Cropping and Compositing

This composite image was created in Photoshop CS3, though it could have been made in almost any of the Photoshop programs available, or even in GIMP. This is an example of many different tools in action all at once.

First, the background had the color levels adjusted. While they were just fine as they were, they didn't have that perfect "wistful" look that I was tyring to achieve.

Next, I removed the mountains on the right-hand side of the lake photo. To further cover this, and to add some more mood, I added in the fog by using blurred brushstrokes, which I further blurred using the Gausian Blur Photoshop filter.

My daughter, the subject of the photo, and the rail, were painstakingly removed by outlining them with the pen tool, which created a workpath. Using this workpath, I was able to delete out everything surrounding the items that I wanted to keep. I then flipped the image along the y axis to make her face the opposite direction.

The right-hand railing and foliage border were taken from the remaining picture, shown in the lower right. This was accomplished by using the Color Select option in the Select menu, as well as some careful brush-erasing. These were then manipulated around to fit properly into the spaces they needed to be. Finally, the colors were adjusted using filters and blends, and shadows were added to the underside of the railing and other areas to add the proper lighting effects.

Landscapes

Landscape, compositionally in regards to the layout of a picture, means "wider than taller", as opposed to "portrait", being taller than wider. This is a little cold and clinical when referring to the the subject matter or a landscape, however. From this angle, a landscape can be shot in any format, but the subject of the image must be a literal landscape. The shot must be of a natural environment, such as mountains, a field, trees, the shore of a lake, etc. This leaves much up to the photographer, determining the right angle, the right lighting, whether to use lighting or simply enjoy the natural light provided.

I had a bit of trouble this week with my photos. None of them seemed to come out quite right. The lighting simply didn't work out, or the colors weren't translating properly. Unfortunately, I just didn't get any pictures that I thought were worthy of posting as good examples of landscapes. I did, however, find some great examples in my older photos.

The first one is autumn shot taken across a valley near Hardwick and Greensboro last week. Alone, the valley is nondescript and plain, but with the colors of the trees and the way the clouds had lined up with the sun and the shadows, this picture is one of my favorites taken. I cannot take credit for the shot, however. This one was taken by my wife.



The second shot, while it includes some "man-mades" in the fence and the chairs, captured the beauty of Caspian Lake as seen from the front of our summer house. This shot, taken the same day as the first, also benefited from the autumn colors. The blue of the water and the sky and the darkness of the trees make these colors pop even more. I actually kinda like the fence and the chairs, as they add a certain je ne ç'est quoi to the image. Perhaps it's the depth of frame provided by the fence and the wistfulness of thinking about sitting in those chairs with a hot cup of tea with the crispness of the Autumn air nipping at my cheeks as I look out across the water at the leaves that does it.



The third photo was taken by my step-father a couple of winters ago behind their house. This image, while capturing only a narrow view as opposed to the expansive nature of most landscape images, is a wonderful snapshot of the wonders of winter. Again, there's just something about this photo the seems right and perfect. You'd never know that this was taken only feet away from civilization in the heart of Williston, would you?

Photo Composition

So this week's assignments took us on a road to compositional enlightenment. One of our first stops was the Rule of Thirds. I'd heard of this concept before, but only had a vague idea of what it meant. Following this rule, a photographer takes their compositional "canvas" and splits it vertically and horizontally into thirds, creating an imaginary tic-tac-toe board over the image. By lining the main subject up on one of these intersections, the piece gains greater compositional value and becomes more interesting. In the images below, I've expanded this concept not only to the alignment of the objects in the frame, but also to their physical positioning to further highlight the importance of proper subject placement.

Moving further into the lesson, we were asked to define "aesthetics". Being the literal mind that I am, I immediately reached out to my online friend, Dictionary.com, who returned this rather cold and clinical definintion: aesthetics is "the branch of philosophy dealing with such notions as the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the comic, etc., as applicable to the fine arts, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art, and the principles underlying or justifying such judgments." Mind thoroughly numbed, I began to drift off and attempt to brainstorm when I noticed the second, more concise definition on the list: aesthetics is "the study of the mind and emotions in relation to the sense of beauty." Now that's something that I can sink my teeth into!

Every image, regardless of the content, must appeal to an individual on some level. This is the point of this artform. Aesthetics is the study of how to make these images appealing, from the rule of thirds to the color wheel and color schemes to the selection of the subject matter itself. Each person will have their own definition of what aesthetics are and how each image should be composed, but there are certain constants, such as the rule of thirds and the concepts of complimentary colors.

The final assignment this week was to capture a few pictures using the "framing" technique, essentially framing your subject behind and through some foreground scenery, and create a digital slideshow (shown below) of these images. This was a fun bit of the assignment, as I really like the multimedia stuff.

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While I was doing these assingments, I was reminded of an old project that I'd put together. I wanted to share it here with everyone. This is an image that I composited in Photoshop a while back that I thought really emphasized the whole "framing" concept. I had taken a picture of my car's rearview mirror, and had nice photo of some foliage that just didn't seem to do anything on it's own. I took the two and created this totally new image, unknowingly using the framing technique to add a whole new dimension to both images.

Colors and Lighting

This week's assignment was fun! I played around with a few of the settings on my camera, got to mess around with lights, and contorted myself into the strangest of positions to get my shots.

For the Color Wheel portion of the week, I chose to go with a monochrome color scheme (which happened mostly by accident but I liked how it looked) and complimentary colors:

As for the lighting, I figured that I'd play around with color there, as well. My first shot was a plain-jane diffused room lighting. The others were much more interesting. I took some colored lights and added direction to give the subject a whole new look and feel:

Originally, I had tried playing around with a flashlight and spot light, as well as trying to throw light through a crystal prism, but these just weren't doing anything for me.