Summer School

This summer I'm taking photo-editing again with Mike Swoboda. Here is the first version of the portrait project we are doing.

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#