Children of Cambodia

Final Project Slideshow: Children of Cambodia

Reasey

Difficulties with this assignment is how awkward it is to just pull out my camera and snap pictures of people. Even though people are always more than happy to be in your picture, it still feels weird for me. So I took pictures of people I feel close to.

For some reason the resolution of this picture is kinda horrible on the blog... hmm.

Filters

I'm not particularly happy with my choice of filters, but my computer (or maybe GIMP) is beingridiculously slow loading each filter, so I could only experiment so much without wanting to pull all my hair out....

The first one, I used the newspaper filter; the second, cartoon filter.

Dodge & Burn

Original & Edited - a subtle difference, but still noticeable. "Burning" the background makes the cute chicken puppet(?) stand out more.

Yaya & Alice

Okay, I did lots of GIMP experimenting this week. I cropped both of these photos, and in the first I just increased the contrast and left it like that. With the second, I played around with a few different settings: I posterized it, therefore reducing it to a limited set of colors; I increased the "curve"; I decreased the brightness a bit; and I changed the color balance, adding some more blue. I wouldn't normally play around with a photo so much, but it was fun to experiment.

Big Fish

I decided to make Rithy&Thavy the fishermen here a bit more fortunate...

Landscape

Here are two of my landscape pictures for the week.

To be honest, today (Sunday) was the only day I took any pictures. I went out to the countryside and went fishing with my English students and decided that it would be a good time to bring my camera and get some shots. Since I hadn’t been out that particular way before, and I was riding on the back of a motorbike while snapping all the shots, I couldn’t exactly plan what kind of photos to get. I snap-snap-snapped away, every chance I got, and ended up taking a lot of pictures – mostly pretty bad ones. When I was riding through one particular area, I originally didn’t think it was a very photogenic spot, but I decided to keep my camera out anyway. Then when I took a picture and looked at it, I realized that it was better than expected, but I wasn’t sure why. So I snapped a couple more – one of which is the picture below – since it always takes me a few shots of the same thing before I get one that works. I’ve decided now that I think the reason I like it is because the photo has depth, which I was having difficulty achieving with my others. It’s not a great picture – I don’t think I’m very good at landscape photography, perhaps because landscape in general usually fails to interest me – but I like it okay.

This is another one that’s alright but I wish I could have done better. I like the color contrast of the greenery and the road...

Rule of Thirds

Here are two pictures of Cambodian children. The first has them centered; the second follows the rule of thirds, with the subject off to the right. While I like both photos because they're so gosh darn cute, I think the second one has a more artsy feel to it. For whatever the reason, the rule of thirds rarely seems to fail at being more aesthetically pleasing.

Framing Slideshow

Here's my framing slideshow.
(It says "By Jess" because I used my mom's Picasa account... hope that's not a problem.)

Composition Technique

Hi everyone,

I found this link: http://photoinf.com/General/Peter_Ensenberger/Improving_Your_Photography_Lesson_Two_Composition.htm

An interesting idea to improve an image's aesthetics is called "Leading Lines": Include lines in the photo that lead to the focal point of the image. They can be curves or diagonals, but try to shoot horizontally or vertically depending on which way the lines go. Patterns of shape and texture can create "rhythm and motion in a composition." Interesting -- the picture on the site are of lines in the sand. I'm wondering what other sort of setting would lend itself to create leading lines...

Lighting

This is right outside my guesthouse in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Being here, I wish I had had a chance to take a picture of a much more interesting scene, but we've gotten a blast from Typhoon Katsana, the roads are flooded, and so it's a pain to go much of anywhere, especially three different times of day. Oh well, there will be many more photo opportunities, I'm sure.

Anyway, this one was taken midday when we had some sun. It's my favorite because the green of the trees stands out against the blue sky.

This one was taken on an overcast morning (we seem to be getting a lot of those!) It's definitely not as good, because all the colors are so muted from the lack of sunlight.

Ha, now this one was clearly taken at night, and shows how much I seem to have overestimated my flash. Although this isn't much of a picture, I hope it can count as one of the three, as it was certainly a learning experience for me as to how far my flash can (or rather, cannot) travel.

Color Schemes

This is a complimentary color scheme, with the red of the flowers and the green of the leaves contrasting. This is my favorite, because I really like how the flowers stand out.

I believe this is a monochrome color scheme, as it only has black&white in the picture. I like this too, because there is a lot going on in the picture, but because it's only black and white, you really have to look for it.

Now, I'm wondering whether this is an analogous color scheme (black, gold, orange??) or another monochrome (different shades of gold?)... Maybe someone could help me out labeling this one.

Macro Collage

Compare & Contrast

These are three very different photos. The first is very straightforward: it clearly presents what the object is from an overhead view. The second two are at more unusual angles, emphasizing certain aspects. What I like about all of them is that there is no background to them besides the leaves - I had some others that showed the fence or cars in the background, and it took away from the photo. What bothers me is that these seemed to turn out blurry - I wonder how I could have gotten the images sharper. My favorite is the third one - I especially enjoy the bright colors.