CAGD 112 - Photography

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Hyper-Realism
December 20, 2019

They say eyes are the windows to the soul. Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but beer is good for the soul.
The goal here was to create a surreal image by compositing two or more of our own photos. I started out with the concept of a daydream about a giant bottle of beer, which is not a daydream I have ever had, to be clear. My original vision was of a person looking down the top of a human-sized bottle. I wasn't particularly attached to that idea, but it did amuse me. When I started shooting, I had the idea to replace round things (eyes) with other round things (bottle caps), and this composition sort of fell together. Self portraits can be tricky to execute, but I do enjoy the opportunity to create characters. While shooting, I asked myself where the missing eye went, and immediately decided that it belonged in the mouth of the bottle.

Four photos went into this final image. One photo had my head in the right position, with the right expression, and in perfect focus. The second photo was for the bottle cap to go in my eye socket, and the third was for the eye that goes in the bottle. The fourth photo had my hands holding the battle in the shot. In photoshop, I used layer masks, saturation tweaks on everything but the bottle, cap, and eyes, and a curves adjustment above every other layer.
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Portrait
December 8, 2019


My intention for this photo was to reflect friendship. I was out with several of my friends, exploring Chico and taking photos. I think this photo captured the mood of that day pretty well. We ended up at a place with a riddled with inventive and creative graffiti. Much of the graffiti was colorful in more ways than one, which game me some serious difficulty in settling on how to edit my photos. The backgrounds were all very rich, both in colour and value. Setting this image in black and white was ultimately the right choice, since it narrowed the focus to the human connection, while keeping the visual interest in the background.
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HDRI



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Panorama
November 8, 2019

Bille Park, Paradise

Our assignment was to take photos of an interesting location, and merge them in Photoshop as a panorama. The panorama had to include at least four images at different positions. We were required to blend the images at the seams manually instead of letting Photoshop do it automatically. The point of this was to get used to a different way of composing, and to become more comfortable using adjustment layers and layer masks.

A friend from home came to visit, so we drove to Paradise to take photos. We hiked around Bille park for a couple hours, stopping at spots along the way. I experimented with vertical and diagonal compositions, sometimes focusing more on my immediate surroundings than the landscape. Most of those were probably not successful. Many of my attempts had obstructions such as trees that were close to the camera, and would likely make processing tricky. I haven't tried processing any of the other sets, since this one was such an obvious winner to me. Eventually, we made our way to this spot. I liked that it had a clear view of the landscape and plenty of foreground elements that worked well together.

I enjoyed the challenge of adapting to a different way of composing while shooting. Since the whole image doesn't fit into one frame in the camera, it's important to visualize what you're expecting the final image to look like before taking a shot. I'm used to having a lot of freedom to experiment, but it's easy to ruin a panorama entirely by deviating from the formula.

The focal point of this image is at the far left, around the rock and tree. The high contrast of the rock, leading lines formed by the trees and terrain, lens flare, and difference in overall lighting draw attention to that area. When processing, I made some levels adjustments to the two leftmost photos

before blending and adjustments


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Things
October 11, 2019

Looking at a reflection of a roll of film in the lens of my Canon AE-1

In this assignment, we were told to get very close to our subject and use a shallow depth of field. Our instructor encouraged us to experiment with different lenses, and that's exactly what I did.

I ended up with so many pictures and I could not choose just one to share. The above image is the one I submitted for the assignment. I'm still not certain I made the right choice, so I'm including four of the other candidates in this post. I took all these pictures last night, using my desk lamp as a light source. I was able to use shutter speeds between 1/10 and 1/30 because I set my camera on the desk. I have so many toys (lenses and cameras), and I don't really use them much. I made a possibly financially unwise move by buying a Soviet-made rangefinder last month. I was planning on using it and my Canon AE-1 on some of the assignments for this class, assuming I would be able to develop and scan B&W film myself at no cost. Turns out the photo lab here is only for students currently in a traditional photography class. Damn.

Anyways. The point I'm trying to get at is that I have a total of 5 lenses and 2 lens accessories to play around with. I started out taking pictures of my FED-3 rangefinder with rolls of film in the background. In one of my first shots, I caught a glimpse of the film reflected in the lens. Reflections and lenses became the basis for the rest of my compositions. Over a span of about 60 pictures, I experimented with several combinations of subject, lenses, and arrangements. I took many pictures using my DSLR's lens, some using a macro extension, others using one of my AE-1 lenses held up to the camera body, and a few at the end using the Industar-61 lens that came with the rangefinder.

The critiques told me that people were having trouble identifying the subject. Most seemed to think the camera or the lens was my subject, when really it was meant to be the roll of film reflected in the lens. Looking at it now, I think I understand why that is. The distortion is quite strong, and most in this class aren't as familiar as I am with the look of a roll of film. I wish I'd submitted the top right image below instead. The camera body doesn't take up any of the frame, the blurred film rolls in the background give the viewer a sense of the object's shape to supplement the image in the lens, and the reflection itself is much clearer.

Same as above, but with FED-3 instead of Canon AE-1
Roll of film reflected in Industar-61 lens on FED-3 camera

Canon AE-1 seen through Industar-61 lens held up to DSLR

FED-3 camera reflected in lens on Canon AE-1

 


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On the Edge



In our first assignment for this class, the subject needed to be placed on the edge of the frame. The final image also had to be monochrome. The goal was to get into the habit of slowing down and composing our shots carefully and thoughtfully.

On my way to school, I walk by a train track for part of the way. There's a lot of interesting subjects (trash) on the opposite side of the tracks from the path, so I explored over there one morning. I'd seen this couch many times before, catching glimpses of it while passing. It almost always catches my eye, even if only for a brief moment. I took pictures of several other things, but had a feeling that my final image needed to be this couch.

In order to better focus on light and shadow, I set my camera to monochrome, but shot in raw to preserve the color information. I tend to avoid looking at the immediate preview on the display after taking a shot, instead preferring to focus my attention on my next composition. I wouldn't have the option of immediately reviewing shots when using a film camera, so I find that find that disabling it helps get me in the mindset for black and white photography.

The final image isn't quite what I wanted it to be, but I do feel proud and satisfied with it. I ended up with two shots that were very similar, one of them with a wider angle. The wider angle shot had some good gravel texture, and the leading lines really seemed to pop out more. It had some other distracting background elements that couldn't easily be cropped out, so ultimately I made a compromise and settled on this framing.
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