Texture and the Holidays

This is the last day before Christmas break! For my last post of the year, I will finish up my assignments. This photo was for a texture assignment. there are many interesting textures out there but my camera must be getting old or something because almost every picture I take comes out blurred or shakey-even with the stabilization on.  Or maybe my hands are really shakey.....hmmmm... well until I figure it out, this is the best texture picture that I took, the least non-blurry and hopefully after the holidays I will have some much better pictures.

So have a fantastic holiday and see you next year!

Some non-assignment pictures...

These are some more pictures from the Nutcracker. I couldnt really use any more of the Nutcracker pictures for an assignment because they were all mostly snapshots, I didnt really think about them. But the many many photos I did take were very fun to play around with in photoshop!

A pair of character shoes for Russian Trepak, I blurred the background a lot because there were a lot of random things in the background

The Mouse Queen! It took 45 minutes to do her makeup and hair. I changed a duplicate of this to black and white but i like the color one so that you can see the cool makeup

A soldier. I took this picture at a weird angle, but I like it. 

Me in one of my costumes--i turned down all of the color except for the green of the dress.

Color

This past weekend's assignment was color and texture, but this past weekend also meant Nutcracker weekend for me. I thought it would be easy to find a good color picture because of all of the costumes, makeup, set pieces, so I set out to find some when I had time, and this one is one that I really liked after I finished editing.  This picture is of my Spanish Hot Chocolate costume. I just love the red in this picture!

Also, if you want to see some amazing photos of Nutcracker rehearsal last week, they are in the Marshfield News Herald--(I'm in some of them!)  www.marshfieldnewsherald.com just search "nutcracker"

Derivitive

One of our projects were to take a photoshop photographer's ideas and try to copy them in a picture.  The picture I found was by Kevin Irby, a photoshop photographer who is pretty creative when it comes to his images. The one I tried to copy was that of a woman holding an abnormally large book.  To try and copy this image, I first took a picture of a book by itself, against a white background. I had to zoom in a lot on the book so it would look large when I photoshopped it. Next I took a picture of myself looking like I was holding something large. Then I photoshopped the book onto the picture of myself.

Original photo by Kevin Irby
website credit: http://www.kevinirby.com/concept106.html

Image made by me.

Hard Select

This is my attempt at the hard select assignment. I've been putting off posting it because I didn't know if I wanted to post or print it because it certainly did not turn out the way I expected to, but at least it looks like I am standing on top of our Christmas tree by the star.

Snow. Eh.

Snow is great at first, like I think it is really very beautiful at the first snowfall, but after time goes on it just gets to be more and more annoying. This past weekend's assignment was to photograph snow and thank goodness because there was so much snowfall I would not have been able to get out of my house to take other pictures. we literally could not get out our front door there was so much snow piled up.

They looked like little Christmas trees before the snow, but now they are just globs of snow with some pine needles sticking out.

This picture does not do justice the amount of snow that was piled up  alongside our driveway.

Footsteps in the snow.

COLD!!

This past weekend's assignment was to show cold someway. That was not very hard because snow blankets every surface.  So I went out in the cold and took pictures of the kids playing in the snow, all bundled up in hats, gloves, snow pants, heavy jackets, yet their faces were still very red from the cold. I also found tree branches that had snow piled up very high on them.

Even though this picture is blurry I really like it anyways, looking at him through the  snow falling down. (I still like it even though his eyes are closed :) )  

Attempted snow angel- but however when he stood up it looked quite deformed but that is ok!

I like the snow coating the branches and the setting sun peeking in the bottom corner.

Even though it has been below freezing for a few days now, the creek is not frozen yet. 

Portraits of me!

These are some portraits of me that I took for my weekend assignment. Both of these I love, and they were taken on a really cold day--hence the hats.  There is rarely a picture of me that I like, and these I actually did like.

Me and my best friend, on a very cold winter's day--at least I think it's cold, when there is actually no snow on the ground yet!!

I try to be happy as much of the time as possible, and it really shows my personality, which was the point of these portraits.

Portraits

This past weekend's assignment was to take portraits of myself and of other people. This picture was not actually taken by me(so I am not sure it counts), because I wanted to be in the picture, but I did set the settings myself and edit it (obviously) myself.

This picture was taken last Thursday at our dance studio. We were promoting our upcoming Nutcracker show by walking and handing out candy in the winter parade. Might I add that it was FREEZING cold that night, and the hat, gloves, scarf, and many layers of clothing did nothing at all.

More portraits to come!

Open Theme 3

This weekend's assignment was another open theme. We went for a little trip up north in the state for the weekend, and it snowed very heavily.  By morning everything was covered in a blanket of snow. I took some pictures of the snow covered houses and trees-and the road on the way home-which was very pretty because of all of the farm houses covered in snow, and the multicolored trees with snow on them as well. However, I'm not going to post any of the pictures from on the way home, because they are all really blurry.

I really like this picture-the tree looks really curvy, and I like how it is leaning over the snow-topped house like that.

Alphabet

One of my assignments was to find things that looked like letters and put them together in a type of collage of the alphabet. I admit that this was very hard for me. I wasn't feeling very creative apparently-I mostly just found things around my house, or I think I found one or two outside. One letter that I could absolutely not find was the letter z. But now after the assignment, I will probably start seeing "z" everywhere.... Another problem that I had was my camera. Usually, my camera can take pretty clear pictures, but over half of mine were blurry and out of focus which was weird because I think I put on the picture stabilization setting. Oh well. Here is my alphabet collage:

My Typical Day...

One of the assignments from the past week was to photograph my typical day. My typical day is usually very busy-school, homework, and dance.    My day starts around 6:30, and I start the long process to get ready, then I pack up my backpack, head to school and start the school day. After school I go straight to dance, which usually lasts until 9:00, then I head home and to bed to start the day all over again.

Halloween!

So this past weekend was Halloween. We also had a four day weekend off from school. I thought that I would get lots of pictures  because of all the decorations, costumes, festivities. But of course, I had to misplace my good camera. So I dug up our very old digital camera, which has practically no settings and will make the photo blur if my hand shakes the tiniest bit. So I did not have much success with this camera, and I will see what I can do in photoshop. Anyways, here are some of the pictures I took on Halloween:

Now that's a nice dinosaur smile!!!

This one is almost too dark, but when I looked at this picture later, I liked how the sun is setting through the bare trees, and the blue tint on everything-which I think gives it a slightly creepy appearance.

A fairy princess, a dinosaur, and a cowboy in that order. The dinosaur would not smile no matter what!!

This picture was one of my camera screw ups, but I actually like it... the cap did not open all the way when I turned the camera on, and I forgot to check it, but it kind of gives a frame to the cowboy.





I don't know why I was so into black and white, I think it makes the picture look better.

Decay

This past weekend's assignment was to find decay-stuff that was in disrepair, collapsing, in ruin, or maybe partially dead. I took some pictures but I do not think that they are very good, considering that I used this pumpkin in another photograph and assignment, so it is kind of a before and after picture. This weekend I wanted to take pictures as we were heading into town a  half hour away, because on the way there there are some old, broken down, and collapsed shacks/barns. But my reaction skills are not so great while driving in a car going 60 down the road.  So these are what I took, but I want to see if I can find some more interesting subjects for this assignment.

The AFTER picture!! Aww, I guess we should have put a mouth on it before it started to die...

It's getting colder, and colder, and colder...

This is a picture I took this weekend of the tree behind my house. I actually really liked how this picture turned out. This was not an assignment, just for fun. 

Well, you can definitely tell winter is coming by the look of those branches- there is not a single leaf left!

Animal Morph

This weekends assignment was animal morph. First, I found an animal to use, and took a close-up picture of myself. Then in photoshop I copied my mouth and eyes onto the animal-and now I have quite a strange looking dog....

My animal morphed dog Kaycee Lou. 

This photo was taken during our trip to the arboretum, but then we used the same photo with different effects, like color, black and white, sepia, and an effect of our choice.

Black and white

I can't remember what I did to make everything blue-but I think it looks cool.

Regular color, taken in the morning

Sepia-I actually really like the sepia, it gives kind of a creepy/antique feel to it.

Around and around in circles.....

This is the circle assignment from this weekend- I tried my hardest to find some interesting circles. I took about 30 pictures, and ended up only really liking one. 

These are just some computer discs that i found on the computer desk, so I just spread them out all over the desk and tried to take an interesting picture.

We all love bubbles!!!!

Here are some of my favorite bubble portraits from last Wednesday (these were taken first hour on the elementary school playground):

Just blowing bubbles... peace out. 

I think the wind caught that one but i managed to take the picture just in time before the bubbles flew away.

Probably the largest bubble anyone had blown that morning. 

Taken on top of the monkey bars-it takes skill to stay up there and blow bubbles at the same time!!!

My friend the bubble!

I absolutely love this photo I took while outside on the elementary playground. We were blowing bubbles outside and taking pictures of people and their reactions. I won't post those pictures until next week, but here is my favorite bubble photo:

A really large bubble!! I thought it would pop but I got a picture just in time!

Assignment: Open Theme

Here are some pictures from this past weekend's assignment and Friday's trip to the arboretum:

Arboretum: 

Looking through the trees in the forest, taken in the early morning.

On the edge of the river, taken in the early morning.

 This past weekend's assignment: Open Theme

A pumpkin on the top step of my porch, taken around midday.

Looking up through the trees at the creek by my house, taken around midday. 

Can you tell fall is here? It's very beautiful, but that means winter is not far behind! Yikes!

Hello September!

School has started, and we are all so excited, right? This semester I'm taking an advanced photography class at my high school. As an assignment, we are to create this blog and post our pictures on it.  I hope it turns out o.k!  Anyways, here are my favorite pictures of September:

The sky on my way home one day.

                                      

                                          

An abandoned old birdhouse deep in the forest...

                                          

Ripples in the creek by my house.

                                                          

                        

A stack of pumpkins on a wheelbarrow.

                                              

"The Leaning Tower of Pumpkins" This photo was taken for one of my composition assignments.