Photo Contest Entry

American Glory; 4-7-2011, 10:32pm; Idaho Falls, Idaho; f/2.8; 1/15; iPhone 4

I went to the fireworks show in Idaho Falls with the full intention of getting some really cool fireworks shots. i didn't realize until me and my friends got their that I had forgotten my camera. Thankfully I had my phone. I wasn't able to manipulate the shutter speed or aperture or set in on a tripod, so the method I used to get good shots was just to take as many shots as possible and hope a couple of them turned out. Thankfully I got a couple of shot that were in decent enough quality that I could use them.
The flag that I overlayed on the fireworks comes from an old photo blog I put together a couple of years ago. I had to pull the picture off that blog so it wasn't in great quality, but good enough to go along with the quality of the pictures I took with my phone.
I entered this picture in the Photographics Society Celebration contest. I thought this would be a fun contest to enter especially since it was the day after the 4th of July. It was really cool to see everyone's entries and their interpretations on celebration.
Submitted to contest July 5th, 2011

http://byuiphotographics.blogspot.com

Photo Book Extras

Just the extra pictures im adding to my photobook

Poster Print

Bannack Buggy; 5-25-2011. 3:50pm; Bannack, MT; f/4.1; 1/180; Samsung PL60

Large format printing is a hassle, but I love how the poster came out. I was really worried that the picture would get too blurry when I blew it up to 24x36, but it came out nice and sharp.
I took the original buggy image and overlayed a picture of peeling paint on it to bring a little more to it. I then sharpened the whole image and adjusted the hue to make the wood look more natural. Last I boosted the saturation on most of the image, but that made the grass in the corner really bright, so I masked that out and darkened it a little bit in Camera Raw.

Weekly Edits - Fine Art Templates

Secret Hideaway; 4-28-2011, 2:38pm; Nature Park, Rexburg, ID; f/8; 1/80; Nikon CoolPix P500

Bannack Scraps; 5/25/2011, 12:50pm; Bannack, MT; f/3.4; 1/25; Nikon CoolPix P500

I like the look of the fine art template, makes me feel fancy and professional. It was fairly simple to put together with the clipping masks. The hard part was getting a signature I was somewhat satisfied with. Looking at it now I'm still not entirely sure I like it. For the second one, I wanted to try something with color, fool around a bit. So I edited the original hue to give me something fun and pulled the color for the background out of that.

Night and Light

Have a seat; 6-12-2011, 10:41pm; Rexburg, ID; f/3.4; 8.0secs; Tripod; Flashlight

Look at the Light; 6-12-2011, 10;14pm; Rexburg, ID; f/4.0; 8.0secs; Tripod

Shake It Up; 6-12-2011, 10:23pm; Rexburg, ID; f/4,8; 5.0secs

Traffic In Motion; 6-12-2011, 10:31pm; Rexburg, ID; F/4.0; 4.0secs; Tripod

This weeks assignment was tough for me.. I was just totally lacking in original ideas of what to shoot, so I ended up putting it off until the night before it was due. Never a good idea.
For my light painting shot, I used the light from my phone to highlight the legs of the chair in my room. Of all the shots, I think this one came out the best for me this week. No big edits, just sat boostng.
For Light Sketching, I set my camera up on a tripod and used a laser pointer and wrote on the wall with the light. It took forever to get the shot right. My camera won't let me do a longer SS than 8 seconds, so I kept running out of time. I finally got it on about try #30. I used PhotoShop to change the color of the light from green to the fuscia and boosted the saturation.
Camera motion was my least favorite. I had my roommate hold up the light and I set the SS to five seconds and shook the camera around, nothing to special.
Blurred Lights came pretty easy. I waited for it too get dark, set up my camera at the corner near my apartment, waited for a car to come and got the shot. I like how you don't even see the car in the picture, just the line from the taillights. I did some adjustments in Camera Raw to lessen the yellow glow from the street lights.

Weekly Edits - Border Effects

Jillian; 5-19-2011, 3:15pm; Rexburg, ID; f/6.3; 1/250; Nikon CoolPix P500

Rustic Cowgirl; 5-25-2011, 1:45pm; Bannck, MT; f/4.4; 1/5; Nikon CoolPix P500; Tripod

Day's End Beverage; 5-25-2011, 5:15pm; Bannack, MT; f/5.0; 1/100; Dynamic Photo HDR

I really like some of the cool border effects you can create in Photoshop, and they are pretty quick to do as well. For the first picture, I created a flexible vignette. I decided to add the white stroke to the inside of the border rather than feathering the border. For Rustic Cowgirl, I applied a sponge effect with reduced opacity to the original image. I used the brushed on effect using the history brush to add the border. I like how certain parts of the picture come through more than others. My favorite is the root beer bottles. I first edited the image using Dynamic Photo HDR to give it the red color and enhanced lighting. I like the effect of the double fade border and how it pulls your attention to the middle of the image.

Scannography

Money Grows; 6-5-2011, 4:00pm; Rexburg, Idaho; Canon Pixma MX340 Scanner

All Hand Shots - 6-5-2011; 4:45pm; Rexburg, Idaho; Canon MX340 Scanner

I was nervous about this weeks assignment. I have never really used a scanner much, just for some old pictures of my family, but I was pleasantly surprised to see what I came up with. For the Single Scan Image created a landscape shot using some coins I has laying around. I really like how you can see all the details from the coins, how each one has different imperfections on it. For my blend image, I decided to use Photoshop for to create a panoramic image. I scanned my hand five different times in the different positions then used the photomerge function in PS. I darkened the blacks to remove some fingerprints you could see from the glass of the scanner.

Bannack Best Pictures

Ghost Door; 5-25-2011, 3:51pm; Bannack, MT; f/9.0; 1/250; Samsung PL60

Under The House?; 5-25-2011, 2:56pm, Bannack, MT; f/4.6; 1/30; Nikon CoolPix P500

Cowgirl; 5-25-2011, 1:37pm; Bannack Saloon; f/5.6, 1/50; Nikon CoolPix P500

Wagon Wheels; 5-25-2011, 12:48pm; Bannack, MT; f/3.4; 1/6; Nikon CoolPix P500

Abandoned Cabin; 5-25-2011, 4:24pm; Bannack, MT; f/3.5; 1/240; Samsung PL60

The trip to Bannack as alot of fun. These are some of my more favorite shots from the day. For the first shot, I was just walking by this house on my way back to upload some pictures to my computer when the wind started blowing. The door made an eery creek, so I stopped and took a picture of it. For the second picture, I was trying to find something that no one else would get a picture of that day. I walked behind the house and saw a kicked in board under the house. I looked inside and saw this cool broken basket. I used my fill flash to get as much light as I could under the house and used Camera Raw to add a little more color to it. The time we had to shoot in the Saloon was alot of fun. Playing with the light coming through the windows really interesting. That's where I got the portrait. The other two shots come from some of the smaller buildings behind the hotel. I really like the shot of the wagon wheels. I like how the light was coming through the back wall and makes for the cool shadows and highlights.

Bannack HDR

Bannack Truck; 5-25-2011, 5:13pm; Bannack, MT; f/4.2; 1/800; Nikon CoolPix P500; Tripod, Auto Bracketing

Parked Buggy; 5-25-2011, 4:50pm; Bannack, MT; f/4.1; 1/180; Samsung PL60

I think creating the HDR shots was my favorite part of the Bannack assignment. For the three shot HDR picture, I used the automatic bracketing function on my camera to take three identical shots at three different exposure levels. I used Dynamic Photo to create the HDR composite picture. I just used the basic tone mapping settings. I then took the created picture into Camera Raw to remove a blueish halo that was in the shot and to reduce tho brightness and saturation slightly.
What I think is really cool is that you can create similar shot using just one photo, not the three different exposure levels. I used Dynamic Photo again for this. I like how it made the picture look like a water color painting.

Bannack Macro Abstract

Door Hinge; 5-25-2011, 3:47pm; Bannack, MT; f/8; 1/125; Samsung PL60
Texture; 5-25-2011, 4:07pm; Bannack MT; f/3.5; 1/45; Samsung PL60

For the door hinge, I used the macro function in aperture priority mode. I got close to the hinge, about 10 inches, and focused on the center of the hinge. The texture shot is some peeling wallpaper I found in on of the houses in Bannack. I used a large aperture to pull as much depth and texture out as possible. I imported both pictures into Photoshop and layered the texture over the hinge. I applied a Divide blending mode. I like how the edges of the texture come out with this blending mode.

Bannack Reverse Shallow Depth

Foreground Focus; 5-25-2011, 1:11pm; Bannack, MT; f/3.4; 1/800; Nikon CoolPix P500

Background Focus; 5-25-2011, 1:11pm; Bannack, MT; f/3.4; 1/500; Nikon CoolPix P500

For both of the shots, I used aperture priority mode and used the largest aperture I could. For the foreground focus shot, I metered on the nails in the foreground, reframed, and took the shoot. For the background focus, I metered on the far end of the door, reframed, and took the shot. Both shot of a shallow depth of field, but have a different appearance because of the different focal lengths.

Bannack Action Shots

Ghost; 5-25-11, 12:06pm; Bannack Schoolhouse; f/3.4; 1.8sec; Nikon CoolPix P500; Tripod

Action Freeze; 5-25-2011, 1:08pm; Bannack, MT; f/4.0; 1/640; Nikon CoolPix P500

For my action blur shot, I went into the schoolhouse. We had alot of light coming in through the windows, so I used a shutter speed long enough to give Sara a chance to move, but not long enough to let in too much light. I also used a large aperture to not allow keep the opening of my lens small. For the action freeze shot, I set my camera to continuous shooting with a fast shutter speed so I could make sure to catch the my model jumping in the moment.

Bannack Portraits

Peering Through The Door; 5-25-11, 12:27pm; Bannack Schoolhouse; f/5.o; 1/80; Nikon CoolPix P500; Tripod

Bullseye; 5-25-11. 1:19pm; Bannack Main Street; f/5.7; 1/200; Nikon CoolPix P500

For my portrait shot, I had Sarah (Thanks Sarah for Modeling all afternoon for me!) step into the door of the school house. There was alot of light coming through the door. I stood back quite a ways and zoomed in to take advantage of the dark interior of the building so the picture wouldn't be blown out. For the Bullseye shot, I zoomed in from a distance to create the good background blur. The rest of the shot took care of itself. I wasn't trying to line her eye up like that, but I got lucky.

Weekly Edits - Camera Raw

Spring Blossom; 5-8-2011, 4:32pm; Rexburg Temple Grounds; f/4.7; 1/640; Nikon CoolPix P500

Camera Raw Editing - I opened the image in Bridge. I then used that to open the image in Camera Raw. I upped the brightness and decreased the clarity of the whole image. I then used an adjustment brush to boost the saturation and vibrance of the flowers in the foreground as a well as to bring back the clarity of the same flowers. I clicked Save Image and then saved it in a separate folder where I keep my edited photos.

Music Writing; 4-25-11, 11:42pm; Rexburg, ID; f/4.8; 1/60; Nikon CoolPix P500; Fill Flash

Camera Raw Editing - I opened the image in Bridge. I then used that to open the image in Camera Raw. I decreased the vibrance all the way to make the image black and white and upped the brightness about by about half. I then used an adjustment brush to highlight the ukelele. I boosted the saturation of the ukelele all the way up and added a bit of a lite orange color to it as well to make it pop a bit more. I clicked Save Image and then saved it in a separate folder where I keep my edited photos.

Panoramic

Taylor Quad Pano; 6/21/11. 4:30pm; Nikon Coolpix P500; 7 original shots

Pano Originals; 5-15-11, 3:42pm; Rexburg, ID; f/3.4; 1/650; Nikon CoolPix P500

For this panoramic shot, I thought it would be cool to get a view point of the whole field outside of my apartment complex. I stood to at the edge of the field and took the four original images, pivoting the camera slightly each time to create the right amount of overlap. I used Photoshops automated panoramic feature to put the four images together. I then used content aware fill to fill out the edges. The content aware fill did a good job, but replicated some of the tree in the top left corner, so I used the clone stamp tool to fill in the clouds. I upped the exposure on the shot and boosted the saturation to pull more color out of the grass and sky.