my boom boom " s o m e t h i n g . d i f f e r e n t "

-LINK TO WEB ALBUM-

//.info!
A lot of work was put into the blended pictures, hope you enjoy them.

-research on photographers to come eventually-

//.info!
For this assignment I have taken a few pictures in the studio, but not so many because I was mainly posing for the others to take pictures. And for the ones I took, I tried my best to come up with the most unusual and unique lighting setup I was able to by using more than two lamps or by using two 500w lamps and leaving one on the ground. Most of my pictures were taken outside the studio, however very close attention to lighting was paid, and there was a lot of experimentation that took place. I have bought a big bounce flash for my camera, the canon 580 EX II, and experimented with bouncing the light from white pieces of paper held by assistants in the air, white ceilings, white floor tiles to white cars and vans. I am more satisfied with the results I got outside of the studio than inside because the backgrounds and the lighting is more intriguing.
LINK TO IN-STUDIO ALBUM
LINK TO OUT-OF-STUDIO ALBUM



//.best 2 studio pictures:

//.best 2 OUT-of-studio pictures:

//.best 3 pictures:



//.info!
Original lighting, taken at a dance show. Fast shutter//high ISO, f1.8.





//.info!
Picture taken at the same place with a slower shutter while the strobe that was on stage was firing. That's why the motion is at the same time continued and stopped with no blur in between.






//.info!
Dance performance again, stopped motion due to fast shutter speed. The high level of brightness outside helped quite a bit.

//. o r i g i n a l p i c t u r e




//.edit01


//.edit02


//.edit03


//.edit04


//.edit05



//.edit06



//.info!

To begin with, all of my pictures are edited in Adobe Photoshop, I have more experience with it and i feel more comfortable than using Picasa. It is quite a big process for each picture so i won't be able to go in details but here's a rough idea to what i did to each one:

*sharpening//color balance// contrast was applied to every picture*

//.edit01 - I duplicated the original layer, I turned the duplicate black&white and then with a layer mask I let the color from the one underneath come out. With a big soft brush I further added more yellow around the girl. I manually blurred and pixelated the bottom of the picture, but it is a very subtle effect. And last but not least i added text. [the picture was also cropped]

//.edit02 - Very thin crop of the picture, I played abit with the colors to make it more lively. With the selection tool I made a barcode-like selection and I used lens blur to blur it.

//.edit03 - Image cropped again, turned 180 degrees, black&white, and with the selection tool I duplicated only certain parts of the original layer and i moved/rotated them over the original layer.

//.edit04 - Image cropped, transformed to black&white and I played with the curves after for that "tint" effect. Furthermore, I used color brushes big and small, sharp and soft for more details.

//.edit05 - Image black&white + tinting + text.

//.edit06 - Image black&white + selection tool + lens blur outside the selection made + smudge tool at the bottom of the selected box.

//.general
All the effects I tried turned more or less very successful, and I almost equally like all the pictures. I am not such a big fan of black&white, neither of sepia, I used to be and I had played with this effect in the past a lot, but now that my camera can analyze so many colors I don't see the point to waste them. My favorite edited picture is edit02 because I like to play with composition and cropping the picture in formats that not everybody is used to look at and because I really like how the colors turned out. My strongest picture in my opinion is edit01 because of the emphasis on one color and because of the message sent through the picture + text.

// MY A L B U M


// R E S E A R C H [to come shortly 19.02.09 sorry for the delays]


//.01 HENRICARTIER-BRESSON

//.02 WALKEREVANS

-What is the resolution?
6.3 megapixels.

-What kind of media storage does it have?
CompactFlash SanDisk Extreme IV 8.0GB.

-How do you download images to the computer?
I use a universal memory card reader that I connect to my computer via a mini USB cable.

-What is the name of the cord connecting the camera to the computer?
The original cord supplied with the camera is IFC-300PCU.

-How many low res images can you store on your disk?
> 999 JPEG images.

-How many high res images can you store on your disk?
> 999 JPEG images [i did not calculate exactly and teh number on the camera only goes 3 digits high, but with 8gb i can store somewhere near 3500 high res pictures. However the camera is 5 years old now and after 1000 or so pictures it becomes almost unusable, because its processor was not conceived to work with such large amounts of data.

-What kind of image (file format) is stored on disk?
JPEG and RAW.

-Do you have a camera manual? Have you read it?
Yes, I have a camera manual and I have read it more than once.