Final Blog Post

Well the school semester has come to an end, which means it is the end of my project...or is it?

This years passion project I enjoyed doing quite a lot. Learning how to use photoshop was really fun and was really intersting for me. Being able to learn how to accomplish different techniques on photoshop that I have always been curious how to do was awesome for me, and I know that even though this project is over, I am still going to continue to do it. I have learned that taking pictures and taking the time to edit things is something I really enjoy doing. I loved being able to take portraits of people and having them love the finished product. It was a really good feeling, and I loved being able to share my pictures with other people.

My plans for this project had been originally to learn how to use photoshop, and to continue my project from last year by taking different types of photography. By the end of this project I feel like I did my plan quite successfully. One thing I didn't do was take different styles of photography... all my pictures ended up being portraits. Personally I am not disappointed by this because I really do love taking portraits and I am really happy how they all turned out. I learned a lot on photoshop, and I got the opportunity to get out and take some more pictures of my friends and my sister and I had a lot of fun doing that. My final goal was to have 15 edited pictures by the end of the semester. I only ended up having 8, but I am not bothered by the fact that I did not get 15 because I really accomplished the original goal by learning a lot on photoshop, so I am really proud how my project ended.

So applying my passion project to bible class is quite easy with the biblical through lines! This year I chose 3 through lines. My first one was beauty creating. Beauty creating is referring to the fact that God is the creator who has made everything, and while we are creating something we are reflecting on him. When I edit pictures I am enhancing the photo to look even better. I think when I'm doing this it makes Gods work look even better. It is eye opening to me to see the things that God created and that I created and be happy with both. My other through line was creation enjoying. This through line is one of the most easiest through lines for my passion project. God has created everything so beautifully and wants us to enjoy it. For my project I am constantly doing this. When I take pictures of natures, or portraits or even my sister playing sports I can reflect on everything God has made, and it's amazing for me to be able see all that he has created. The last through line I chose was community building. This project I got to work with a lot of different people and I had so much fun doing it! I got to know Felicity, who really helped me in this project with learning all about photoshop, and I got to work with Taylor a lot when we went on photo shoots together and I got to hangout with Miranda lot because as you can see when you look through my blog, she was my main model for this project. God has made us so that we are to be able to help each other and live in community together and I really felt like I was able to accomplish this in this project.

For this project I used Felicity as my mentor. Felicity was the obvious choice for me because she was posting pictures on Instagram and flickr of edits that I really wanted to learn how to do. We ended up having a lot of fun together and I learned a lot from her. So a big shout out to Felicity, thank you su much for all your help in this project! My other main resource was youtube and blog posts similar to my own. I used a lot of self discovery in this project and enjoyed doing. Check out my resource page for all the sites I used throughout this project! Also you should check out my mentors blog, she has some great stuff! My Mentors Bog

So this is the end to my project! I hope that by looking through my blog posts you could learn something about photography through my learning experiences. Thanks for reading!

Also if you are interested in seeing more of my pictures, check out my flickr account! My flickr AccountI'm hoping to get more viewers, commenters and likes on flickr as I started sharing more of my work.

Film Effect Using Curves

Recently I had the chance of going on another photo shoot to get some pictures for my passion project. I went with my friends Taylor Vaags, Miranda Vlaming (the two girls I used in my last shoot)  and Felicity Pollard, who I have mentioned before in my blog. Having Felicity come along which was really nice because she was very helpful, and gave a few key points while we took pictures. Unfortunately the day was not as successful as we had planned... It was very cold and we were all very miserable. I only ended up getting few good pictures, which was a little disappointing. But thankfully, with the few pictures I got, I was able to learn many different things on photoshop which I am very excited about! So taking pictures in the cold ended up being worth it :)

One thing that I have really wanted to learn how to do on photoshop was trying to make my pictures have this cool effect that a lot of pictures that I have seen, seem to have. I was not sure what the exact type of editing it was, so I talked to Felicity because a lot of her pictures had the look I was wanting. She told me that the look is called the Film Effect. It is a very common type of edit now a days, and you get this kind of edit  by using curves on photoshop. 

I tried looking at different youtube tutorials, but I could not find one that really helped me understand how to get the right effect. I was looking at tutorials that were talking about a matte effect that had a similar look to the film effect, but I was not satisfied how my pictures looked after trying the different things the tutorials suggested to do on photoshop. I used a picture that I took of my sister back in the fall to try to experiment with curves. I had different trial runs, and was not really happy with any of them. 

Since I was having no luck with finding film effect tutorials on youtube, I thought I would try to search it up on my pinterest. I often use pinterest for photo inspiration, ideas, or I use the photoshop tutorials I find on it. Pinterest has many photos that I love, and that have the exact look I was looking for, so I thought I'd give it a try. I was very successful when I did this! After looking through different Pinterest posts on film effects, I found one that explained how to do it very clearly! From that post I successfully edited my first film effect edit. (Check out pictures at the end of this blog post) 

This is how I managed to get the film effect. You open up curves on photoshop, and you need to do these two key things to get this certain look.

Step One: The left bottom corner you need to take the curves line and move it up. This increases the brightness in the dark areas of the picture.

Step Two: Move it to the right which reduces the detail in the picture.

Something that was also suggested to do on the blog post that I used, was yo take the top right corner curve line and move it down and move it to the left to "crush the white", as said in the blog.

Another thing that I found to make the picture pop more is to take the middle of the curve line and pull it up. This boosts the contrast of the picture, giving it a brighter look. 

I was really excited when I figured this out! Not only had I finally got the look I was looking for, but it was also super easy! 

I tried doing it on different pictures and loved the results. As I practiced more with curves, I ended up really enjoying using it and feel more confident when I use it that I know what I am doing which I am very excited about. 

One another thing I found out is to get more of a film effect you should make more curve layers. This will put a new curve layer on top of another layer and gives your picture a even cooler look. 

Here are the before and after of my film effect pictures:

This is the link to the blog that helped me learn about the film effect: Film Effect

First Finished Product

I have successfully finished editing my first picture in photoshop! I took the picture I talked about in my last blog post and I figured out how to make black and white images. There are a couple of ways to change a picture into a black and white image, but I liked this one way the best, and I will tell you what it is!

Here are the steps I used to change my picture, with picture examples so that you can get a better idea of what tools/settings that I used to make my picture black and white and what tools I used to enhance the picture. The picture examples with the description will give you a clearer demonstration on what I all used to change my picture and how to access them in case you are wondering how to do it yourself in photoshop. 

Changing your photo into a black and white image: 

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select images

Step 2: Select the adjustments option
Step 3: Then click gradient map
Step 4: A bar will pop up, hit the okay option and then viola! Your picture is in black and white.

Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button. 

Changing your exposure: 

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select images. 

Step 2: Select the adjustment options. 

Step 3:  Pick the exposure setting.

Step 4: Play around with the exposure, offset and gamma correction bar by moving the scale up or down until you feel that your picture is properly exposed.

Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button. 

Changing brightness and contrast:

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select images. 

Step 2: Select the adjustment options. 

Step 3: Pick the Brightness/Contrast option

Step 4:  Play with the contrast and the brightness bar until you feel like you found the right option for your picture.

Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button. 

Changing colour balance:

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select images. 

Step 2: Select the adjustment options. 

Step 3: Pick the Colour Balance option

Step 4: Move the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow scales up and down, until you find the right settings for you picture. 

Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button. 

After I used all these tools on photoshop I was pretty satisfied with my picture. But I thought I'd ask someone else for suggestions on what else I could do to my picture, because Im always wanting to find new ways to improve my pictures. I talked to my friend Felicity, who is also doing photography for her passion project. Felicity is amazing photographer who has a lot of experience with photoshop. I sent my picture to her, asking for some advice on what else I could change to my picture to improve it. She suggested to add a little vignette to the sides of the picture and to add midpoint. She said these features would make the picture pop more. I googled it, and figured out how to use these tools. Here is what I did:  

Adding vignette and midpoint:

Step 1: Go to the top of your screen and select Filter.
Step 2: Select the Distort option.
Step 3: Pick the Lens correction option.

Step 4: A large screen will pop up showing a big version of your picture. To add vignette and midpoint to your picture, move the vignette and mid point bars up or down, until you are satisfied with how it looks. *Note: when the screen pops up with your picture a grid will be over it. If you want to move the grid because it is a little distracting, click the check mark box by the Show Grid option on the bottom right hand side of the screen*
Step 5: When you are done, hit the okay button.

Here is my first finished photoshop edit. I am very happy with how it turned out, and am already feeling more comfortable with using photoshop:

The before

and after picture!

Thanks again to my friend Felicity Pollard for the help with editing my picture! Check out Felicitys blog:http://devolpingnegatives.wordpress.com. She has some really beautiful pictures :) 

If you want to see more of my pictures check out my filckr account: My flickr account

Here are the youtube tutorials that helped me learn all the things I talked about:

Changing black and white pictures, contrast, brightness and exposure  

Adding vignette and midpoint

Video on adding vignette and midpoint

Complications and Successes

The beginning of the photo shoot, Miranda and
Taylor carrying their bags of clothing. 

I went on a photoshoot with my friends Taylor Vaags and Miranda Vlaming. Taylor and I will be working on this project together a lot so we decided that doing a photoshoot together would be fun and also helpful. Miranda came as a extra model. All three of us brought bags of clothing for costume changes and everything, which provided entertainment throughout the shoot! It was nice having Taylor there so that her and I could talk about what modes we were using to take different pictures and it was nice to be able to collaberate with someone during the shoot. We went to Kildonana Park around 3:30pm and didnt end up leaving until 5:30pm. Because of daylight savings, it was getting dark pretty fast so we also needed to move very fast, which we thought might be a bit stressful, but the pictures turned out nicely and we all had a lot of fun.

For using photoshop I am having a bit of troubles. The program I am using is a older version of photoshp (Photoshop CS3) and all the tuturiols I am looking at requires the newer version. Also, Ive heard from some friends of mine that using the newer version of photoshop is also quite a lot easier to use, then the old version that I am using... which is a bit frustrating. At first, Taylor and I talked about splitting the cost and purchasing photoshop together, but it turns out that this program can cost around $600! Which is not what we expected at all. I have an interest in getting the newer photoshop program, but am unsure of how to I will be doing this. I guess for now, I will just have to look at tutorials with the photoshop that I have. 

I  am currently working on one picture from the photoshoot. It is a picture of taylor and miranda together. I love this picture because you can see how happy the two of them are together, and that they love being together which I like to focus on.  The problem with the picture is that our bags of clothing are in the background and it is VERY distracting. It probably doesnt help that the bag is hot pink either...haha. So I figred out how to take the bag out which is something I was very happy about! Here is the before and after shots of the pictures: 

Before, with a very distracting bag in the background 

After, a hot pink bag free picture!

How I did it: 
On the left side of the computer screen there is a bar that is called the toolbox. To remove an object from a picture you go to your tool box and select the stamp tool. Then you hit the alt key on your keyboard and you drag over a part of the picture that you can replace your unwanted object with. For example, I replaced the bag with the path that would have been shown in the picture if the bag was not there. So I dragged my stamp tool over another part of the path in the picture that is shown. Ater you do that you let go of the alt key and click your mouse and drag the stamp over the object you don't want. It looks like you are coloring a picture when you do this step! One problem I had with this is that when I was "colouring" over the object I wanted to remove, was that other part of the picture would start showing up, instead of the path that I had been copying! I found out that you just need to keep repeating the first steps because the stamp tool starts copying other objects in the picture as you move away from the original object that you are copying. Then after your object is removed from the picture, you go to the tool bar and select the healing brush tool and click and hold down the curser over the area that you copied. This tool allows things to blend into their surroundings, looking more natural.

Instagram post 

Being the typical girl teenager, I posted my pictures on instagram. I took two other pictures of Miranda and Taylor that didn't have the bag in the background I edited the pictures in VSCOcam and made the pictures black and white. I loved the way these pictures looked in black and white! So my new goal is to learn how to make black and white pictures on photoshop, so that i can make the picture that i took the bag out of even nicer :) So this picture is not a finished product...yet!

If you want to look at more pictures I took with miranda and taylor, check out my flicker account!
My flickr account

Here is a youtube tutor that helped me out a lot:
Removing unwanted objects