Ink Swirls

Ink Swirls

Posted by on Jun 12, 2013 in Blog, Creative, Photography |

These were shot using a single macro extension tube and an assortment of speedlights.  The “ink” is food coloring that we dripped into a tall round glass of water. A big THANK YOU to Max and Kenna Gurrel for helping me get these exciting shots! It was really neat to see the shapes that the ink formed.  The last shot was actually way over exposed, but I loved the way the blown out shot made the colors look.    ...

Read More

Water Drop Macro

Water Drop Macro

Posted by on Jun 12, 2013 in Blog, Creative, Photography |

These shots were pulled off using a device called a time machine, which released carefully timed and sized drops of water while also opening the camera shutter and firing three speedlights. By changing the timing and water drop size, we were able to capture these drops of water at different points of entry.  The vibrant colors were caused by the reflection of abstract panels of color on the wall behind the dish used to make these drops.  For the last photo, I held up a bouquet of flowers instead of using a color panel to get the neat texture. A big THANK-YOU goes to Julie Peterson, who did a lot of work to get the time machine set up!      ...

Read More

What I’m Made Of (Mosaic)

What I’m Made Of (Mosaic)

Posted by on May 26, 2013 in Blog, Creative |

It’s hard to know where to start when describing my sister LC. There are so many facets of her personality that are wonderful in their own ways that she almost defies description.  I tried to express that in this mosaic of her.  This image is comprised of 113 different photos I’ve taken of her over the past year or so, and I assembled them using an awesome program called AndreaMosaic. After the program put the image together, I took it into Photoshop and tweaked the saturation and contrast with adjustment levels, overlaid the original photo on the mosaic at a low opacity, and used a large, soft white brush to clear out the background and soften the edges. It was lots of fun to...

Read More

“I Spy” Scanography

“I Spy” Scanography

Posted by on May 26, 2013 in Blog, Creative |

  As a kid, one of my favorite pastimes was perusing Scholastic’s “I Spy” books (The Spooky Mansion one was my favorite!).  The idea to make an I Spy game of my own struck me suddenly in the middle of the night with a surge of nostalgia.  I raided my roommate’s trinket hoard for most of the items you see here.  My sister and I carefully arranged every piece on a scanner bed, and allowed the scanner to “photograph” our scene.  It took about thirty tries to find a configuration we liked, but it was so much fun! The only thing that’s missing from this I Spy game is a riddle by Jean Marzollo to tell viewers what to look for! What kind of things can you...

Read More

“Confessions” Movie Poster Spoof

“Confessions” Movie Poster Spoof

Posted by on May 8, 2013 in Blog, Creative, Photography | 3 comments

As a Visual Communication major, I find myself wearing several different hats.  Though I didn’t love the movie, I loved the layout of the “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” movie poster and thought it would be fun to spoof it!  I certainly felt like a teen putting this together–I changed my outfit nine times and took over a hundred and fifty selfies to get the right photos for this project!  Self-portraits are really difficult when you don’t have a trigger or anything to focus on it.  I also had pretty poor lighting.  The photo WITH my camera was the most awkward to take and edit, since I had to use my bathroom mirror to take it.  Even so, I had a lot of fun with this!  Here are the original photos: To edit the photos, I relied mostly on selection tools (lasso and quick selection), two adjustment layers (for hue and saturation), and the brush and eraser tools for airbrushing my terrible complexion and sculpting out the stray hairs I couldn’t select.  For the photos I used my Canon DSLR and a tripod.  Since I don’t have a trigger, I had to set a ten second timer, focus the shot on my chair, and then run into the shot before it took.  I’m sure there must be a simpler way!  If I wanted to put more time into the project I’d probably refine the airbrushing some more, and try to make the photography image match better than it currently does.  It looks pretty...

Read More

Self-Portrait Collage: “Life is What you Make of it”

Self-Portrait Collage: “Life is What you Make of it”

Posted by on Jan 29, 2013 in Creative |

I used 12 different images to compose this design, all taken by me.  Most of the background photos were chosen just for their colors and textures, but some were also chosen because of what they represent to me as an individual and as a part of a larger whole.  I chose to organize this project in this manner to communicate my personal belief  in the creative nature of the soul, and that all people (myself included) are the expressions of several diverse influences. I constructed this image using primarily the quick selection and lasso tools, the rectangular marquee, the stroke tool, and the “paste into” feature on Photoshop.  I bounced between Photoshop Elements 7 and Photoshop CS5 out of necessity.  I began by carefully selecting myself in the self-portrait photo and saving the selection.  Then I used the rectangular marquee tool to break the image up into squares, copied these selections to their own layers, and pasted the various photos into each layer, reloading the selection of myself each time to keep the portrait of me from being hidden by the new pictures.  I applied the white stroke around each box to more clearly distinguish the boxes from one another and the black background.  I finished by touching up the edges of my silhouette and adding the dark background and...

Read More