In Jay’s class our Photo-A-Day theme is layering. I thought I would get a head start by practicing my layering. Framing is part of layering and this is my attempt at framing.
Blog, Week 8, Last Class
How am I feeling about the next 8 weeks? The PJ class does not have internships until the spring semester so we will be completing the remainder of Jay’s assignments. We will be completing the filming of events as well as still photographs of events. Also, we will be trying to photograph features, which is something that I am not very good at. Last week we got checked out on the drone so I am looking forward to flying and photographing.
Blog, Week 7, Pano
This week was panoramic week in PHO 241. I could not believe how easy this was. I packed up my gear and headed to Salem Lake to shoot the shoreline from the fishing pier. I got there about 5:30 p.m. so the light was pretty good. I pretty much had the pier to myself, which made it even easier. I set up my tripod and camera and started taking pictures, overlapping as instructed, with a 70mm focal length. I did this a couple of times around the lake not really knowing how things would turn out. I returned home, loaded the photos into Photoshop, toned each one with the same way, created the panorama, and here it is.
Blog, Week 7, The Tango
My Event #2 was the Fiesta 2017 put on by the Hispanic League of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This was their 25th anniversary of this event and it was a blast. If you have not been, you should definitely mark your calendar for next year to come out and enjoy the music, the food, and the dancing. This couple, along with several other couples, danced to the music very artistically. This couple was doing the tango and they were very talented. I am not sure if this was a group from a dance studio or a group that just like dancing at festivals.
Blog, Week 6, Stand Alone Feature
This is my Stand Alone Feature for this week. I visited Divine Llama Vineyards this past Sunday to see and photograph the Llamas. The Llama in the photo is named Zorro and is owned by Leslie Messick. Leslie owns two Llamas and they are boarded at Divine Llama Vineyards. Jay told us that if we did well enough, this would be our last Feature. Well, I guess we didn’t do that well because we have another to do this week. I am headed out to the 2017 Fiesta, which is put on by the Hispanic League in Winston-Salem in search of this week’s Feature.
Blog, Week 6, Composite
Here is my idea for my composite for PHO 241. I have taken a photo of the R. J. Reynolds school sign. I also have photos of 6 different R. J. Reynolds sports I have photographed. That will give me my seven different photographs for the composite. I intend to take the student athlete from each of the sports photos and place them on the school grounds near the school sign. I have posted 3 of the sports I intend to use for the composite. I have photographed 3 sports especially for this project, volleyball, field hockey and football. The school was also photographed just for this project. The other sports will be lacrosse, baseball, and soccer.
Blog, Week 5, Features
Okay, here is my photo for Day 27 of my Photo-A-Day blog. It was supposed to be a feature photo, or a photo that did not require an article written about it, only a correctly worded caption. The caption was to use AP style captioning. I thought I had a pretty good shot here of a guy practicing his serve at Miller Park Tennis Courts. It did not require an article to know what he was doing and the caption followed AP guidelines. Well, while I thought it was right on, Jay had other ideas. To make this photo newspaper worthy, it needed something else. Perhaps climbing the fence with the camera and taking a shot down on the gentleman or lying down and shooting through the net. Next time I will try and come up with an unusual angle when doing a feature.
Blog, Week 5, Portrait/Background Composite
This week in PHO 241, we learned to create composites using Photoshop. We went about campus, photographing walkways, hallways, and anything else that would make a good background. Then we photographed 3 of our classmates in different lighting situations in the studio to place on the background. We used the Quick Selection Tool to select the image we wanted to place on the background we chose. Once that was done, we used ‘Select and Mask…’ to either smooth the edges or use the Refine Edge Tool Brush to bring in wild hair. Once this was done, we created another layer in Photoshop and simply drug the selected image onto the background we chose. Voilà, we now had the students image placed on one of the background scenes we photographed on campus.
Blog 4, R.J. Reynolds Football
I do not know why, but last Friday night was a hard night for me photographing football. The action shots all seemed to occur on the other side of the field. When the ball was handed off to a running back, they all seemed to run off tackle, which means they just ran into the line and disappeared from site. Sometimes they would appear on the other side but getting a shot with their face in it was next to impossible. The field where R.J. Reynolds plays is one of the worst lit fields in this part of the state and that also presented a challenge late in the game. I basically had to quit shooting after the third quarter because the lighting was so bad.
Blog, Week 4, Advanced Portrait Retouching
I will be the first to admit that retouching photographs does not come easy for me. I took this photo of Sue Kendall and went to work. It took me the better part of 3 hours to achieve what you see here. While my instructor will have many ways that I could have improved on this, I am pleased with the outcome. I showed it to Sue and she said she liked it because I did not take away or correct too much. There are some areas that I need to ask Josh how he would have done it to improve on the photo.
Robert Hill Photography 