Bonnie - Week 5 - Macro Assignment

 

It's Class Macro Time

 

Starting in Color. Glorious Color!



There's no doubt about it, I love taking pictures of flowers.

 

The shapes, the colors, all the varieties...and whether they're blooming weeds, or not, I just love everything about them! 

 

And this week, I did finally shoot in RAW! I'm still learning the difference in editing for RAW versus other photos, so it's a slow but steady learning curve.

 

Orange Tiger Lily

For this photo I tried to bring a little lightness to the bottom two right flower petals by lassoing and changing the levels. Other than that I increased the color saturation and erased a low hanging stem in the top. Behind the top right hand side petal is a blue hydrangea, and I liked how it blurred out and almost looks like a halo around the flower petal.

Mom's Hydrangea

This hydrangea bush has sentimental value to me as it's a transplanted stem that propagated from my mom's hydrangea bush. I lassoed and adjusted the contrast on the inside by adjusting levels, and increased a bit of saturation overall for color.

Unknown Weed

I have absolutely no idea what this is, but it sprouts up every year in my backyard and I typically chop it down before it fully blooms, so I'm not sure what it would look like flowered. It does have an interesting shape to it, however, so I thought it would make for an interesting subject. For this photo I cropped it and lassoed the bud area and adjusted the levels for brightness.

Heuchera Berry Marmalade

These are the blooming stalks of flowers from a Heuchera perennial that I have in my window boxes. I cropped and rotated the photo so the stem looks like it is dropping from the top, when actually it grows straight up. I lassoed the stalk and brought the levels up to brighten the color and then inversed the selection to reach the outer portion and increased the contrast. There was a section of mismatched bright green color at the top that I erased to keep the blurred silver-grey and black background intact.

Favorite Photo #1

Lupine-Like Weed

These stalk like lupines sprouted up in a pile of dirt we have on the outskirts of our yard that we use to fill in and level areas while we landscape. I'm certain they're nothing more than weeds though. For this photo I cropped and kept the growth angle to keep the photo more interesting, rather than straighten it. I lassoed and feathered the stalk area and adjusted the brightness and contrast levels which brought out the buds that were just beginning to open. I inversed the selection and deepened the contrast of the background. The bokeh background occurred naturally and I really liked the effect of the orbs. The other foliage and other vegetation in the area gave a nice splatter of blurred green and purple/grey in the background, that I really liked, as well.

 

 

 

 

Tiger Lily Revisited

The day after I took the original top Tiger Lily photo I came home just after my husband watered the plants outside so I had an opportunity to catch some water droplets on the flower petals (far right). What I didn't realize was that there was also a bug of some type on the far left upper mid-section, perched on edge of the flower petal, that I didn't notice until I started editing. I tried to crop it to feature the bug, but it pixeled out (in spite of using RAW). I lassoed the bug and feathered and adjusted to brighten it a bit, but unfortunately it's not as prominent as I had hoped it would be. Other than that, the only overall edits I made were to deepen the saturation of color.



 

 

Salvia(?)

This is what I believe is purple salvia that grows outside our entrance at work. It was super hard to focus because the blossoms are so tiny and dainty that it kept changing focus. I just kept snapping away hoping I would catch it and eventually I did! And ... NEWS FLASH!!! Here's where I think I FINALLY learned how to edit differently for RAW. A different screen pops up that allows for individual adjustments of just about everything, so I experimented with every sliding adjustment to some extent in this photo just to see what each would do. Other than editing everything, I didn't crop or straighten anything, allowing the natural formation to exist 'as is'. One thing I noticed when experimenting with the different levels was that the left hand side stalk became more prominent in the photo, which I thought gave a visual balance to the flowering stems on the right.

Favorite Photo #2

 

Ending in Some Beautiful Tones of Black and White

 

After all that color I thought I would end on a more restful bit of black and white.

 

Vinegar Jar

This is the handle of a vinegar jar that we keep on our lunch table at work. I thought the handle made for an interesting shape in macro. Adjusting the levels for contrast and brightness brought out the shadow of the weld, as well as some interesting striations of color in the glass jar.

 

Tea Kettle

Another photo from our lunch area at work, this time a tea kettle. I loved the lines of this cherry red tea kettle, but changed the photo to black and white. There I found another new tool to adjust by color, in spite of being in black and white. When adjusting the red hue, it brought the gray-ish teakettle to a beautiful shiny black. It also increased the reflection of the fluorescent fixture above it. I tried to erase it, but it was blurring it more than erasing, so I "stepped backward" and kept it there as a little window. I cropped and straightened the photo a bit and I really liked the high contrast of the light wall and the dark teakettle.

 

 

Things I learned this week:

 

...another great week for learning how to use Photoshop and I discovered some new settings that I need to experiment more with, specifically:

 

The Black and White Tool pictured below

 

 

...and some things I need to work on like learning how to use the somewhat different editing tools for RAW

 

RAW Editing

 

 

Week 5- macro project

mini acorns

 a screw on the back of a sign in the park

fruit tree

 okra

 bracelets

 flower

it's in the details

Here are my shots for this week. I took shots of my guitar, amp, some decorative rocks, statues on ,y garden, and of course my dog Lola. I tried to focus on areas of an object that would normally be overlooked, and make that the focal point of the photos. I feel I was able to capture some interesting compositions. I tried to make sure that light did not cause any distractions within the composition, hopefully I was able to accomplish this. I have tried to use the feedback from the professor in order to make these photos as successful as possible.

Week 5: Macro

I really enjoyed this week's assignment. I enjoyed shooting ordinary objects and making them unique by focusing on the small details. I also enjoyed shooting the different types of natural flowers which allowed me to capture their beauty. I tried to get as close as possible without loosing the focal point of the shots. It was not an easy task to get as close as I can without beginning to loose focus as I got closer to the object, however, with a lot of practice shots and experimenting different angles and lighting position, I believe I chose the correct photos to post. I edit some of the photos that I took and converted them to black and white while the others I left in color and tried to adjust the color and lighting. I was not sure how I did on the photoshop part but I am looking forward to your feedback so I can keep learning how to edit the photos better.

This is a shot that I took of some coins that I had. I took this shot outside and while I was taking these shots it began to rain which you can see the rain drops on one of the coins. I think the rain drop made the photo stand out which I though it was cool.  

  

  

This is a shot of my wedding rings.

This is a shot of my watch. For this shot I tried to darken the white but had a hard time figuring out how to balance everything.  

These are my 4 year old son's toys which I thought look really cool in macro.

These are more photos of my son's Thomas the Train toys which he is obsessed with.

The rest of these photos where taken at Pardee Garden in New Haven which has a variety of beautiful flowers. Like the photo of the coins, I was able to also capture rain drops on some of the flowers. While taking these shots, I also captured a couple of bees that were on the flowers. I tried to get as close as I can without getting stung. :)

Bonnie - Week 4 Light and Shadow

Week 4: Light and Shadow

 

This week for me should probably be labeled less light and more shadow. I was attempting to find some amazing sunrises or sunsets -- or stormy skies that would demonstrate light better, but my attempts were either thwarted by lack of sleep in getting up early to catch a sunrise, uncooperative weather -- or simply not being able to find what I wanted to take a photo of.

 

So, here's what I have for you...

 

Light:

 

A Bright Idea

For these I took a photo of two overhead lights from a row of many at a restaurant in Fairfield CT. I liked the filament that was visible in the bulbs. I cropped the photo to center the bulbs, and attempted to straighten them. However, because they weren't hung straight to begin with, I tried to find a happy medium. I lassoed the entire middle section to adjust the brightness levels after feathering, so the socket would be better visible against the dark background, but it made the filaments blur a bit -- so I did it in two steps. First I brightened the whole area of bulb and socket, and then I went back in and brought the sockets alone up a bit more. While they still blend a bit into the dark background, they are a LOT better than they were. I played around with black and white for this photo, but I liked the amber tones under the bulbs, from the blurred bulbs behind these two, and I also liked the red color that came out on the top left socket when I increased the brightness. There are also some nice shades of blue that are intermittently picked up from shadows on both the bulb and the sockets, as well as a slight reflection of filament in the bottom of the glass bulbs.  (Favorite #1)

 

 

Lace Curtain Irish

For this I loved capturing both the shadows and light in the window panes from the filtered sun coming through the lace in the early morning. I cropped the photo to remove the window frame and I switched it to black and white. Then I lassoed and feathered the middle portion where the sun was shining in and adjusted the levels to be even brighter to make it the focal point, and then I inversed the lasso section and created a darker contrast in the outer edges.

 

Shadows

 

 

The Cowboy

This is the shadow of my husband, who always wears a cowboy hat, in the midafternoon sun. For this I cropped the photo to just capture his head, and I lassoed and feathered the interior of the shadow to increase the darkness contrast. I contemplated changing it to black and white, but I loved the blue tones that emerged from the darker contrast so I left it in color. Then I used the inverted selection to lighten outside the shadow. Not my favorite picture at all, but I did think the idea was cute, in spite of the execution being a little less than stellar. If it was a sharper shadow it might have been a bit better, as this looks a bit cartoonish. But I did like the beautiful variety of colors that I was able to intensify within the shadow that were not really apparent to the naked eye before editing.

Window Pane Chair

This was the shadow from a chair in a courtyard and I liked the way the chair back curved and gave a soft effect against the hard patio bricks.  I did little more than crop this, and I'm not sure if should have straightened it or not. But straightening it cropped more of the picture out and left less of the patio brick. (see below). For these two photos, other than cropping, I did little to edit it except to use the shadow and highlighting tool, which gave me some nice white reflections in some of the window pane from the chair reflection, and brought out some of the brick texture.

Same as above - Straightened

Tried to straighten the grout lines, which cropped the picture down a bit more. I'm not sure which one I like better...so here are both!

Fencing

This photo I cropped and straightened to align the end post with the photo frame. I lassoed the center portion and feathered and adjusted the middle to a brighter shade to create a focal point. I considered using the erase tool to rid the sidewalk of gum, but thought that it might get a little too perfect looking, and for some reason my photographs seem to accent the grittier side of life.

Cast Iron Pan

This was my brunch dish Sunday afternoon that was served in a cast iron skillet with a porcelain white dish as a liner.  I loved the way the shadow reflected the handle slot in the side of the skillet. For this photo, I changed it to black and white, cropped it and increased the contrast on the pan, then I went in the outer edge of the pan and increased the highlight and contrast to show the hard and uneven texture of the interior of the pan.  (Favorite #2)

 

Where I failed this week:

• Still not shooting in RAW. (Why do I keep forgetting to make this adjustment??)
• Went out to shoot with ideas of what I wanted to capture (sunsets, sunrises, amazing shadows) and of course could not replicate what my imagination wanted to find.

 

What I learned this week.

• Let the picture come to you instead of looking for it. My favorite photos from this week were the ones I  just happened to see, and say, "what a neat picture that might be".
• I love black and white!

 

For this week I intend to add more over the next few days as I relax and let the photos come to me.