Cool drinks and warm colors

Found a couple neat randoms on my comp while looking through pics to find my 12 best photos of 2008 so far for an electronic imaging assignment. This first one was taken down at the Figge in Davenport, IA, in their little cafe area... Will post more later from here, especially the ah-mazing elevator..

This was shot taken this summer that I hadn't even seen until I was looking back through Suzanne's pictures. Turned out really well..

This was for one of the lounge's in Cedar Falls for their promotions/menu's... A couple other students and I went with our instructor Dan one evening and shot this among others. I won't include others since we all took turns shooting on my camera, so they're not all mine... :)

Not so unsettling...

I've made my decision and settled on a major/specialization in the Photography program... *whew* That was a toughie... or not. :) Quite obviously, portrait was calling my name. I'm taking a pretty in-depth weddings class next semester, as well as an advanced electronic imaging class (beyond Photoshop!), a Studio Promotions class for marketing, and then my major, Advanced Portrait.

Here's a few of the portraits for assignments recently:

Taler, a 1st year Photography student for the male portrait/lighting assignment. He was a blast to work with. This was shot digitally on my 30D with a 70-200mm in the studio.

Amanda Weede, a 2nd year Photography student for the window light assignment. This was shot film with the Hasselblad and 150 mm lens and scanned. Isn't the difference between the two qualities amazing?? The color with film is just spot on, whereas you can manipulate digital all you want and you still don't get that beautiful skin tone. (But no, I'm not a die hard film fan... yet.. :D)

Wedding China...

Our Commercial Instructor told us that the reflective surface assignment was going to be the hardest one we'd had so far. I didn't believe him... until I spent 3 1/2 hours in the studio!!

It was frustrating, but turned out pretty well. I didn't do a 'scene' with this one like I did the last one because I envisioned this as a catalog shot, or something along those lines. I also included a couple shots of the studio setup I used. It was fun messing around with the different lights and what strenths they were to be set at as well as where to place them on the top reflector to get the reflection on the plate. Interesting stuff...

The final

Facebook

Wheels of fortune...

We had an assignment to go out and photograph an object in one class period... and be creative with it... so we troop out to Dan's (PJ and Visual Communications instructor) vehicle and he gives us the object... bicycle tires...

Wow.

So the motion blur turned out really cool... but I threw some others in also just for fun. :)

Mug shot

Not my picture, but thought it was really awesome.. I should try a project like this sometime.

Late night hunger strike, take 2

Our 2nd assignment for commercial... Texture! Decided to add a little bit of the finishing goodies like backgrounds, borders, signatures, etc..

Blogger makes it somewhat blotchy throughout their uploading process... its not this stark, and the background is actually a little darker brown... :)

PJ felt left out..

As you can probably imagine, I don't really enjoy Photojournalism, the third and never aforementioned specialization offered at Hawkeye. I suppose that its good for me to struggle through this, because through struggling, I can learn.. ??

Anyway, I'm having an easier time now of walking up to people and talking to them, getting their names, etc. so if anything, it's helped my people skills. It's hard for me to grasp the concept of the right moment, or to catch the fleeting millasecond when a certain face has a certain expression with a certain background with certain lighting and a certain camera angle, just to name a few aspects of a great pj picture... phew, I'd much rather set up a scene, or better yet, be able to manipulate my images after the fact.

So these are a few that I've shot for PJ. No comments on my lack of skill here, please. :)


This was a hilarious rodeo clown at the National Cattle Congress Fair rodeo on Saturday, Sept 21. He was "picking his wedgie."



I just shot this today of a young girl cleaning out her pumpkin at La Porte City's fall festival and po-dunk city gathering. :) She was adorable. This was for a general news assignment, but didn't end up using this one.
Note: to all LaPorte City residents (yes, all 500 of you), I mean you no disservice by calling your fall festival po-dunk. Please don't sic your farm animals after me.



This was a young girl at the National Cattle Congress Fair on the 18th of September this time. She went on this ride probably 30 times. I got to talking with her mom, also; guess she's a little spitfire! :) I was going to use this for my 'feature' assignment, but didn't really fit, I was told.



Okay, this was also at the Cattle Congress Fair, and again on the 18th. I happened to meet up with Monte (from class) and our instructor just about to try to attempt to get on a ride with some young kid who was willing to have his/her picture taken and sit next to a complete stranger. (Also the mom willing to let her child do this!) Monte wanted to get a shot of her in focus with the background blurred out. I guess he didn't get too much, but this shot certainly has some bragging rights for me.

Norah Jones Assignment

For our class called "Visual Communication," we had to come up with a photograph that captured the essence of Jazz or our interpretation of the song "Seven Years" by Norah Jones. I included the link below if you want to watch/listen to it. So far, this has been the most challenging assignment to come up with the idea for it, but the easiest one to shoot. I had the help of quite a few in coming up with the idea, namely my teacher. I then packed up Shawna Simons, a girl from my Bible Study, and we shot this in about 30 mins, start to finish, not including our stop to get a chocolate ice cream cone. :)

I used a Canon flash held off camera with a portable softbox attached to it to come up with the great lighting effect here. I wish I could accept more credit for how it turned out, but I was just messing around, and this is what I got!

Anyway, needless to say, my instructor loved it (nearly the only thing he's even come close to liking of mine in the last year), and I'm anxiously waiting to see what kind of grade he gave me on it.

Here's the link for "Seven Years" by Norah Jones:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXiRuSIXbns&feature=related







I wanted to see if I could recreate that a couple evenings later to get just a little better lighting, but nothing really turned out much from that. Did get this interesting one though... :)

A little more perspective

We had to take a picture of a building for our electronic imaging class and then fix the perspective in Photoshop. If you look really closely, you'll see that the three main verticals are vertical; however, I was using a wide angle lens, so the verticals in between are a little bowed due to lens distortion.

We also had to convert to BW using Photoshop's sweet BW conversion tool. Absolutely incredible. Helps that the sky was awesome.

"The Eyes are the Window to the Soul"

What else does a slightly soft, but beautifully done portrait need beside eye enhancement? Also an electronic imaging assignment, we had to rebuild her eyes in this and do the basic retouching.. I personally think it looks a little overdone (I know, I said that?!), but the effect is super amazing.

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For Cereal!

Our first commercial assignment... challenging, but so rewarding. Hmmm, is commercial now an option for me? 'Tis fun, that's for sure.

This is amazing cereal, by the way. The best granola on the face of the planet.

The Fourth Man on the Couch..

This strapping young man has a lot going for him... aside from being handsome as 'all-get-out,' he's got some serious glare from his beautiful lenses, lens refraction (see on the left side of his face how you can see the background "through" his head?), and some minor facial hygiene issues... (How about a complimentary eyebrow wax??) One more thing... don't you love his tie?! Ladies love frogs, eh? We now present you his next facebook picture!

And no, I don't know any of these people; these are images we work on in class.

The copyrights are reserved to the specific studios that volunteered the images. This is used for personal and educational purposes only.

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Extreme Photoshop Makeover...

A different take on perspective..

Working with perspective in Photoshop? Bring it on!

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Lines, Wrinkles, and Bears.. Oh My!

We did a challenging assignment in our intermediate Photoshop class that turned out to be really fun also. We learned about lines and which lines to soften, which lines to take out, etc and what to just leave to "finesse." Needless to say, I had a ball... :)

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Worked