extra pictures :)

                                        1) 

2) 

3) 

4)

week twelve. PPA meeting....

     Today was the second time that I went to a PPA meeting. They are always pretty interesting, but they can also get pretty boring. During the meeting, they were re-organizing the plans for each meeting and how they wanted to run them. This was all because they just got new board members. They all went around giving ideas for topics of the meetings, but pretty soon people started going off tangents and talking about how their website works in complex computer terms that most everyone didn't understand. By that point in the meetings I have to will myself to stay awake and focused. Finally, they all got back on subject and finished planning the next few month's meetings out. The subject of websites came back up once again. But this time it wasn't the technical part, it was the design part. They did a little website critiquing on a few of the photographer's websites. One little tidbit of funny information about website design is that if a website is all black, it was most likely designed by a man. I guess men like to have the color black as the background for a website. My mentor, Dan, had his website critiqued. The other photographers gave him tips on how to make it more appealing, how to put your name and number on the website clearly, and how to have a cohesive design on the website to reflect your marketing picture for your photography studio. They told him to get rid of this curly design on the home page of his website because it didn't go with his birch tree on all of his cards, photo bags, etc., they also told him to make his name bigger on the homepage so that when people accidentally come across the page they will know right away whose page it is and remember the name of the studio, and they told him to put his studio number on the home page also as to make it more accessible to people wanting to have their pictures taken by him. After the website critiquing, Dan shared some pictures of the photographers they had taken at their "pictures for Haiti" event. He created a montage of cutouts of the photographers doing silly poses. He also made a few other pictures of three of the photographers. He has been messing around with Photoshop, learning how to cut things out of pictures and put something else in the place of it and other things. Then finally, after a very long meeting, we were able to leave. By the time we got back to the studio, it was way too late to start looking at my pictures, so we just didn't look at them and saved them for next time. I think it's very interesting to go to the PPA meetings, and it's really cool to see all the different portrait photographers in Alaska and the different picture styles they have.

week eleven.

 

Town Square. 

Eagle River Boys Varsity basketball game. 

Today was a very short meeting because we both have a lot of things going on at this moment.

This meeting was the time when I got to sit in Dan's chair and work the images on the computer. Dan wanted to give me the chance to tweak the pictures how I thought they should be. What looks good to me might not look as great to Dan. Photography is relative. Everyone sees everything differently and will like it or not. When I was working with Photoshop on Dan's computer, it was hard for me to choose what action to put on the picture because I wasn't familiar with what it does to the picture. So, it was a combined effort of both Dan and I. Maybe one of these days I'll do it all by myself. I could work with my Photoshop and become familiar with that too, instead of working with Dan's version of Photoshop. After we quickly looked at the pictures, Dan gave me his 85 mm lens to borrow to try to capture fast moving pictures. I plan to take A LOT of pictures this following weekend, so it's going to be great to have a different lens. The 85 mm has a lower aperture than my other lenses and it will allow me to push more light into the camera and getting a faster shutter speed to capture the speed.

I'm still loving my mentorship, and I feel sad to know that it's coming to a close. :(

week ten.

The bridge picture, is a picture that I messed around with on my Photoshop. I think that it really works. I burned the edges of the bridge, because I wanted to lead the eye down the bridge to the end. 

This week right when I arrived at the studio for my meeting with Dan, Dan asked me if it was ok if we went into Anchorage to Kaladi Bros. to see Shalem Mathew's pictures. When we got there, Shalem Mathew's pictures were all around the shop. We started at the beginning and gradually made our way to the end. My favorite picture was one of a model dressed up to look like a pilot (like Amelia Earhart) and the flying goggles were pulled up and there was a goggle mark around her eyes. The rest of her face was covered in soot, and there was one teardrop coming from her eye. I don't know how he came up with the idea to do that, but it's pretty cool. After we we finished looking at the pictures, we drove over to Barnes and Noble to get a book on my Photoshop Elements 8 that I got for Christmas. I finally picked a book called: "Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac OS X". It's a great book that shows me how to work Photoshop. Now I can mess around with my own pictures even after my mentorship is over.
Finally, we drove back to the studio to look over my pictures. Last week, I drove out to Wasilla/Palmer to take some different pictures. As we were looking at my pictures, Dan saw that if I cropped some of the pictures I took, it would make them look more appealing to the eye than it would with everything in the picture.
My homework for the week is to think of what I really want to take pictures of, and not just go out randomly and take a few pictures.

week nine.

Every Christmas Eve, my family goes sledding. This is a picture of my sisters sledding. 

This is just a funny picture of my sister. Haha, that's it. :)

After my family went down the sledding hill. As you can see, some people didn't stay on the sled the whole time. 

My older sister getting some air off a jump. It took about ten tries until I finally caught the perfect shot. 

When I got to the studio, we did our usual things. We looked at the pictures I had taken the past week and fiddled around with them on photoshop. This time I had more pictures than usual because of Christmas Break. One thing I kept doing is clipping parts of pictures such as feet, heads, and other objects. Another tip he gave me for fast shots is to set the camera onto multiple shots instead of just single shots. After the picture reviewing, we again talked about photoshop. When I was at home working on some of my pictures, I didn't know how to make layers and put the actions on them. He told me to hit command "J" to duplicate a layer. After there is a duplicate layer, I can screen the picture (lighten) or even multiply (darken) the picture.

Dan offered to help me with my photoshop elements sometime. He also mentioned about going to Barnes and Noble during one of our meeting times to find a book on photoshop elements 8 and how to use it. 

Next week, Dan and I are going to visit Kaladi Bros. in Anchorage because there was a photographer who put his work there named Shalem Mathew. I'm excited to see what kind of pictures he has in his gallery thing at Kaladi Bros.

week eight.

 

yummm.... white chocolate popcorn. :) 

 

white chocolate covered pretzels. :) :)

This is the last meeting before Christmas break. I asked Dan how to take fast pictures again, because everytime I try to take fast pictures it doesn't really work, so I wanted to ask Dan again to make sure how to do it. He told me that it depends on the lens you have and how much light it can let in. He told me to bump up the ISO to get a faster shutter speed with the lens that I have. 

Our next topic was photoshop. I'm really interested in learning about it because you can do so much with it. It's amazing! :) In photoshop, there are these things called "actions". These actions run programs that tell photoshop to do certain things with the picture to make it look different. You can make the picture look ancient, really bright, or even newspaper-like, there are also things like defog. These actions that Dan has are part of a program made up by Kevin Kubota who made the actions more accessible to people. If someone doesn't have this program, they can write programs to get the inteded effect. 

Just to make sure I don't forget anything, we did a focusing recap. He reminded me to use the focus area button on the camera, so the things I want to be in focus are in focus, and the things I don't want in focus aren't. 

There is this photographer named Zack Arias. He's a GREAT photographer that uses only one light to take his pictures. We visited his blog. There was a shootout that he and some other people had. We looked at all the pictures and I picked the one I liked and he did also. Zack Arias made this video called Transformation that was all about his photography life and how he felt throughout the year with his photography. He makes some deep stuff. I absolutely loved it!!

Lastly, Dan gave me a new video from Zack Arias called "One Light". I'm going to watch it over break.

week seven.

This is my little sister, Amber. We were ice skating out on our pond, and she was being crazy. I absolutely LOVE this picture!!

Every year, my family makes a gingerbread house. This particular part of the house really caught my eye. I was going to edit it and add a little Christmas saying in the blank spot, but I'm still not sure if I am.  

    Although this week is really busy for me, I felt the need to still come in.
    As usual, Dan looked at my photos that I had taken the week before. Then we worked some of them on photoshop. Looking at the pictures and working them took most of the time for this meeting. As we were doing that, a client came to the studio to pick up some pictures they had ordered. After they left this got Dan thinking about how to save the files for the client and for your own copy. He said to save the picture as both a PSD file and a JPG file. You give the client a JPG file, then they can look at it and see what they would like changed. Then, you can go back and change the picture on your own computer with the PSD file without compressing the file anymore. You also have the RAW file to work with to get more information about the picture and help when you save the picture.
    One thing that Dan likes to do is put vignettes around pictures to draw a person's eye to a certain focal point in the picture. A vignette is a frame around the picture that is usually black that is used to focus on something, it kind of burns the outside of picture so that what is left is not burned and is the focal point. We tried it on a couple of my pictures, and it ended up looking great on all of them. I like the vignettes, not only because they sound french, but because it makes the picture more interesting and much better.
    My homework for today is to update my blog from the last weeks and to keep taking LOTS of good pictures.

    I'm loving my mentorship!! <3 (it's supposed to be a heart)