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)

week six. sad day :(

What?! No meeting??! 

    Unfortunately, Dan called and told me that he was really busy this week and that there would be no meeting. I guess I'm going to have to wait and see another photo reveal with a client some other time.

week five.

 This is pretty much my life right now--- pre-calculus. I felt that some of my pictures should reflect what's going on in my life. You can see the detail on my eraser with the smiley face, the pattern of the polka dots, and just the placement of the objects.

This picture was taken outside my house of some of the rocks that are there. The weather had been pretty warm but still cold, so the rock is peeking through the snow. 

      Today, Dan decided that it was time for me to start learning about lighting, because I have a pretty good grasp on the fundamentals of photography. One thing about light is that it is directional. When taking pictures with light make sure that you point the light at the subject however you want it and make sure that the direction of the light isn't casting too heavy of shadows on the subject. Avoid, as much as possible, to use flash light. Flash light is the flash in your camera or on top of it. That kind of flash can cause everything to look flat and bad. It is mostly used as a filler for some dark parts in the picture. You don't have to have super high-tech gear in order to get great lighting. Lighting a picture can be as easy as taking a piece of cardboard with tin foil wrapped all around it and reflecting light to the subject's face pushing more light there. When taking a picture you need to look for the direction of the light in you picture. Place the subject in a place where they won't be too overexposed or too underexposed, or cause heavy shadows that distract from the picture. Overhead light is BAD!! That light casts horrible shadows on the subject and is not flattering whatsoever.
    For next week Dan asked me to come in 10 minutes early so that I can get there before some of his clients. There will be some clients in his studio to look at their pictures. I haven't seen this process yet, but I am super excited to see how it works. If I ever open up my own studio one day, I will have to know how to do all of this. Now is a great time to learn. :)
    Something funny that keeps happening to me is that when I bring my pictures in on a thumbdrive, I either forget to bring the thumbdrive home, we forget to put the edited pictures on the thumbdrive, or we forget to take that weeks pictures and put them on Dan's computer. I guess now I'll have to superglue it to myself so that I'll always bring it home....maybe not that drastic, but maybe a big long string tied on me. :D