CAGD 112

Hyper Realism Blog Post

• The intended composition of the scene was of a tree trunk with the roots being fingers. 
• I utilized the shaped of the roots and the texture of the bark to contain a visually compelling image. 
• The focal point in the scene is the tree.
• I feel that I did achieving drawing the viewers eyes to the tree. 
• I had to change than angle of the fingers to match up with each tree root I used.
• There wasn't any new subject matter beside the tree and my hand.
• The tree picture was shot outside and the picture of my hand was shot inside.
• I had to adjust the camera settings to take a picture of my hand.
• I used the Wrap and the Puppet Warp tools to fit the fingers to the tree roots, which enhanced the perspective that the tree is a hand. 
• I also used the Lasso and the Fill Content Aware tool to get rid of these small objects sticking out of the ground and some garbage in the scene, to make them not distract away from the image. 
• I painted some light and shadows to the fingernails and to the trunk of the tree to give the scene dimension and for them to look more like fingers. 
• I also used the curve tool and the vibrance tool to add light and to increase the saturation of the scene. 

Panorama Blog Post

• The compositional elements of the light hitting the water, the light and shadows on the bottom structure of the bridge, the lights turning on from the underside of the bridge, the mosaic tile wale at the top, and how the top of the sundial arches and is a leading line for the 80 degree angle makes it a visually compelling image.
• The intended composition is a 180 degree upward angle view of the Sundial Bridge in Redding, California.
• The focal point in the picture is the Sundial Bridge.
• I feel that I did draw the viewer's eye tot the focal point by making the top of the sundial a leading line back down to behind where I was leaning against taking the pictures at the top of the panorama. 
• The top part of the sundial did not match together, so I used the layer masks and the clone stamp tool to erase the extra bit of the sundial sticking out.
• I positioned myself against the mosaic wall, and you can see my shadow at the top, and was following the path of the top of the sundial from the bridge and to do that I did a 180 degree angle, but I kept wobbling and fell over so my sister had to hold me steady, actually while I was taking the picture.
• No, I took them all of the pictures at the same time, but I took the pictures at sunset and the sky was getting darker by the minute.
• This mom came walking into the photo at the bottom to get the little girl out of the picture, but ended up becoming blurry. 
• I didn't need to adjust the aperture, shutter, or ISO when I was taking the image.
• I used the following post-processing Photoshop tools in this Panorama: selective mask tool, curves tool, blur tool, the content fill tool, UnSharp Mask tool, Noise Reduction tool, Smart Sharpen tool, and the Vibrance tool.
• I used the Mask tool to ease the seams of the separate pictures. For the Blur tool I used it to blur the edges of values to fit together. I used the Noise Reduction tool to reduce the noise in the panorama. I used the Curves and Vibrance tool to make the values of each photograph and the panorama itself to be consistent. I used the Content Fill tool to fill in small value changes that were inconsistent. I used the Smart Sharpen tool to help sharpen the blurry movement of the people at the bottom of the image. I used the UnSharp Mask tool to sharpen the edges of the top of the sundial and the bridge against the sky value. 

Time Assignment Blog 

The assignment was to take pictures that either stopped motion or blurred motion depending on the shutter speed used to take the image. I decided to use an image that stopped motion of water from a drinking fountain. The intended composition of the scene was to freeze the motion of the water coming out of the drinking. I used the line created by the granite of the fountains background shifting to become the wall above it to create a natural backdrop to the fountain head and water. I also used the round fountain sink and cropped it so that where the water meets the round fountain basin it also meets the edge of the image frame in the corner. The focal point in the scene is the fountain head. I feel that I achieved drawing the viewers eyes to the drinking head because the white globe of the drinking fountain head catches the viewers eye which then directs the eyes of the viewer to the water.

The fountain was located indoors and was at an angle. I actually placed the camera on the fountain's edge to get a straight angle of the fountain head. I then cropped out the shadow of the camera in Photoshop. In Photoshop I reduced the noise of the image if you zoom in on it. I then used the crop tool to crop the image so the water and drinking fountain touch the edges of the frame and to fill the image space. I then used the lasso tool to select and then to fill two white glares in the sink caused by the reflection of light. I then decided to make the image into black and white instead of a colored image. I then used the graph curve tool to lighten the darkness of the background, sink, and the translucency of the water. While also adjusting the darkness of the shadow from the water. I then added the brightness/contrast tool to help darken the background while keeping the lightness of the water.

Portrait Assignment Blog

The assignment was to take a photograph of a person and to convey their nature. I used the rail of the staircase , the vertical pipe, and the bricks to frame the focal point and to create leading lines to the figure. The focal point of the image is the figure leaning against the wall. I feel that I achieved drawing the viewer's eyes to the focal point. When I was taking the picture the sky was overcast, but the clouds kept shifting and it became sunny and bright. As a result I had to keep shifting around to fix the lighting and shadow in the image. I took the original image into Photoshop and cropped the sides and top of the image. I then used the Lasso tool to crop out part of the light lamp at the top of the image. I then used the Clone Stamp tool to get rid of the dark circles under the eyes. I then used the hue/saturation tool and the curves tool to increase the brightness of the bricks and skin, to turn the shirt from blue to grey, and to add a bit of shadow to the image. 

Things Assignment Blog

The assignment was to take a picture of a subject as the focus and the background out of focus by lowering the aperture setting of the camera. I then took the image into Photoshop and used tools to crop the image, I also increased the vibrancy and the hue/saturation of the image. I also increased the vibrancy of the red tailgate on the bicycle and increased the vibrancy of the blue of the bicycle. I cropped the image so the bicycle was the only bicycle in the scene and took up most of the space. The focal point of the scene is the blue bicycle. I feel that I did draw the viewers eyes to the bicycle because of how vibrant and in focus it is. 

I did not encounter any problems with this picture, the only problem I had was that the camera could not get a subject in focus and the background out of focus in the beginning, but after lowering the aperture setting and taking pictures at different angles I managed to capture the focal point in focus while the background is out of focus. I used the crop tool to crop the right and left side of the image so that the bicycle is in the immediate foreground and that the other bicycles in the original image are not in the image drawing the viewers eye away from this bicycle. I also used vibrancy, curve tool, and hue/saturation to increase the hue of the bicycle so the bicycle could be more in focus, while I decreased the vibrancy of the background so that the bicycle could capture the viewers eyes to the bicycle. 

Edge Assignment Blog

The assignment was to convert an image to gray scale and to use at least two post processing techniques in Photoshop, tools like Dodge and Burn. The picture I used for the assignment is of a side view of a walking ramp against a brick building on the CSU Chico campus. I made the picture be at a side angle to create an interesting composition within the rule of thirds and to make the handrail on the ramp touch the side of the picture frame. I used the handrails of the ramp and the contrast to the brick wall to create a visually compelling image. 

The focal point of the picture is the ramp with the handrails. I feel that I did achieve drawing the viewer’s eye to the focal point by highlighting the shine in the handrails in contrast to the darker part of the handrail. I encountered the problem of my images accidentally being duplicated after batch renaming them in Adobe Bridge and I solved it by deleting the duplicated images and re-doing the batch rename in Adobe Bridge. I used the Dodge and Burn, the lasso tool cropping, and the black and white adjustment tool as my post-processing Photoshop procedures. I used the lasso crop tool because a part of the bush at the top was sticking out so I used the lasso tool to get rid of it. I used the black and white adjustment tool to help increase the contrast in the bricks and in the handrail of the ramp. I used the dodge and burn tool to increase the lightness and shadow in the left handrail and in the pavement. I also used the dodge and burn tool to increase the darkness in the bush, tree, and their shadows.