Portrait

For the portrait photo I used a simple point and shoot camera. My model was Christina and the assignment was to use only window or door lighting. I finished taking the photos in about 10 minutes and had the pleasure of having a few friends outside the doorway making Christina laugh which helped the photo a lot. So, here in this photo she's obviously laughing, Showing emotion, which is what portraits do best. I enjoyed taking photos with my friends and I enjoy how the photos all came out. Including the 'blooper' photos shown below.

Group Photos

We had to work with a group this time to do some photos. Our theme was the school, and the different majors here at SDSCPA. So, we chose a few models, and went on with our shoot. We had it all mostly planned out, but the second we started doing the actual shoot, Things got pretty chaotic. It was fun though, and I really enjoyed working with the professional equipmen and the group of photography students. In this particular photo I chose, We featured the Visual Arts to the right, Drama department in the middle, and Musical arts to the left. We did alot of different photos, but I really enjoyed this photo the most.


There is one more photo we did that I printed that I will surely be posting when I get it scanned. This second photo wasn't for the shoot. It was the end of the shooting, and we had all the shots we needed and more, but we still had to photos left to take on the film. I decided to snap those two of the models sitting down and enjoying themselves. It's almost like a portrait of the four. But I'll relflect more on that photo when it's uploaded.

Portraits Vs. Snap Shots

Portraits. They focus on the subject's face, expression, and emotion in the model. Capturing an intimate moment. Manjari Sharma has a strong connection with the models, which seems to make them a bit more comfortable during the shoot. Making it alot more natural aswell. This method seems like a very good idea. The more natural the connection is, the better the portrait becomes, and the better it can capture the expression and emotion in the model. Manjari seems to very much enjoy working with people, and capturing these lovely portraits.
Snap Shots. Consist of posing. When you snap a photo, usually your model is posing. Even if you don't mean to, or tell them to. Example? Last day of school, all your friends get together, get in a group, make some funny faces and snap! You have a memorable photo, but it's not a portrait. Snap shots can be as good as portraits, but they don't have much of a one on one connection with the photographer/viewer and the person in the photo. But they can look very nice.

I'm looking forward to the Portrait assignment. I've actually done quite a few portraits on my own, and I'm very proud of them. They capture alot, and they're usually very deep. They can capture a person's personality in a simple 2D photograph. It's quite amazing.

Putting Ourselves Somewhere Else.

Did I ever mention I met Robert Downey Jr.? Haha. Alright, well, for this assignment we were supposed to use some Adobe Photoshop skills and put ourselves somewhere else, in another photo, add a word or number, and use two techniques we didn't already now how to do (The right way). I couldn't find any good photos and then I stumbled upon this one, and thought it'd be a pretty good try. (Pretty funny too..) My two techniques were desaturation (the correct way) and a inky, cartoon like effect called poster edges. My word, obviously, is IRONMAN.. Which is debatable for being two words, but I hope it's all good. I had fun doing this project, even though it took forever to find a good photo of myself and to put myself in. Pretty sweet. Learned how to desaturate things in several different ways, and how to add a cool outline effect on photos.

Extra Credit

We were told to write about a photographer or artist as extra credit.. Well the particular artist I would like to focus on is Chris Ryniak.
Unfortunately, There really isn't even much about him on the web. In fact, he's not even on Wikipedia. But I did repeatedly find a little bit about him, about 3 paragraphs. So. Let's get started shall we?
Chris Ryniak was born in 1976 in the Detroit suburbs. As a child he spent every Saturday morning watching the Saturday Morning Cartoons and when he wasn't doing that, usually he was turning over numerous rocks and such in search of insects, reptiles, and ghosts.
As a graduate and former instructor of the Ringling School of Art and Design, he's now a painter and sculptor of all kinds of odd little creatures. His work has been exhibited in galleries through the entire US as well as Hamburg, Germany and Rome, Italy. In the US, his odd little creations showed up in Miami, LA, and New York. His paintings have also been published in many periodicals and various books in the US, As well as Singapore and Europe.
Now days, Chris resides in nice coastal Ohio Dutch Colonial with his two children, his wife, a lizard, a frog, and a cat. Though he still has yet to find any ghosts.
As for my personal opinion on his work; His creations are very bizarre and creative. They seem to have a pretty inspirational effect as well. I personally love his sculptures. The detail is astounding and the exotic blend of reality and cartoon like design on these creatures of his are just amazing.
I would like to invite you, to see these pieces for yourself. Simply click this link here... Be sure to check out all of the gallery. The New, The Old, and The Dimensional.
(The Dimensional works are probably my favorite.)

Quite sadly this is all I could obtain on this particular artist at the time, but I do thank you for reading.

Softening Effect

This was the finished product after using the Softening Effect which I learned from Ms.Miles and the tutorial at photoshopessentials.com. But I don't think it really added much to the photo because the way the lighting was on the original, it already lacked a bit of focus making it apear blurred/softened. So.. Not much change, but I did go through all the steps.

Photoshop: Brushes

We were told to use 3 colors that made sense, as in, they fit the image. Complimentary. So I chose red, obviously, black and white. The color scheme puts alot of emphasis on the color red and somewhat the black due to contrast. I'm actually really proud of how these came out.
The first image was my first experiment with new brushes. I found alot of cool brushes, but I've always loved the smoke and light streak brushes the best, and so I decided that I would use them in this project. In order to put most of the patterns behind myself, I had to select the background carefully with the quick selection tool, and therefore make it only possible to paint and edit the white space. I had to use a different layer for each color for a layered, thick, effect. After, I 'deselected' and put just a few streaks, smoke effects ontop of myself, to give it some depth.
The second image was a combination. You can't see it as well, but the brushes used in the first image, are behind the smoke layers. Basically, for the new smoke layers, I just repeated the same process with new layers. It then occured to me, maybe it's a bit too crowded? After deciding that it wasn't too crowded, because the intent was to make it all seem hectic around myself, like symbolic..
For the third image, I decided to try a new little experiment, that was with the saturation and the gradient tool. I had to copy every single layer, and merge them so that they'd All be effected by the saturation, and just in case I wanted to toss it. After playing around for a bit, I got the effect I was looking for. So everything on the edges got kindof dark, and dull, and greyscale. I actually really like the third one as well.
In the end, the three images almost turned into a step by step piece. But I'm proud of the way it looks. I've always loved Adobe Photoshop, and I love experimenting with new brushes and techniques, so this assignment was pretty fun for me.