Thought it looked cool

I took this on the way out of graffiti ally, I used a 1/40 second exposure, then I twised the camera while I was taking the photo. I thought it looked pretty funky. It has nothing to do with my curiculum Ms. Zannini... just thot it looked cool...

Breaking teh Rules

For these three photos I attempted to break the rules of photography... Which didn't turn out as well as I had anticipated. It was actually difficult to break rules despite the fact that I was not trying to use them, they just turn up no matter what photo you took. So I decided to focus on one rule, the most prominent, the rule of thirds.

For my first photo I was walking behind the group and I noticed that everyone was bunched up, it almost looked like the end of a line. Sometimes if an opening popped up, I could see all the way to the first person in the line. So I took advantage of this and tried to get everyone in the center of the frame, thrying to get everyone the farthest from the "focus points". I didn't really check this photo while I was there, I should have because I think I could have gotten a better one.

My second photo, I like, there are several things that fall just off of the "focus points". I took this on the intersection before graffiti ally, since I had a few minutes to play with settings I took about 7 photos of this. I really liked using a higher exposure because it helped make solid colours "pop" more. You can see this because of the McDonalds sign, the white car and the graffiti to the left of the McDonalds sign. By only eliminating one rule, I was able to allow other to stay therfore creating an enjoyable photo to look at... I think.

For my last photo, I dunno. This was taken by accident. I wanted people in the foreground, but not EVERYONE. I like this one because although people fall on the "focus points", your attention is still drawn to the pink bike because of it's extremely contrasting colour. I think it breaks the rules by breaking the rules. It's cool how the bike is still the main focus point despite the fact that "elements of design" say it should not be. I find it interesting how great this terrible photo turned out!

3rd Alternative Process - MULTIPLE EXPOSURE

For this one I took a picture of Rachel's feet in mid stride in the studio room using 1:1 Lighting. I then brought the photo into Photoshop to add the "board" she is walking on. My original idea was slightly different but I changed it because I though the flat board looked nicer. I then found some pictures of trees and buildings, cropped them out, and printed them onto an acetate.

After my first attempt the photo looked awful due to the crappy printer in the library. So I had Ms Zannini photocopy the paper copies of the pictures I had. Then it looked better. The vertical lines had been eliminated and the photo looked more "full". I also noticed that the buildings and trees looked a little dry. So I added a star field photo I created in Photoshop to add more volume to the photo. Then the photo came together.

My final exposers looked awesome, I made two, one with the original idea of the star field coming out of Rachel's boot, and a second of it just on the board. The one of the stars coming out of the foot seemed to just look better. So I dried it off, slapped it into Photoshop, filled in the background with a gradient, and threw it on my blog.

2nd ALTERNATIVE PROCESSSSSSSSS!

I really LOVED how this process turned out, it was just awesome and funky and... nyuuuuuuuuuugh. I decided to use a shot of buildings I took in Toronto. I thought it would make a really interesting print. When I was making the print I actually had no clue what I was going to put the print on. It wasn't until the day I was exposing my photo that I decided to put it on a shirt that already had a design of a urban setting.

To make the silk screen, I first printed out an acetate of the photo I wanted. When I was in the library I noticed that the buildings alone would be a little boring so I decided to throw the planet earth into the picture, made it look better I think. I then placed them under the screen and flipped the switch, waited 6 minutes and scrubbed like crazy for around 45 minutes. Of course this was all after the creating and painting of the silk screen which was a pain because it stuck to the bottom of the dark room cupboard and was a mission to get out...

When I was printing onto sheets of paper to check my design out, I noticed that one solid colour wasn't that awesome, so I threw some red in there. It was pretty cool and looked even better on the shirt. I was a little disappointed because I got a small drop of red fabric paint of the side of the shirt and forgot to put some spot remover on it and only iron the design. So now I have a silly little line on the side but it doesn't really matter.

All in all it was a pretty awesome silk screen and if I find the time I would like to print onto more shirts! Because Ms Zannini said that she might steal the one I made...

1st Alternative Process

I used one of my photos from Toronto to create this acrylic lift. I tried one before this but it did not turn out as well as I expected, the back was fluffy and I think I did too many layers of gel medium. So I tried with this photo which surprisingly I just snapped when I was walking across a street and Ms Zannini told me to "HURRY UP!!!" For a photo that took little to no preparation, it turned out really nicely.

I printed this out as it was, no alteration of contrast or brightness and taped it down to a piece of construction paper. I then took 3 days to layer on gel medium, I lost count but I think I used about 12 layers by the end. Then I took it to the water and started scrubbing. It took me 2 days to get it right after constantly asking "is this done, can I rub more off?".

When it came to taking the picture, I was stuck. I couldn't find a way to make the picture look "good". I finally asked Ms Zannini how I could make it look nice and she suggested holding it up to the light in the studio. I modified this by placing the picture right on top of one of the lights. It was a little troublesome because it would start to melt and get stretchy if I left it on the light for to long, I had to take the picture reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally quickly. I saw that it still didn't look good enough so I decided to try placing the original photo underneath, it was really cool because it created a sort of reverse duplicate type of effect.

I was then done... ha

The Mona Rachel

The Renaissance was a cultural movement in Europe starting in the 14th century and ended roughly in the 17th century, it was the kick starter for most of today's academic studies as well. These include art, science, literature and an assortment of others. Some of the most influential scientists, writters and artist's lived in this time period. Galileo (a famous astronomer), William Shakespeare (a famous play writer) and Leonardo Da Vinci, the painter of the Mona Lisa, which was the painting subject for this assignment.

The Mona Lisa was an oil painting on a poplar canvas by Leonardo Da Vinci and was a self portrait of Leonardo himself, and took him more than 16 years to complete (1503 - 1519). This was because he was know to start things but never finish them. It is one of the most popular paintings around the world and one the "most used" paintings by the Avant-garde society of art. It is currently on display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, and is priced at 100 million dollars.

For this assignment, I used 1:1 lighting with a shutter speed of 1/40 and an aperture of 4. I had Samantha's laptop right next to me with the Mona Lisa open so I could get Rachel to sit just right! It took me a while to get the lighting right because I wanted to use as little Photoshop as I could. The light on the right side of Rachel's face was very close (only about a meter away), while the second was just a fill light about 3 meters away to help lighten the shadows. I had taken several pictures before I decided to make Rachel have a very subtle smile, I did not notice that the Mona Lisa had a smile till that point and was glad I caught it. One last thing was once I got home I noticed that the eyes on the Mona Lisa are looking directly at the viewer! I could not fix this and had to have a "Mona-Rachel" looking to the left, but whatever, IT'S STILL BEAUTIFUL!

And yes, I procrastinated to post this till Sunday...

Mixed Lighting

For mixed lighting, I decided to half light the face with natural light coming in at a 45 degree angle from above, the devils pit seemed like a good area because of the second floor windows.  I thought that this would help create shadows under the eyebrows, nose and bottom lip without being too harsh. The first photo I took was just using the light on the left from the window in the devil's pit and a large piece of white paper on the right to get a very faint glow on the cheek.
For the second photo I attempted to use the flash as a secondary, artificial, source of light instead of the paper. It did not turn out well. I found that I could adjust the power of the flash and set it to 1/8 the standard power, It gave me this nice result of a slightly more powerful glow on the right cheek and gave a bit more " of a shine" to the hair. It also took me about 5 different shots because Sam kept look directly at the camera!

Studio Lighting

For this photo, I used 0:1 lighting to get a shadow on one side, I also used a light piece of paper to help fill the
left side of her face to that we could still see facial features.

I liked this photo because of it's "sepia" tone. This was unintentional and was pleased and surprised to get such a warm colour. I used 1:1 lighting with the light on the right side being about  meter farther away then the one on the left. The shadow produced on her cheek was purposely done by having her bangs block the light.

This was just one that I took randomly, but I really liked it. The lighting was 2:0 with one facing at a 45 degree angle and one right beside her to get the light to shine behind her head, like I said, this was just taken randomly but it turned out better that some of the ones that I had set up for!

Painting With Light

In this photo, i decided to try something different, instead of just painting light swirls with a flashlight, I tried to see if changing the lighting would affect the picture. IT DID! I was very pleased to see that by flashing the light on different areas and moving while the light was off would create an exact duplicate. I then tried this with myself and was very pleased with the results.

CLONES!

Banner

For this I decided to challenge myself by only using the subject matter I had in a few rooms, I saw that everyone was going all over the place to get their photos and I knew I could find all of them almost from where I sat. This is why all my photos are from the atrium and the art room.

THE FIRST POST!!!

For my first post i decided to post a picture of a lengthened exposure of the north sky. I really like night photography because it allows you to capture things not visable with the human eye. My friend and I attempted to do this during the summer and came up with some good results, although the picture was blurry because of the moving sky we were able to get the image of the milky way and some bright stars.