Black and White Assignment

This week we're taking pictures in color and converting in the photo editing program of our choice to black and white.Here is the link to the photos I turned in for this assignment.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16844826@N07/sets/72157622653439076/

Macro or Getting in Close

I needed to read the instruction booklet to learn how to use the macro and super macro functions on the camera. Wind was a problem for the outdoor flower shots. Without a tripod, moving the camera after focusing was a problem. Choosing which area to focus on was a challenge. I quickly realized I was using a camera and not a microscope. I backed off a little more and got better pictures.

Here is the link to see my first attempt at using the macro functions.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16844826@N07/sets/72157622488209107/

Portrait Lighting

Tony calls it the $20 portrait studio. I had an old clip on desk lamp, so my garage studio was only $13. I had the subjects too close to the background. They should have been 3 – 4 feet from the screen. Here is the link to see the portraits I took.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16844826@N07/sets/72157622543962024/detail/

Cropping

I wanted to see how some of the landscape assignment photos looked cropped and with type as if they were books or a pamphlet.

Landscape Assignment

This week we are to turn in about 50 images of landscapes. Tony wants us to vary the exposure compensation on a few. Here is the link to the images I'm turning in.

Converting Color Images to Black and White

This is a class exersise I did in the photo editing class I took this summer. We used Adobe Lightroom 2 for this tutorial. The middle image was made by converting to greyscale. The bottom image has the saturation and vibrance increased. The blue was decreased to darken the sky. The yellow and green were decreased to darken the ground. A brush and mask were used to brighten the road and areas of the mountain.

Woodland Restoration

For the past 6 years I have been restoring the woodland of our subdivision's common ground. Eight years ago I cleared the honeysuckle from the portion of my backyard that borders the common ground and made a shade garden of ferns, hostas, ornamentals and a few native shrubs. The common ground portion has been planted with native plants. Over 3,500 yard waste bags of honeysuckle were hauled out over the past 8 years. After the bush honeysuckle was removed, winter creeper and Japanese honeysuckle started to become problems. These have been very aggressively removed over the past 2 1/2 years.

Rob Emmett, the forester for the Department of Conservation, for the St. Louis area made a field visit in December 2007. He gave me helpful information on future maintenance and encouraged me to enter the project for the Missouri Arbor Award of Excellence. In January 2009 I was notified that the project won a Citation of Merit. In March I went to Columbia, Missouri to a conference sponsored by the Urban Forestry Council and the Department of Conservation, to receive the award.

Flash Assignment

The assignment this week is to use 3 different types of flash techniques. I mostly worked with fill flash but did a few slow sync and freeze action. Trying to put enough flash on my black poodle KT to see her face was difficult in bright sun or twilight. Here is a link to see the the photos I turned in.

http://picasaweb.google.com/brsenti/FlashAssignment#

A Well Socialized Dog

This video will show how years of obedience classes, practice and socializing a dog can get great results.

Photoshop Transform options

Each fish was copied from the same fish and is on a separate layer. The transform options of scale, distort, skew, rotate, perspective, and flip horizontal were used to get the effect of different fish. The hue, saturation or brightness was changed on each fish. The original fish had a light reflection near the tail and several identifying markings around the eye that were changed. A good selection is critical.

Photo story

The assignment that is due in two days is to shoot a photo story. Tony Doesn't want us to simply shoot an event. He wants us to go inside the event and tell with pictures how the person does the process. My neighbor,Seth, likes to ride his bicycle on Sunday mornings. He was very patient and let me take pictures of his morning routine getting ready to go cycling.

Here is the link to see the photos I took for this assignment.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16844826@N07/sets/72157622234354129/

POSTERS

I really like making posters. These two were made for previous classes I took at St. Louis Community College, which I'll just call in future posts Meramec. That's the name of the campus, named after the Meramec river which is nearby. The Cuban poster was made in Adobe Illustrator The assignment was to make a protest poster. I got the idea when I heared the news that Fidel Castro was turning power over to his brother. The concert poster was done in Photoshop. Trio Globo was here last spring and our class made posters for the event. One of the posters was used in the school newspaper but it wasn't mine. It was the first time I used Helvetica. Now I use it ad nauseam. Sizing and moving the graphic layers around the page is my favorite part of the project.

Replacing the sky with Photoshop

The photo was taken on the Aqua Caliente Indian Reservation in Palm Springs. It's a California fan palm oasis. The palms need a permanent water supply such as seeps, springs and streams.

Some oasis are along fault lines where water is pushed to the surface. I've been to several oases in Arizona and California. There are also a few in southern Nevada.

After selecting the sky I filled it with the color of the sky from a different image I took the same day. I used a mask and the gradient tool to get the lighter color by the mountain. I got some banding which I corrected by adding a small amount of Gaussian blur and then some noise.

Learning how to shoot a photo story

The last hour of today's class was spent outdoors as Tony explained how to shoot a photo story. It was a beautiful morning. Unfortunately nice mornings in early September remind me of 9/11. I've posted some pictures of the class and Tony. Some of us took turns being the subject or director. Holly, who worked for a photographer after high school, was getting all these amazing shots from different angles. Johnny as a director was creating all kinds of scenes. There's a lot of young talent in this class.

I cropped these photos, using the front photo option in Photoshop. All 3 photos are the same size and resolution. They align nicely when uploaded. Without using this option, it's harder to do this.

I didn't take enough pictures to have a good section from which to choose. The assignment for this weekend is to take pictures that tell a story. We need to get at least 50 pictures put on our photo site. The challange will be to figure out what's going to be the story. I find it's much easier to be told what to shoot.

Palm Trees

I've been fascinated with palm trees for years. There are two species of palms, in this picture, taken in Palm Springs, California. The taller ones with narrow trunks are Mexican fan palms. The shorter ones with the thick trunks are California fan palms. The Mexican fans have a lighter colored trunk and usually are flared at the base to give it more stability. My niece Rayna, who also likes to identify palms, calls it a trumpet bottom. The California fans have a dark trunk, and usually have a bigger petticoat or shag hanging below the leaves. In cities in Arizona and California it's common to see them planted near each other, and it's usually easy to tell the difference. Along the gulf coast and lower atlantic states the Mexican fan is way more frequently planted than the California fan palm.

Teaching your dog the finish

Some of you couldn't open the mp4 video file I emailed. I couldn't get a quickTime movie small enough to email. I'm posting the file so you can view it.

portrait assignment

Getting people to relax when I did this assignment was difficult. I found that if I told them that we wanted to get a nice casual picture that they could use for work, we got better results. Two of the people publish articles and newsletters and they were excited about getting a good portrait.

Photo Essays

I enjoy making photo essays. This summer I took a photo editing class with a great instructor, Michael Swoboda. We covered topics like typography, history of photography, architecture, art history, design, color theory, and an endless list of other subjects. I started putting together these photo essays on 11" x 14" paper, and would bring them in the morning to the group I have coffee with at Einstein's each morning. Nobody would read the text if it was more than a few lines. The challenge was to edit the information.

Here are two of my favorite subjects, the International Typographic Style and the font Helvetica. I spent the 5th grade in Munich Germany in 1955 when my father was in the Army. I noticed this style that I didn't remember seeing in the States. Last year I got into a Helvetica frenzy, and used it for almost every poster I made. I couldn't get enough Helvetica. There even is a feature length film made for its 50th anniversary in 2007. I don't think any other font has a movie.

Here's a link to see more of my photo essays.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16844826@N07/sets/72157622102764261/detail/

Dog Practice

I used the rectangular marquis tool in photoshop to make this graphic. Each selection is on a different layer. After I pasted the selection on its layer, I deleted it from the source layer. This prevented me from overlapping selections. Another way is to make all the rectangles on one layer and use it as a clipping mask. I like the first way best,because then I could move the layers around and elongate the nose.

This morning we practiced the individual exercises for the obedience trial next month. I made a video of the retrieve over the high jump. I put the camera on a small tripod and put it on the hood of the car. On one retrieve she was slow to return but had a good finish. We did it again and she returned great but had a sloppy finish. I spliced the two clips together and there is a rough transition because we are in different locations. I'm going to have to start using Final Cut instead of iMovie. I love iMovie because it's so easy.

I haven't started the portrait project for class yet. Maybe this afternoon.

Dog Training

We're busy getting ready for two obedience trials in October. KT got her AKC Companion Dog title in June. Now we're working on Companion Dog Excellent. Last month we had difficulty with the retrieve over the high jump. She would nicely jump on the way out but would either just look at the dumbbell or if she picked it up, she wouldn't jump on the way back. We practice before dinner when she is hungry and I give her a piece of chicken each time she brings back the dumbbell. She's now so eager to do the retrieve, a few times she started the retrieve without waiting for the command.

She also started cutting to the right on the broad jump. I put a large traffic cone past the jump to make her go down the center. We are now down to a little plastic bottle. Each week I use a smaller object.

There is a portrait project due next week in the photography class. It will be a challenge to see if I can make a modern style photo portrait. I usually end up with some Edwardian looking picture with a dazed pensive stare.

The picture of KT is after she ran though some weeds. It takes a long time to get out the seeds and burs out of poodle hair. The pollen comes out only with a bath.

white balance

ISO 80 1/6 f 2.6 tungsten setting

auto white balance

ISO 800 1/60 f2.6 tungsten setting

The assignment was to take a a series of images using the different white balance settings in the camera. That was easy; posting the pictures and linking them to the blog site seemed hard at first but now is easy. I wasn't the only one who had difficulty. Tony spent an hour linking each blog site to the class site and helping the class link their blogs to their photo sites.

We took pictures in class today under low light with different ISO settings and no flash. I forgot to change the color balance back to auto, after the last assignment. It was on the tungsten setting. The lighting in the room is mostly florescent with some recessed tungsten bulbs. THe tungsten setting wasn't bad. Here is a comparison.

Morning in the CVT lab

One of the neighbors gave me their plastic playpen that their daughter outgrew.I offered to pay them, but they refused. They said that it was for when I pruned their linden tree. I'm using it for Peggy's dog Ruby that I dogsit 3 days a week while she is at work as a school counselor. Ruby's 6 months old and is up to 6 hrs without an accident in DaBou's large crate. The playpen is much better and I made a video of the 3 dogs this morning. Put it in mp4 format and medium streaming video. The screen size is small but the 3 minute video with soundtrack and went down to 4 MB and was easy to email.

Neighbors and friends have started asking me to come to their home and pay me to make videos. I need to get my skills up before I would think of accepting payment. A better video recorder wouldn't hurt. Also have gotten two requests to take dogs for the day and train them. Getting KT ready for the Obedience trial in October is keeping me busy, not to mention taking class at Meramec. Since I retied 10 years ago, I'm busier than when I worked.

First Day of Class

Our instructor, Tony Carosella, held our interest as he outlined the course, and showed us the links in Blackboard he created instead of having to buy a book. He showed slide shows and videos done in last semester's class. Nobody was surfing the internet or on Face Book. I've had classes where the instructor droned on, and over half the class was surfing.

Setting up this blog was part of our first assignment. It will be linked to the other class member's sites and our photo sharing sites. Looks like it will be much better than putting the work on the school server.

Looks like I won't be able to check out a GL2 video camcorder. Janet explained the politics. CVT purchased 6 and there is a total of 11. The Multimedia class in the Art Department and the Movie Making class in the Mass Communications Department want them. I'll keep using my point and shoot and using IMovie. There's plenty to learn in this class. Next semester I'll take the Multimedia class, and check out the Canon GL2.

I'll post the videos and you can be the judge if they are getting better.

Hope to post after Thursday's class,

Barry