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.