Anything But Clothes!

In our ABC (Anything But Clothes) photo shoot, we spent a lot of time and effort into everything - from our outfits, hair and makeup, and the actual pictures itself. In this picture, we are outside and you can see the grass and trees in the background. You can't really tell, but there's a dumpster behind me which fits into our theme of the shoot. We chose to do trash items. Carmen is wearing newspapers, Ava is wearing toilet paper, and I'm wearing a trash bag. These are all items that you would find at the dump and we chose this location specifically for the dumpsters. The models are close to the camera, but far enough to see the outfits that we worked so hard on. For the most part the image is in focus, but on the bottom and the right side, you can see that it's a little blurry. This was done accidentally. I photo shopped this picture up a little bit because it was way too light and there were empty spaces above our heads. I cropped it, changed the contrast, and converted the photo to black and white. We were trying to show the life of those people who have no clothes to wear and spend their time digging through trash to get by. We took an ordinary trash bag and turned it into a dress. And with a little creativity, we made an exotic looking newspaper dress and a flow-y toilet paper gown! It was difficult looking for a picture that I liked enough to put on my blog because one of us would always be blurred out. Or Carmen would do that grunt kind of look with her eyes. But for the most part, I believe that this photo shoot was extremely successful. Me and my group put a lot of effort into this (especially Krystle) and it was definitely rewarding to see this as our end result.

Manjari Sharma

I never really thought that there was too much of a difference between a portrait and a snapshot. I just thought that a picture was a picture and that was that! But by reading the Manjari Sharma article, I learned a lot more about the differences between these two types of photography. This article explained that a snapshot is a a posed picture that really has no meaning. It could be a picture of you and your family taking a picture in front of the new family car and it would be categorized as a snapshot because it is a picture that is somewhat staged and pretty much fake. When I found out that this is what a snapshot is, I figured that a portrait is more of a candid picture. I realized that I was wrong and even a staged picture that you would think would be categorized as a snapshot may actually be a portrait if there is meaning in the photo. A portrait doesn't always have to be candid, but just as long as it has meaning and it isn't staged, then you can give it the title of one.

Manjari Sharma's portraits are amazing. I really enjoyed looking at the pictures of the people that she took in the shower because it shows how vulnerable we are when we're doing something thats comfortable to us. I believe that we are our true selves when no one is around and Manjari showed through her pictures that we don't have to put on a mask for anyone when we are alone. This is a brilliant idea to photograph people in their shower because the intimacy shows that everyone is human, we all have feelings, and everyone has that sensitivity and vulnerability in them - even though we may not think that from the things that we initially see and judge them by.

Photoshop Brushes

For this assignment, we learned more about photoshop and how to use the brushes. I really enjoyed this assignment because I learned to take an ordinary photo and turn it into something more interesting. I had trouble figuring out what I wanted to paint onto my picture, so I just clicked on a random brush and started doodling all over it. I was seriously getting really frustrated but then Ms Miles came by and said that the pink random squiggly line that I had looked good. I was surprised and when I looked at it a little more, I began thinking more into it and seeing that it could be something I could work with. I used pink because it matched my shirt and looked on the color wheel and used a sort of blue-ish green as my other color. I decided to draw another crooked line with that color and then finished it off with a little bit of pink at the bottom.

Even though this assignment was difficult, it was still fun. The project that we did in class helped me a lot because I learned that it helps if you have something touching all the sides. I tried my best on this photo assignment and I think that I did a good job for my first time using brushes!

Soft Lighting

Original Photo

Soft Lighting

In this photoshop assignment, we had to make our picture and the lighting look softer. I did everything correctly and followed along as the teacher was doing the steps, and although I got confused, my picture turned out good. The process in editing this picture wasn't difficult at all because of the help we got from the website and the teacher. I thought it would look just a bit more lighter on my face, but I can definitely see the difference. There is more of a angelic glow to me and I am much lighter.

Photobooth Assignment

This photo booth assignment was one of my favorites of this semester. I think the reason for that is cause we got to take pictures of ourselves instead of other people. I mean, we're always fooling around on the photo booths anyways! Haha. I took about 20 pictures on the photo booth and it took forever for me to figure out which ones I wanted to use. I chose these four specific pictures because it shows my different personalities. My crazy, ghetto, hippie, and "just Chelsea" sides :) So this assignment was a personal kind of thing as well. Although I had tons of fun taking these pictures, it was SUCH a pain trying to pick which ones I wanted to use. I also had a hard time with photoshopping this and putting it all onto one page. I was confused with how to crop, copy, and paste it. & had trouble with the spacing of it.  But it ended up turning out good! :) Yay!!

Photoshop Elements

In this photo, I used a picture that I shot back in the beginning of the school year of Briana and put it onto a picture of clouds. I first opened the photo of Briana and used the lasso tool to cut around her body. I then opened up the picture of clouds and pasted the cropped picture of Briana. I began to move her around and see where I should position her. I tried putting her on the bottom right and then the top cnter, but positioning her in the center seemed perfect. The edges seemed a little rough so I used the eraser tool to make the edges seem softer. I wanted to make this picture seem as realistic as possible and not as if I copied and pasted.

I love the way my model looks like an angel in the clouds looking at the earth below. I think I did an amazing job even though I had difficulties with erasing (because I'm not that patient and my hand is so shaky! lol). But other than that, I actually enjoyed editing this and the best part of this project is the fact that I did it all by myself! (with help from Ms. Alvarez :P )

Studio Lighting

In this assignment, we had the opportunity to work with studio lighting. In this figurative photo, I shot Darchelle and Janay in front of a white background. It is a candid picture of them laughing about a joke that was made. The image is in focus and the tone of this picture is very interesting. This picture was taken indoors and the image turned out darker than I had planned. I don't think my work was as successful as I had hoped it would be because the lighting is more focused on Janay than it is on Darchelle. I should have had Darchelle move into the light more or moved the light back. There is also an akward gap between the two models. Other than that, I love how naturally the models are posed in this picture since it's candid. I also love the way the shadows add that extra flavor! (: