project 7: Portrait

Portrait

Model: Canon PowerShot S3 IS

Date: 11/26/2011

Shutter speed: 1/320 sec

F-stop: f/4.0

ISO:

Focal length: 16.4 mm

Tripod: No

Cropping and levels

Portrait-

            Portraits can say a lot about a person. My goal was to take a portrait that captures the essence of an individual and their personality. So who should I take this picture of? I am pretty close with my siblings and so I decided that I would use my sister.  Growing up people have always told us that we look a lot alike but that always bothered my sister. I think that she just wanted the world to know that she is different and unique. My sister has a wild and crazy personality that is filled with colors. She is very funny but honest and if you cross her you will be sorry because she is strong and can hold her ground, attributing to her stubbornness. My sister likes to be different and although she wants to fit in she also wants people to remember who she is. One of my favorite things about my sister is her unique personality.  And that is what I wanted to capture.

            To try to capture the wildness and uniqueness of her personality I short portraits of my sister by the lake where we grew up.  I think that the rocks have many cool colors so we took the pictures in the rocks. I soon learned that taking portraits are a lot harder to take than I originally thought it would be. I tried many shots, shooting her in different poses and changing the setting in my camera. My goal was to find a pose that I thought would capture my sister’s personality and beauty. As I was trying different things my sister was starting to get frustrated as teenage girl get so I had to hope that I had captured her.

            As I was looking at the picture later to decide which one to pick, there were so many pictures that represented her and I had a hard time deciding which picture I liked and I of course wished that I had taken more pictures so that there would be something more magical than what I had shot. But I had to decide so I picked a few and started to edit them. The picture I choose best represents my sister because it shows off her sweet side, while also hinting that she has a darker side.

Project 6: Night and Low Light

Jacobs Ladder

Model: Canon PowerShot S3 IS

Date: 12/05/2011

Shutter speed: 0.3 sec

F-stop: f/3.2

ISO:

Focal length: 12.4 mm

Tripod: No

Cropping, adjusted straightness added a little saturation

Dark Downtown Night Life

Model: Canon PowerShot S3 IS

Date: 12/05/2011

Shutter speed: 0.3 sec

F-stop: f/2.7

ISO:

Focal length: 6.1 mm

Tripod: No

Cropping and levels

Night and Low light

            I found this to be a hard assignment. I had many ideas but I soon learned that my camera doesn’t have all the adequate equipment. So I had to learn how to use my camera and how to make adjustments to make it so I could take the shot. This took some experimenting with different modes and ultimately figuring out how to adjust the shutter speed.

            This first picture I called Jacobs ladder. I took this picture when I was driving around with some of the friends looking for Christmas lights to take pictures of. I saw this and thought that it was really cool. When I was looking at the picture later in Photoshop I was amazed with how it turned out. I cropped it a little as well as changed the level a little. I really like the lights and think that they turned out really well. I named it Jacobs Ladder because as a child in my church there was a picture called Jacobs ladder. It was really pretty and I loved looking at it this picture made me think of it. I know that the picture was not the same the one in the church was more heavenly but none the less I loved the lines and the shapes of the stair way in this picture.

            The second picture is a picture that I took downtown. We were downtown and we were going to take for picture of the neon light signs. The colors can be so sweet but as we were getting out of the car I saw the car I saw this image and thought that it looked magical. It was so dark but these lights had a blue glow to them and the yellow line on the side walk added a little color and life. The trees are dead but there is something about how they wrap around the lights that makes them special and not so gloomy. Overall I think this activity made me learn a lot about the difficulties of night photography and overall I am happy with the end result.