Week 12- Rachael's Photostory

Week 11 - Portrait

This week was interesting working with portraits and I have always enjoyed taking portraits. I wasn't very happy with the lighting in this shot, because it was overcast, but I think the shot is okay. Like many others, I had to think about the background and make sure that it was appropriate and I think that this works, with a sort of up close greenery and a background landscape view. In photoshop I did some minor spot healing and and I changed the picture to black and white and made adjustments with the levels. I can't wait to take more portraits!

Week 10 - Clone

I was experimenting again with the clone stamp, and I think that I have had more success in the previous images that I have posted because with this image there was less material for me to clone from, so I think that it looks sort of obvious that the pattern on the bottom left repeats and is copied! There is more exploring and fine tuning to be done with cloning and it will take a lot of practice!

Week 10 - Text

For these images I chose to do a bit of cloning to take out some of the scraggly trees in the way, but I couldn't take out as much as I would like to, so I cropped the bottom of the image off. Then I played with a simple relaxed font, and wrote the location of where the picture was taken. The color of the font is taken from the tones in the bottom of the image. I was experimenting with a darker green for the text also, but I ended up thinking that the brighter green was a little more engaging. Anyone have an opinion on that or any other comments? Thanks!

Week 9 - Filters

For this image I viewed several different filters in the "filter gallery". This allows you to see filters over other filters and you can change the effects of each filter. For this image I used "palette knife" filter and I adjusted the detail and smoothness. I like the effects and I think that the possibilities with filters are endless because there are so many ways to layer them and adjust them.

Week 9 - Burn & Dodge

Many of the pictures from my trip are very washed out, and overexposed. I played with the burn tool on this shot, and in the bottom one I tried to get some more contrast. I found that although you can change the exposure level of the tool, it was still kind of hard to control and I think that although the color is restored, it may be too dark in some areas, but when I went back to dodge some of the areas, it was too obvious and way lighter. These tools will take some practice but I think they can be effective.

Week 8-Photo Adjustments- Image Set 2

For this image set I adjusted the photo so that It had more contrast and richer colors. I used curve adjustments and I also used the spot healing and the clone stamp again in the sky to soften some of the clouds. I think that the original image is to dark and doesn't have a lot of contrast so I think my revised image really brings out the color in the sunset as well as the overall contrast of the piece.