Bicycle Shooting Assignment
The first step I took to edit this photo in Lightroom was to adjust the white balance. This got rid of any yellow light on the photo. My next step was to adjust the exposure and contrast. This brightened it up a little bit, and adjusting the contrast really separated the gear on the bike (the subject of the photo), from the background. In order to put even more focus on the gear, I used the brush feature to increase its texture and clarity. My final step was to pull down the vibrance and saturation in the background, because the brightness of the grass and trees was taking away from the gear too much. I really like this photo because I think it does a good job of displaying the details and intricacies of the bike, and makes it look interesting and realistic.
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As with all of my Lightroom edits thus far, I began by finding a middle grey in the photo and adjusting the white balance. Wanting to differentiate the tire from the metal parts of the wheel, I adjusted the contrast next. I then approached the tire similar to how I did the gear in my previous photo- by using the brush tool to increase its texture and clarity. Even after this, I still wasn't quite achieving the contrast in the wheel that I had hoped for, and so I used the brush tool to lighten (dodge), the spokes and the metal parts of it, which fixed that problem. My final step was to pull up the vibrance and saturation in the photo, so that the green in the grass and the red reflector would really stand out. Unlike in the gear photo, I wanted this one to be more bright and playful, and I feel pretty good about how it ended up.
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Pattern Shooting Assignment
After adjusting the white balance, I began editing this photo by leaning into the yellowish colour of the wall and its decor and giving it a warmer tint. My next step was to pull up the contrast so that the plates on the wall would look separate and not blend into the wall. At this point it was a little dark, and so I adjusted the exposure accordingly. Following this, I increased the texture of the entire photo so that the intricacies of the wall and the decor would be more noticable. My final step was to make the colours in each of the individual decor plates stand out more by zooming in and using the brush tool to make the green and orange in them stand out. Of all the photos I have edited so far, this one took the longest because of how careful I had to be with the brush tool in the carvings of the plates. My goal was to make the focus of this photo its intricacies and texture, and I am pleased with the outcome.
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The first step I took in editing this photo was to adjust the white balance, which immediately improved the image and got rid of the dark and yellow tints it had before. Then I decided to crop it so that you couldn't see where the chairs end, to make the pattern look ongoing. To make the photo bright, I pulled up the exposure and added a slight cool tint. The biggest problem that I faced is that the wooden spaces between the chairs was very noisy in the original image, which made it look cluttered and messy. To fix this, I increased the clarity in those areas and used the brush tool to turn down the noise. These techniques worked out really well for me, and I ended up with a very bright and interesting pattern to display in my photo taken from a low and unique perspective.
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Autumn Shooting Assignment
When I think of autumn, the first thing that comes to mind is colourful leaves-- exactly my reason for taking this photo. After adjusting the image's white balance, I gave it a warmer, autumn-like tint, adjusted the highlights, contrast, and texture, and slightly pulled up the image's vibrancy and saturation. My next step was to use the brush tool on the colourful tree, as it is the main focus of the photo. I pulled up its clarity, texture, and most notably, its saturation. My last step was to adjust the sky, because the warm tint I used on the rest of the image wasn't really showing up as well there. So, I adjusted its highlights and saturation and managed to get the desired effect. I like the way this photo turned out, as I feel that it does an excellent job of capturing the leaves changing from green to red, and subsequently, the transition from summer into autumn.
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As I mentioned in the previous image, nothing says autumn to me more than bright leaves, making them a common theme in my photoshoot, as is reflected in this image. I did very little editing in this photo because when I took it, the candle was already very obviously in focus, which saved me from having to clarify it and then blur the background accordingly. So, I instead adjusted the image's white balance and cropped it to get rid of a piece of plastic in the background. Unlike in my other photo, I gave this one a cooler tint, which complemented the teal of the candle and connotes the cooler weather that autumn brings. I then pulled up the vibrancy and saturation of the leaf (similar to the last image), and increased the texture just a touch in the foreground of the image in an attempt to give it more depth. I'm pleased with the final product, because the wooden background made for some really interesting texture in the photo.
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Giving Thanks Shooting Assignment
For me, the most obvious way to interpret "giving thanks", was to capture my family enjoying one another's company. This resulted in the photo of my siblings above. After adjusting the image's white balance, I cropped it, trying to keep in mind the rule of thirds, as well as at what point a cropped image looks well-placed and not as if the image is just cut off. After messing around with warm/cool tints for a little bit, I decided to try and make it black and white. I really liked the result, and so I continued by adjusting the photo's highlights, whites/blacks, and contrast, in an attempt to create an interesting looking contrast between the subjects and their environment. Eventually, I settled on the image you see above. As I final touch, I used the burn/darken tool to define the blacks of their eyes better. This photo may be my favourite before/after thus far, because of how dramatically it was changed, and how sweet and artistic the black and white makes it seem.
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For this photo, I wanted to show "giving thanks" by capturing the emotion of joy. So, I had my cousins run towards each other and jump into each other's arms, which made them laugh and become distracted enough that I could get a candid image of them. When I started editing, I adjusted the white balance and cropped it to minimise the amount of background, and to correct the image's balance. Next, I adjusted the image's tint, pulled up its highlights, saturation, and contrast, and overall just brightened it up a little. Following this, I worked a little bit on the girls in the image. I bumped up their clarity, darkened the blacks of their eyes, whitened their teeth, and evened out their skin in some spots. In the future, I might use an actual camera instead of my phone for a picture like this, as it had a difficult time capturing still, clear images of moving subjects. However, I am still happy with the way the photo turned out because of how candid and real the subjects' faces and emotions are.
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Shoe Shooting Assignment
I chose to take and edit this image because of its unique perspective. The majority of the shots I took for this assignment were from my eye level, and so I really liked the way it looked when the camera was at the level of the subject (the shoe, in this case). In lightroom, I edited this by adjusting its white balance, pulling up its exposure and highlights to make the gym brighter, saturating the red parts of the shoe, and using the whitening tools on the white parts of the shoe. This made the shoes look very vibrant and new. I particularly like this photo for its background. Although the shoe is the focus, I feel like the environment, being the court and net, really add to the story that the photograph gives.
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I spent a very long time on this photo compared the the others that I have done thus far, because it started out with experimentation using lightroom and photoshop to change the colour of objects. From the original image, I started by cropping it and brightening it up. I then began by using the brush tool in lightroom to select the parts of the shoe's colours that were to be changed, and then adjusting their hue accordingly. This worked pretty well, but after I was done and had zoomed out to view the entire image, something wasn't looking quite right. I then moved the image over to photoshop, and used the colour picker tool to create various tints, tones, and shades, especially on the laces, to make them look real and to prevent the erasure of shadows. It took some time to properly place shadows and light spots on the laces, but once I was finished I was very pleased by how well this image had set me up for my advertisement.
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Halloween Shooting Assignment
This image took very little editing, because I took it using my mom's professional camera. This way, the subject (the skeleton dog) was already the focus of the image, and the background was blurred automatically, creating the dimension in the photo that I would normally do in lightroom. Instead, I very slightly adjusted the white balance, used the brush tool to select areas such as the eyes and teeth to pull up the blacks, and to pull up the saturation in the flowers and plants to give the photo more colour. I really like this shot because of its delicate and autumn like feel that someone may use to photograph an actual dog, but with a bit of a halloween twist.
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The theme that I chose to uphold throughout this assignment was everyday photos with a scary, Halloween-like twist, and so it only makes sense that this one fits the theme. Also taken with my mom's camera, this photo already had a very defined foreground. So, I chose to focus on emphasizing the skull in the photo, as it is what made it relevant to the assignment. I used the brush tool to pull up the skull's clarity, texture, blacks, contrast, and saturation, so as to really define its details an make it "pop". I am really happy with the way that this photo, along with my theme choice, panned out.
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