Big Project Post 3- Almost there!

Here are some more of my photos to imitate Atget. The sky was overcast that day, and proved somewhat of a challenge both while taking the picture and editing it. With the last one I had a hard time making the buildings seem unique and independent from each other, since they're both brick red.
City Hall remains to be one of my favorite things to photograph, since the architecture is so well thought out and the shadows always fall on it just right- overcast or not!
And since Gloucester doesn't have many fancy stairways that I could get near, I took to getting some of the fire escapes that are around. It took a little bit of finding and creativity to capture a nice composition, but I think that I succeeded.
Oh, and two extra credit images. One in color, one in black and white. The berries were such a nice a red, and it was hard to get my cruddy camera to focus on what I wanted it to, but in the end, it worked out!

 

The signs posed less of a challenge, and I really liked how the tree branches framed it.

On my Way: Big Project- Atget 2

I was able to ask my brother to get the photos from the XD card to a USB. I brought the USB to school and managed to get a few photos edited before Photoshop began to crash on me (even after I moved computers). Here is what I managed to get done.

I walked down Main Street for the first two and photographed the best doors around. I figured if I took pictures of all of them, something had to work out. This one was my favorite. It just seems so peaceful and has a lot of character, with the store hours and the newspaper pasted in the window. It's nice and relaxing to me.
Next I went down to the Dress Code and photographed their window display. It took me a while to get a nice enough angle that didn't have too many reflections off the glass. I touched it up a lot in photoshop, to give it more contrast and depth than it had originally.
The last one is one of my favorite images. The broken docks lead you back to the boat, and in the background is all the buildings along the shoreline. It really says "Gloucester", to me.

Bad Luck in Sydney's World

So I went out on my extra day off of class to take pictures for the project. I did a great job getting many of the images I needed. My computer got a virus, so I was unable to open photoshop to edit them on my own computer, so I figured it wasn't that big of a deal and that I could do it at school.
I get to school and it turns out the SD card was an XD card, and that it doesn't fit int he ports at the school. Hopefully my computer at home will have one that fits it, because if not I will have to go out and retake the pictures, and I will not be happy about that.

Imitating Atget

Usually, Atget would go for a a shot of the whole thing. Whether it be a door, or a staircase, or a statue... but sometimes he would focus in on one small detail of that, or one piece of the whole. I tried to experiment with that in my house with all of the tiny and pretty trinkets we have around. I tried to focus on an aesthetic, compositional appeal of the photograph instead of the subject. Atget's purpose of photography was to document, and for that documentation to look nice. I decided to start focusing on things that looked nice first, before going out and documenting.

Not all of these will make it to the final project.

Composition Challenge

This week we were sent out around the school to take pictures of examples of basic rules for composition. We were told to fill the frame, find patterns that have a break, use the rule of thirds and leading lines, and to frame the subject. I got some decent shots.

 Fill the frame

 Frame the subject. Our principal saw me taking this paparazzi-type shot. Mr. Perreault, though, had no idea I was taking this. He still has no idea I took it. I thought it was a new way to frame something instead of just using the normal doorways and window frames.

 Leading lines. There were plenty of leading lined through the school but I felt the stairs had the most dynamic.

 Patterns. The lockers have locks and it is suddenly broken off by the two that don't. This is also a little bit of leading lines.

I had the most trouble with rule of thirds. Mostly, just finding something to use as the subject. I heard Mr. Enos dilly dallying down the hall with his class and decided to see if there was anything in there I could use. I explained to them what the rule of thirds was, before spying Manny in the corner and using his skull as my focal point for the rule of thirds.

Cute cups

I forgot to post these cute cups. I'll edit them for officially turning them in on Google+ but these are just being plopped here.

Natural Light! (Finally!) - Edit

For this assignment I made sure that I would take the camera out on a day that I ran into a lot of people. It worked and I took many photos of people, but only two subjects came out pretty nice. It difficult to make it so that the backlight wasn't blocking out the figure entirely, so I had to shift my brother around the kitchen to get it just right.

My brother is always happy to help, although you could tell by his nervous half smile that he doesn't like getting his picture taken too often. Afterwards he says "Photoshoot's over! I'll be in my trailer!" before retiring to his bedroom.

We look so alike.

Then I went to Pleasant Street with a friend, where a friend of hers was waiting for her friends. Unfortunately my friend was sitting in front of the window and I had issues with the backlight, but I managed to get some nice candid shots of her friend!

This last one is my favorite.