Final Project Proposal

I know it's late now, but I still want to write about my thought before I shot those images. My original theme of the final project was number, which represent a different way of seeing the numbers. But later on I couldn't find enough objects that worth shooting, so I stopped and looked over my old images. Then I started realized that all the photos I like the most have a very important thing in common: they all have pretty good reflection of the light, and there comes my idea:I'm (was) going to shoot my final project in the theme of reflection.

Final Project - Reflection

This term went by so fast, it might because of the long breaks we had, but the most important reason i think was that the courses are more fun.

First, let me talk about my final project. It is called reflection, although some of them are not quite meet the theme. In this project, I wanted to pay most of my attention to the light and the reflection of light, and therefore, however good each image is, I want to make the reflection of the light the most significant. For the first two and last pictures, the contrast between black and white due to reflection were the most important things. And for the rest of the three images, the reflection showed the smooth surface. All of the images were depended on the reflection. Without reflection, the pictures would have nothing in them, but with reflection, as it turned out, the result was quite difference. So what this final project gave me are not extremely good images but it REALLY helped me understand the importance of the light and the contrast and the information light can provide.

From now on, the blog will be about the whole term:
First, I have to say I have learned so much this term. At the beginning of the term, I thought everything would be the same except we were going to use a different kind of camera, but soon after that, I realized I was so wrong. When we were learning about the level and the curve, that was when I really understood about the contrast. And because of that, the filter and the time thing in the darkroom all started to make sense. And then we learned about the histogram and the bracketing. Those told me what it means to be a good exposure. Everything from the beginning to the end, make perfect sense and it taught me the concept of photography and will certainly help me with photo in the future.
Secondly, I've learned the importance of light. Every image depends on light. Light shows texture; light tells the shape; light makes things look real; light shows and makes contrast; light draws attention; light is EVERYTHING in black and white photography! Same photos, with different light, may look totally different. When there is a good natural light, try your best to make it useful. When there is not, create your own.
This term also made my like black and white photography. When there are only black and white, as Mr. Blake said, light becomes the only thing. Without the distraction of the tones of colors, the pictures will look simple and pure. And that is why I'm now so into black and white photography.
Well, I think those are probably all I want to say. And next time I take digital will be next year, and hope I can do better than now.

Assignment #5 - Re-shoot

This is the original one:


This is the re-shoot before photoshopping:


This is the re-shoot picture:


This assignment was a little difficult for me. At the beginning, I can't think of anything pictures that are both my favorite and worth reshooting. Then, I started looking over my first too assignment and find the photo of the piano. It was one of the pictures from the bracketing assignment. Although it has the best exposure, there are still places that either too bright or too dark. I thought that was all because of the light from the door, so I waited till the night. However, when I used my own home light, the difference between light area and dark area were still huge. After my analysis, I thought of two reasons: 1.the piano was made of white and black keys 2.since the surface was too smooth, it could reflect everything in the room and all that did was distracting. So, I brought the camera really close to the piano and eliminated the reflecting part by only leting the keys in my picture. And that turned out pretty good. Then I started working on the distance to the focus and the depth of the field. After some adjustment, I was able to bring the focus to the center part of the photo. And after all those, I finally got my re-shoot picture.

Photoshopping steps:
1.level
2.curve

Assignment #4 - Portraiture

First, I have to say I enjoyed shooting this assignment really much. Last term, portraiture was one of the assignment I disliked most because the people I was going to take pictures on didn't want to cooperate. But this time, everybody was willing to help me out and I was able to set up the light for some of my pictures so that they would look better. Since I was using a digital camera, I could take as many pictures as I want and there is always one that looks pretty good. The most annoying problem I had was sharpness. Since I didn't have a tripod with me this time and people always moved, it was really hard for me to get a sharp image. I didn't have a chance to shoot a silhouette and I will do that in my next assignment.

ASSIGNMENT #3 - High-key / Low-key

This assignment was GREAT!!!From this assignment, I, once again, have learnt a lot about the importance of bracketing. And finally I could tell if the exposure was good or not by seeing the histogram. Yet, I had hard time finding the dark backgrounds and that really slowed me down. For the high key images, I've learnt to control the light myself rather than finding good lights and then use it. Generally speaking, the result turned out pretty well and I hope I will do better next time!

practice-assignment-1

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