose blending options which opened up the window that you see above. I clicked on the slider tool on the underlaying layer and separated the Hershey's kiss bar so that the galaxy blended into Troye Sivan's face as much as I wanted it to. Finally, I merged the layers by pressing Shift, Option, Command, and E at the same time.  

Now, I was finished with the double exposure technique, however I still wanted to further improve this image. I did so by running through some basic editing techniques. I began by increasing the brightness and contrast to catch the viewer's attention. Then, I further saturated the image to bring more colour to it and used the colour balance tool to make the galaxy a darker shade of blue and more purple. Finally, I used the curves tool to further brighten the picture. 

Personal Reflection:

Almost all of the editing techniques that I used in this project were new techniques that I hadn't learnt before, ranging from the filter gallery to layer masks. However, I soon realised that when creating different effects, I still used the same standard editing techniques like the quick selection tool, select and mask tool, layer masks, and overlays. Therefore, after a while, I began to realise which technique would come next in the editing tutorial videos before it happened. I still require a lot of practice to memorize these techniques, though, as I still heavily rely on the Photoshop tutorials. Along the way, I faced a couple of obstacles that left me frustrated. For instance, when making the text poster, the tutorial said to remove the spacing between letters, but when I did this, the text that I pasted into Photoshop came out really small and cramped. It was only after several tries and failed attempts that I identified this problem. Another challenge that I faced was trying to face paint an image onto someone. I tried following the face painting tutorial several times but couldn't figure out the rectangle marque tool as when I selected the eyes with the tool, so that the face paint wouldn't cover them, the rectangle wouldn't work or disappear. Eventually, I realised that I was spending too much time trying to get this effect so I did the glitch effect instead. When creating the glitch, I faced a similar problem with the rectangular marquee tool but after experimenting, I realised that the issue was that I hadn't chosen the option "free transform" and that I could easily deselect the tool by pressing Command and D. One regret that I have is that for the picture of Troye Sivan for the double exposure technique, I didn't choose a picture of the best quality. Because the photo was big when I searched it up, I assumed that it was high quality so it was only after I completed the technique that I realised that the quality wasn't the best. Overall though, I am very happy with how these photos turned out and despite spending hours editing them, I think that the product was worth it. Therefore, over the summer, I think that I'm going to further enhance my editing techniques in Photoshop.