A few photos I took for digital photography class.

Quick and Easy Editing To Make Your Images A Whole Lot Better

MM140 - Multimedia Production - Photography Project

A recent project involving a photo shoot and some post production in Photoshop has greatly improved the appearance of my photographs. My instructor threw in a tutorial mostly involving adjusting levels, burn, dodge, and sponge tool options, along with applying an unsharp mask.

• Adjusting Levels (image~adjustments~levels)
• Bring in more black by sliding the black arrow over until it reaches a peak
• 
  
• Unsharp Mask (filter~sharpen~unsharp mask)
• Use to sharpen your photos
• Amount - 50-60%
• Radius - 1-2 pixels

- The following tools can be found by clicking and holding the dodge tool on the toolbar. -

• Dodge Tool (toolbar)
• Use to lighten areas
• Set range to highlights or midtones
• 15-20% exposure
• Burn Tool (toolbar)
• Use to darken areas/shadows
• Set range to shadows
• 15-20% exposure
• Sponge Tool (toolbar)
• Use to saturate/desaturate areas
• 15-20% flow
• Using this too much can make your photos look "shopped"

Using these fairly basic tools you can make your pictures brighter and sharper. The flow and exposures are set pretty low, so as not to dramatically change the areas you apply them to. Minimal changes can make a big difference to your photos. Another rule of thumb our instructor gave us was spend no more than five minutes overall adjusting your photos with these tools. Spending too much time on them will make them look overworked and unnatural. The images below are the photos I used for the project. See the comparison side by side, to give you an idea as to what little you need to do to improve the look of your photos.

Graphic Design 140 - Tivoli Project - Workflow

This last semester at ICC I attended a Graphic Design class taught by Roseann Tomko. The class was a bit slow at first, as our first teacher Zachary Bean decided to leave and begin his career in law enforcement. Roseann took his place and picked up the pace considerably. Since I haven't blogged in a bit, I figured I might as well blog a design workflow as instructed by Tomko.

Roseann, having some friends in New York, decided the class would work on a new poster for the Tivoli Bread & Baking Co. Annual Pie Contest. First off, we had to do our research on the town and the baking company, then write a paper showing we did. Here's my paper:


About an hour’s drive north of New York City, nestled along the Hudson River, lies Tivoli, NY. The village of Tivoli was incorporated in 1872 and was coined “Brooklyn on the Hudson” by New York Times’ Griffin Dunne in 2006. Before President Roosevelt took Eleanor as his wife, you may have caught her in Tivoli on a Saturday night enjoying the evening with her rich family in the 1920’s. Today, Tivoli often welcomes the overflow of autumn leaf hunters during the fall, and provides a small town feel to visiting tourists. A quick drive around town and along the outskirts shows a collection of large, gorgeous properties with wrap-around, covered porches, and small businesses far from the prying eyes of a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Nearly Norman Rockwell in flavor, Tivoli is New England’s delight. Aside from the local, liberal Bard college, Tivoli hides a quaint little bakery with delicious, highly sought after baked goods.

Tivoli Bread & Baking Co., owned by Mikee Gonnella, just might be the baking capital of the world. At least that’s what you’d expect from reading customer reviews online. Lemon squares to die for, baguette, cinnamon buns, scones, and brioche line the counter and fill the air with sweet hints of sugar and fresh baked bread. Although Tivoli Bread & Baking Co. does not have an official web page, Mikee stays connected online as “Mikeethebaker” through various sites including Twitter and YouTube. “I love you from the bottom of my flour bin,” he tweets with a true baker’s tone of humor. Mikee also judges the annual Tivoli Pie Contest along with his eleven-year-old nephew Alex Gonnella.

Every year on Tivoli Yard Sale Day, Tivoli Bread & Baking Co. sponsors the Annual Tivoli Pie Contest. Contestants from around town come up with their best pie ideas, bake them up, and rush them to the drooling judges. There’s no sign up fee, and keep your canned filling away! Don’t expect to take first place unless you’re using local fresh fruits. You may slide your canned fruit past a couple judges, but I highly doubt it’ll blow past Mikee’s palate. The contest boasts celebrity judges, and to the winner a $100 gift certificate for dinner at Mercato in Red Hook.

If you’re looking to run away from the daily grind, the hustle and bustle of New York City and its sobering, grey, concrete rivers, you might just want to rent a car and head north. Keep driving until you can see the sun reflecting off the Hudson, take a right, and rent a room at a B&B in Tivoli. You may gain a few pounds, but you won’t regret it.

________________________________End

Once the research was done, pencil, paper, Adobe Illustrator, and InDesign finished the job.

Thumbnails (25 all together - some not pictured)







Roughs:






Final: (Illustrations done in Illustrator, layout in InDesign)
(this is a scan, so the quality isn't great)




The final class project - A "clean" Abercrombie & Fitch ad.
Using Adobe Photoshop to isolate the girl (using quick select) and a text align clipping path.

Production Notes - The Aposematics - Hands On - Stop Motion - A Blue Civilian Production

The latest release from The Aposematics and Blue Civilian Productions is the 2:40 stop motion video set to the tune of "Hands On". Weighing in at about 1,200 still shots after editing, I ended up cutting out about 300 photos. The majority of the video was shot sequentially, making most of the editing easier.

After experimenting with a little bit of stop motion I decided to shoot a full music video. We shot the stills exclusively on Lori's Nikon D40 with an attached SB-400 Speedlight. Unfortunately, continuous shooting ate up the flash's batteries quickly and caused darker frames to litter the video. External static umbrella lighting was used when necessary. A laminated sticker and dry erase marker were used for the doll's face and Hershey's dark chocolate syrup was used to simulate what little blood is present in the film. The stop motion action shots of Ken and Dan playing bass and drums were shot in the Morton building we use as a practice space (partially). The higher angles were achieved by attaching the Nikon to a tripod and triggering the shutter with a remote. Lori cleverly thought up the paper hearts and confetti for her kill scene finale. Some thought went into picking colors that would show up appropriately in black and white. Ken, being the “man behind the curtain” was potentially the hardest message to get across, but we easily conveyed the idea by transposing the last bit of paper hearts over the blank monitor, and then again by cutting back to the doll with a similar facial expression.

All of the images were resized, cropped, auto-adjusted, and converted to grayscale with Adobe Photoshop batching. The images were then imported into Adobe Premiere Pro at 2 frames per still at 24fps. My ramshackle attempt at stop motion ran too quickly and was a little confusing at 2 frames per still. I eventually extended the stills to 3 frames per second; this effectively slowed down the action but made the video a bit choppy. The graphics were then added at the final stage and everything was nested and exported out at 720p.

Overall, this shoot was an incredible learning experience and required more precise edits than the other Aposematics videos. I really loved putting this video together, but it will take much more than just a whim for me to attempt another stop motion film anytime soon. I only have the utmost respect for the real kings and queens of stop motion. I have no doubt their patience is greater than mine.