Project 1

Project 1, The Inspiration

For my first project I want to do a kind of split personality shoot with student-athletes at Cazenovia College. I want to show both sides of their lives, their athlete life and their social life. I found a blog of a photographer named Toby Dixon, where he did something very similar. He called it his Split Personality assignment, but instead of Photoshopping two photos together, he put both personalities on his subject and had one photograph. The following two photos are the ones on his blog that I viewed. My plan is similar except I want to Photoshop my two photographs together.

Tone and Color in Photoshop

Before on the left and after on the right. 

I opened this image in Photoshop, and the first step I took was to go into levels. I took the dark eye dropper and darkened the dark colors, then took the light eye dropper and lightened the highlights. Next I went to color balance, where I went to the mid-tones and put the yellow slider to -60. I did the same for the highlights, since the original picture was very blue. Last, I went into Hue/Saturation and put the yellow saturation to +36, the blue to +65 and the reds to +17. 

Before on top

After on Bottom

I pretty much went in the same order as the previous picture. First I went into levels and darkened the dark colors and lightened the lighter colors with the eye dropper tool. 

Next I went into color balance, and adjusted for the mid-tones, yellow +21, and green +21.  Last I went to Hue/Saturation and changed the saturation of the yellows to +27, greens to +33, blues to +79 and magenta's to +72. I then took the eye   dropper with the + and clicked on the pink flower to bring out that color a little bit more. I made the second picture brighter and brought out the colors more.

 Before on top.
After on bottom.
First I cropped and straightened the image. Next I took the brightness to 29 and the contrast to 27. Then I went to color balance and took the yellow mid tone to -19, and cyan mid-tone to -9. Next I went to levels and darkened the dark colors and lightened the light colors. Following that, I went to hue and saturation and but the blue saturation to +48. I then selected the sky and increased the saturation of the blues and yellows to make the sky pop a little bit more. 

Top before
Bottom after
First I went in and sharpened the image a little bit. Second, I went to brightness and contrast and took the brightness to -8 and the contrast to 12. Next I went to levels and used the eye dropper to darken the dark colors and lighten the light colors. Next was color balance. I put the yellow midtones to -23 and cyan midtone to -9. Last I went into hue and saturation and put the cyan to +39 and yellow to -24.

Top before
Bottom After
First I went to brightness and contrast and upped the contrast to 99 and the brightness to 7. Then I selected the lower left corner because it was way over exposed and bright the brightness and contrast down an bit to balance it out. Next I went to levels and adjusted it to make it a little darker because it looked washed out. Then I went into color balance, and selected the background and took the cyans to - 26.I made a new layerof color balance and included the whole picture, and took yellow to -26. Last, I changed the saturation of the reds to + 27, greens to +20 and cyan to -48.

Top before
Bottom After

The first step I took was to crop and straighten the image.Then I took the brightness to 9 and the contrast to 49. Following that,  I went to levels and darkened the image up. Next I went to color balance and took cyan to -23 and yellow to -14. Finally I added some saturation, red +11 and cyan to +20

Back light with front light. I took this through a tree, looking at the sun. I chose to use this photograph because even though there are sun spots, I liked the way you can see the suns rays coming through the leaves, and how you can see how green the leaves are with the sun behind them. 

Backlight #2

I started with levels and used the eye dropper to make the darks darker and lights lighter. I then went to color balance and made the midtones of yellow -19 since it was a little blue. I brightened it up and took the contrast up to 44 as well. Next I took the selection of my model and darkened it up a little with contrast and took the ground and darkened it up a little bit as well. Next I selected the sky and lightened it up a tad, and adjusted the mid tones and highlights.

Frozen and Blurred Motion

Frozen Motion #1

SS 1/80

F6.3

ISO 1600

26mm

WB Auto

Frozen Motion #2

SS 1/400

F8

ISO 1600

55mm

WB Auto

Frozen Motion #3

SS 1/1000

F18

ISO 1600

20mm

WB Auto

Blurred Motion #1
SS 1/8
F18
ISO 100
24mm
WB Auto

Blurred Pan #1
SS 1/80
F 11
ISO 100
26mm
WB Auto

Blurred Pan #2
SS 1/20
F9
ISO 1600
35mm
WB Auto

Jeff Cable

Both of these photos are by Jeff Cable.  This is an example of panned motion, where the car is in focus and the background is blurry. This kind of photo shows that the car is in motion and makes it feel like the car is moving at such a fast speed that the its surroundings are just a blur as they go by.

This photo shows frozen motion. It shows the swimmer as they come out of the water and the water is frozen. You can see the drops of water in the air, which is pretty cool. You can see so much detail with this kind of photograph. Its cool to have action shots with frozen motion.

Shallow and Extreme Depth of Field

 Shallow Depth of Field #1
SS: 1/800
F5
ISO 400
35mm
WB Auto

Shallow Depth of Field #2
SS:1/320
F4.5
ISO 400
18mm
WB Auto

Shallow Depth of Field #3
SS 1/1600
F4.8
ISO 400
32mm
WB Auto

Extreme Depth of Field #1
SS 1/5
F22
ISO 400
18mm
WB Auto

 Extreme Depth of Field #2
SS1/13
F32
ISO 400
40 mm
WB Auto

Extreme Depth of Field #3 (Forced Perspective)
SS1/10
F29
ISO 400
28 mm
WB Auto

Steve McCurry

This is an image by Steve McCurry, and it was taken in Afghanistan. This is an example of shallow depth of field, since the focus is around the mans face. The animals in the background are out of focus. I think that McCurry wanted the focus to be on the face and not the background because he wanted to show the emotion of the man. He wanted to the viewers to focus on his face, and not on what was going on around him. With the animals in the background it adds more to the picture, but since they're not in focus, we know that they're not the focal point of the photo.

This is another picture by Steve McCurry, of an woman in Indonesia working in a field that has been destroyed by volcanic ash. This shows deep depth of field, with both the foreground and the background in focus. I think that he used a deep depth of field because the background is just as important as the foreground. In the back is the volcano that destroyed the field that is in the front..