Visual Dictionary

Our task was to find five words from the Dictionary (that were school appropriate), then use our knowledge of Gimp editing techniques in order to create pictures that explained the meanings of these words.  My five words are: infancy, abduction, creative, omnipotent, unicorn.

5 Senses

I took photos of objects that represented the five human senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.  The sense I thought I got the best shot of was touch. This is shown by a picture of my mom running her fingers through my dogs fur.  I liked this picture because of the way the light is hitting her hand and how you can see reach hair brushing against her fingertips.  When capturing any of the fie senses you want your viewer to be able to feel as if they were experiencing what is going on in the scene.  For example, you want people to be able to smell the burning candle or the freshly cut grass. You want them to feel the soft pillow or hear the music playing in their head.

ISO: 200
Aperture: 4
Shutter Speed: 1/250

Panoramic Assignment

As an open assignment I decided to shoot panoramic images.  Taking panoramic images involves shooting a series of pictures--usually 3-4 pictures--then stitching them together in order to form a single wide-angle image. I took three pictures this week: my backyard, farm fields, and a Sunday school classroom.  I chose to  capture my backyard because we have a lot of long berms and a wide pond. A panoramic image allows we to capture all these objects in one picture.  Also, the farm fields were easy to take a panoramic of because they were long and went on for miles, and since everything was the same it was easy to edit the pictures together. Lastly, I shot the classroom because I wanted a panoramic where you could see the walls coming at you.

ISO: 400
Aperture: 4
Shutter Speed: 1/1600

Portrait Assignment

While taking portraits we used two different lighting techniques. One technique  was called 3-point lighting. In this setup there are three lights: key light, fill light, and hair light . The key light is the main light source and is placed inside of  soft-box.  Fill lights help to eliminate the shadows caused by the key light.  Lastly, the hair light helps get rid of the light that is cast behind your head.  The other lighting set-up, window light, utilizes natural light and is a cheap alternative.  All you need for window light portraits is a window with light coming through a camera with manual settings, and a bounce card (an object with a reflective surface).  The light from the window serves as a key light and the bounce card is like a fill light.

Nature/Landscape Assignment

This week I chose to photograph nature.  Unfortunately, when I went outside to take my pictures it was raining.  This is one of the difficulties in shooting nature, you cant control the weather. Also, lighting can be hard to manage if it is cloudy.  In order to compensate for the lack of light I had to use a larger aperture and slow shutter speed.  The slow shutter speed sometimes resulted in motion blurs from the plants moving in the wind, but for the most part it allowed to needed amount of light into the picture.

ISO: 800
Shutter Speed: 1/1600
Aperture: 6.3

School Context Assignment

Our goal for this assignment was to change the context of the school.  This means we had to take a picture of the school, hallways, lockers, cafeteria, etc., then add something to the picture that usually isn't there. For example, adding an alligator to the pond or having President Obama eating lunch in the cafeteria.  While adding these things to the original photo your main goal is to make it look natural.  One way to make it look more realistic is by adding shadows to your objects. When including shadows you must consider the direction os the sun by looking at our objects' shadows, the size of the object, and how bright the sun is.  If it's cloudy you're object shouldn't have a night black shadow, but a lighter more transparent shadow would be the more natural looking choice.

Motion Demo - Panning

Today we learned how to pan while taking photos.  When panning you follow the moving subject you are photographing until it is in front of you, take the picture, and then continue following the subject as it moves past you.  In order to take these kinds of motion pictures the subject must be moving horizontally across the frame.  If there is any vertical movement the subject will be blurry.  The end result should be a sharp, clear subject with a blurred out background.

Motion Assignment

For this assignment my goal was to capture moving objects.  The picture I chose is of the splash coming out f my pond after a rock was thrown into it.  the key to taking motion pictures is the shutter speed. if you want to freeze the action in time a faster shutter speed is needed, but if you want to be able to see the blurs of the movements you should use a slow shutter speed.  Another challenge is getting the correct exposure. By having a fast shutter speed you are reducing the amount of light allowed into the camera. Likewise, with a slow shutter speed an increased amount of light is captured.  In order to compensate for these conditions adjusting the aperture and ISO settings are necessary.  Another difficulty when shooting motion is being able to take the picture as soon as the required motion occurs.  Timing is very important in getting a quality motion picture.

ISO: 1600
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
Aperture: 3.5

Panoramic Assignment

This week's assignment was to stitch together multiple photos into one wide angle panoramic photograph.


In order to create a panoramic image you must take a series of pictures of the subject and then combine them.  A key part of having the photos flow together well is making sure the exposure is the same for all of them. If the exposures are not the same or at least very close you will be able to see the lines where the photos end after you combine them all.  In order to merge the pictures we used Gimp.  Photoshop also has a merger button that allows you to instantly merge all of your photos. A key part of editing the photos together is blending.  Blending allows you to create the effect that you have taken a single wide angle panoramic photo.

Animals Photo Assignment

For this week's photo assignment I to capture animals.  While photographing animals you want to capture the character of the animal.  If you have a really playful dog taking a picture of it sleeping wouldn't be a good representation of how the dog really acts.  A more appropriate picture would be of it running through the yard or playing with its toys.  Taking pictures of animals is a difficult task since they do not like to remain stationary while you take their picture.  A fast shutter speed is required to eliminate the blur from their movements.  Also, it is impossible to tell when an animal is going to do something photo worthy so you have to remain patient and just wait and see what the animal gives you.

Shutter Speed: 1/250
Aperture: 8
ISO: 800