Here's my top 10 favorite photos I took during ART-264 at CCC&Ti:

10. Leaves

I bought my first camera a couple weeks into this class. Hopefully you can see progression of skills during these photos because I was learning a ton through the assignments and pictures I took for fun. This picture of leaves was from the first set I turned in after buying my camera and it still blows my mind how much detail shows up. 

9. Piano

This was also one of the first pictures I turned in taken with my camera. This is my mom's real favorite child, her baby grand piano. Again, I'm still shocked at how much detail a real camera can capture over an iPhone camera. If I were to do it again, I could definitely frame things better but I don't think the end result would be too far different.

8. Mini Pine

This is still an early picture but I'm still happy with the result. The color of the tree pops, I picked the right time of day so the lighting is nice and warm and the framing is pretty good.

7. Indiana Pt. 1

I've found that one of my favorite subjects to capture is my dog, Indiana. Indiana is a 3.5 year old German Shepard and he is always unpredictable when you turn the lens towards him. This photo is a little over edited but it brings out the color in his eyes and face. Trust me, you're gonna see more of him very soon on this list.

 

6. Fabricated Fiction

The prompt for this assignment was to create an image that feels like it's part of a story or tells a story within itself. So, I grabbed my brother, Andrew, shoved one of my guitars in his hand and told him to be creative. I had the idea of a young musician performing in his backyard to a crowd of imaginary fans. That resulted in some great shots of Andrew putting on his best country megastar act that the world won't see until I need to blackmail him. We reviewed those, decided against them, went back to the drawing board and came up with this image. It could be a performer starring in a wistful music video or it could be the same young musician from earlier playing his heart out to the pines. I think the open-endedness of it is good because it allows the viewer to use their imagination a little bit.

5. Indiana Pt. 2

I love these two pictures of Indiana because you can see the exact moment I call his name, which in turn, reveals my involvement in the making, not taking, of the photograph. Not to mention, he looks regal and wild poised in the edge of our woods, which is exactly what he wants you to think of him. If he had an instagram, this would be his profile pic and I would have to tag him in videos of him tangling himself up with a stick or lounging on his back in the yard to show what he's really like. 

4. Indiana Pt. 3

This is one of the aforementioned pics of the regal beast lounging about. This photo was part of a set I turned in based of color prompts, like black and white only or analogous colors. This was one using a limited color palette. Its subtle but the leaves/woods are all one color and the yard is one color with a harsh line where they meet. It makes Indiana stand out and it draws you eye to the two different sections of the background. 

3. Indiana Pt. 4

This final picture of Indiana uses a nice soft light and I really like how it makes his coat look and it makes his eyes stand out to me. Also, if you look close, there's some subtle brown highlights on his nose that pop under certain lighting.

2. Solid Color

My top two pictures feature my sister, Anna. However, my pride in these two photos are not in how I captured the subject, but the background. This portrait was the one I used to showcase solid color. Of course, the solid color comes from my mom's azalea bush. Her prized plant is big but it ain't quite as big as shown. I used photoshop to duplicate a part of the bush several times to create the piercing wall of color and then add a little bit of an iris blur to hide my work. I think the result is pretty good. 

 

1. Analogous Color

I did a better job on this photo, so it's my number one. I filled the frame with Anna's face a little more with this one and I used my duplicate flowers more and I think it resulted in a more full, solid background. The mask was a prop to add a splash of color that was close on the color wheel to pink and admittedly, the photoshop job on it was a little more jarring than anticipated. Turns out, white is actually hard to recolor. But that just means my chopped and shopped azalea bush is all the more real since it gets paid less attention than before.

Final Thoughts: I learned a ton in this class this semester and hopefully my pictures show it. I think the most important lesson I learned was that there is a time and a place for heavy editing but more often than not, simple, subtle adjustments are more than enough.