The final project we had to do for our digital photography class was to choose our seven favorite images from this session and to make a canvas around each and title, date and sign each picture. So these seven images below were ones that I liked the best because I either liked how the final image looked, or because while it may not have been needed for an earlier task, I liked the image still.

Note: These three panoramics were too large to have the name and title with them no matter how many times I attempted to resize, compress and change the settings. The first one is titled "Shaded Garden", the second "Serenity by the Lake" and the last is titled "A Walk in the Park".

For our last actual task, we were supposed to go out and take a photo sequence. You will see many images like this with gymnastics and diving to see how their movements actual go. For this I asked my friend Lexy to do a cartwheel and I was able to take photos from the beginning to the end of the cartwheel sequence.

Week ten's task was to look at still life images and tableau vivant. I decided to use a still life because a tableau vivant uses people and is generally seen in plays or in a theatrical set-up. Also because it was a beautiful spring day here in Australia, many of the flowers were starting to bloom and I was able to take some fun photos.

In this task, we were to take a photo of an image we wanted and then to also take a photo of a background image. I chose to take a photo of this pink flower because I really wanted to be able to focus in on the pistil and stamen seen at the heart of the flower. The background is of the leaves of a neighboring bush. I used these two together because I was able to also focus on the veins in the leaves, so I thought it was an overall striking image to see the two together since they both represented life for each plant.

For week nine,  we were told to emulate another photographer's image. I decided to attempt to copy Annie Leibovitz's image that is in black and white of an older woman covering her mouth. It is a very strong image, and I did my best to recreate this image using Caitlin, my ever trustworthy model.

Personally, this was my least favorite task we had to do because copying another photographer is very difficult and because we don't know their exact set-up it's nearly impossible to get the same type of image with lighting. I think I was able to do the best I could with emulating Leibovitz's image, but it is definitely not the same.

Week six we didn't take any actual photographs because we had our photography test. I did get 100% as did Caitlin, my lovely model. So these next photos shown will be from week eight because we also had a study break during week seven. In these photos, we were taught how to take panorama photos, and this was by far my favorite class lesson.

For all three of these photos, I decided to go by the small lake we have on campus because not many people are ever there and it's just plain gorgeous. The first and second panoramics are my favorites of the three because of how the overall scenes look. The first is fun because of all the triangles there are due to the shades over the garden pathways. The second image is actually of the lake and the classroom next to it, and it just looks so very calm and serene. I decided after taking this photo to come down here more often to relax. Last, the third panoramic is of the park/trail that goes along the lake and while it was not my favorite of the three, I still rather enjoyed the overall image and how it turned out.

Week five came around, and we were given a little more freedom with the types of shots we took. In lecture earlier that day we had learned a little about different styles of photography and about specific photgraphers, one being Rodchenko in particular. So playing with both aperture and shutter speed, we were told to go out and take photos of either a stationary object or a person at different angles and heights.

Near the beginning of this shoot, I was taking photos of Caitlin once again, but decided that they were not turning out the way I wanted them to. On accident, my gaze fell upon this faucet that was on the side of a building and thought that it would be fun to take photos all around it. I found that i was able to focus on many different facets of this faucet and the images were very good. Once in the lab, I was able to play with the hue/saturation of all the images and was able to come up with this final image that reminds me a little of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe photos.

The second image in this task, I went back to using Caitlin as my model. For this image, we were told to take a photo up against a plain background, so that we were able to select the model and paste into a new image where you were then able to flip and make a mirror image next to the original.  This photo makes Caitlin look like she now has a twin sister.

While week three was about how to use shutter speed, week four was about aperture. For these shots we were focusing on how to use the different F stops and which ones to use with the type of photo we wanted to take.

For this first shot we used the apertures F16 and F3.5. It is quite obvious that the second image has a better quality to it because it is not overexposed in the sunny day.

For this second image we used the zoom lens and the aperture settings to take the photo. The zoom lens is at 70mm and the shots are taken at F11 and F4.5, and once again we see that the smaller aperture number took the best shot.

This image we were using a prop in front of our subject and using different focal lengths  and apertures. In the first image, Caitlin is not focused on, but the camera on the tripod is. This shot was taken at a 50mm zoom and F11 aperture. The second image is the opposite and the tripod is what is in focus and Cailtin is seen more in the background out of focus. This image was shot at 50mm zoom again but at the F4.5 aperture setting.

This final image of this weeks task was to have Caitlin's palm in focus of this image at different aperture settings. The first image was taken at F11 and appears to be overexposed and in the second image, taken at F4.5, her hand appears normal in color and distinctly in focus while her face is out of focus and covered.

Week three came around and we were finally given a Nikon D70 to use and take photos with! In the lab we first had a lecture on how to properly hold and carry the cameras, and then after we discussed the task for the week, shutter speed. For this task we had multiple shots we needed to take at different shutter speeds so that we could visually see the difference between a good and bad shutter speed for a specific situation.

In this first image, my friend Caitlin was instructed to spin around while I took some photos.  The first image in this sequence was taken at 125th of a second, the second at a 60th of a second and the third was taken at a 30th of a second. What we are able to take from this sequence is that when an object is moving at a faster speed, the shutter speed also needs to be set at a faster setting so that the image is not blurry.

This second image is also working on shutter speed again. In this shot, we are to have somebody walk behind our subject at a brisk walk. It is quite obvious that the second image is taken at a faster shutter speed because the image is clear while in the first the person walking is very blurred.

Going on with this task, we worked on jumping photos, which everyone loves to take, and once again used different shutter speeds to capture the image. For the most part, Caitlin is clear in all of the photos, but where we see the difference is in her boots in each image. They are gradually more and more blurry from left to right which signifies the slower shutter speeds used.

This last shot, was by far the hardest task of the day and it was on how to take a panning shot. Mainly we find these shots at sporting events where objects are moving at high speeds. For this shot, Jamie was running down the street and we were to attempt to use a proper shutter speed to capture a clear image of her but have a blurry background. I think that for my first time using this technique I did okay, but that with time and practice I could be much better and have a much clearer image.

For week two, we once again found ourselves in the photo lab without a camera. We were still learning some of the easy and basic tools of photoshop, and today's lesson was on how to use the healing brush and clone stamp tool on an image to get rid of spots in a photo.

In the first image, we were told to use the healing brush to first remove all of the excess spots that are seen in the left image. In the second we were told to remove the shadows that are seen on the wall in the background. The first task of removing the spots was much easier in my opinion than in removing the shadows.  I personally found that trying to remove the shadows proved to be very difficult the closer to the table I was because sometimes it would smudge a black line across the the image. However, in the end I was finally able to successfully use the tools to get rid of the shadows in the second image without a visible smudge.

So this first week in our lab we are first learning about how to use the basic tools in photoshop. We are using the image resizing and layout of a new photo. In the first photo below, we were taught how to change a photo into a smaller size and how to change a color photo into a black and white and a gray scale. After we finished changing these settings, we then copied and moved each individual photo into a new screen next to each other to have the final product. The second photo seen below was more about image resizing. For this beach photo that we were given, we had to resize the original image and then overlay the smaller image over the original, thus giving this layered 3D effect.

So I created this blog to display all of my work from my digital photography class in Australia. Each week we are given a specific task after a lecture and then in our lab we take photos and then "play" with them in photoshop.  Throughout the session I hope to be able to learn a lot about the history of photography in lecture, how to use aperture and shutter speed properly on a camera and how to use photoshop in the lab.