Hi, my name is Heidi and I’m a snapshot photographer. There I said it. I’m not proud but I’m easily impressed when something I snap actually comes out looking decent. My husband is a photographer so I’ve always relied on him to compose the pretty pictures and often just hand him the camera to document the event. I know sometimes he doesn’t want to be responsible so, this was a good assignment for me. Although I understand the concepts outlined in this assignment, I’ve never really implemented them on a camera or thought deeply about composition or framing when setting up a shot. I learned a lot and look forward to feedback.
When I registered for this class I decided I wanted to do as much as I could with my mobile devices: iPhone 5 or iPad 3 or iPad mini. I wanted to be able to replicate and understand how a student might use these types of devices when preparing their projects and homework assignments. I am hoping that any limitations will be minimal. I found this website very helpful for learning more about the camera app: http://www.griffintechnology.com/blog/tips-and-tricks/stop-taking-crappy-iphone-pictures-part-1/ (along with part 2-6). My ultimate goal was not to have to edit the images –or limit the editing to resolution and size formatting. It can be very time consuming to edit images. I have folders of images that are waiting for editing. and I know that I’ll never get to them. That being said, I did resort to using CS6 Photoshop on my laptop. It is the program I know the best and limited time resulted in going back to that comfort zone.
My images were taken in a 4:3 ratio (standard for iPhone 5) using the default camera application which is really handy since this is the ratio that I was going to use for the three types of files for this assignment. I moved the images to my laptop so that I could view them on my big monitor to check the quality. This was especially important for the images for print. For the images for monitor display I decided to go with a wallpaper size of 1440×900 which is the resolution that my laptop is set. I found conflicting information on “standard” size for creating wallpapers and it seems like the suggestion is to make various sizes so people can pick the best for their use.
Things to remember for next time:
- take your reading glasses so you can review the images you’ve taken to make sure you don’t need to make an immediate adjustment
For the original photos presented here I reduced the canvas size to a 5×7 or 7×5 for easier viewing on this website.
Here is my collection–A Walk to the Beach
I live on Douglas Island, very close to the small boat harbor and the Treadwell Mine area by Sandy Beach. I walk to the beach almost every day and often take the trail through the old Treadwell Mine area to get to a a second beach area. These images are from a walk I took on a very sunny afternoon.
Prepared for Monitor: Poppy
This beautiful poppy was calling to me as I left the house to walk to the beach.
Original specs: 2448 x 3264 22.9 MB
Edit notes:
rotated 90 CCW and changed image size and cropped to 1440 x 900 which brought the file size down to 560 KB
Prepared for Monitor: Pilings
These are pilings from an old dock at the end of the well maintained gravel trail
Original specs: 2448 x 3264x 22.9 MB
Edit notes:
cropped and changed image size to 1440 x 900
Prepared for Print: One Mill Wheel
There is lots of equipment, pieces and parts left from when the mine was really active.
Original specs: 2448 x 3264 22.9 MB
Edit notes:
changed resolution to 300 px which changes the size to 8.16 x 10.88 -> reduced to 8 x 10.667 and then cropped to 8 x 10. Final file size is 20.6 MB and the file type is .tiff.
Prepared for Print: Ride the Pipe
Trenches and pipes to transport water for the mining options go for about 13 miles from high in the mountains near Eagle Crest Ski Area to the mine area at sea level.
Original specs: 2448 x 3264 22.9 MB
Edit notes:
Adjusted the levels so that the green forest wasn’t so dark and is more defined. Adjusting the entire image brought down too much of the contrast on the pipe. Cropped to 4 x 5 proportion and final file size is 21.4 MB and saved as a .tiff
Prepared for Web: Rust King
Original specs: 3264x 2448 22.9 MB
Edit notes:
changed image size to 480 x 640; I first adjusted the levels to lighten up the sky and green mountainside as well as the rusty pipe but noticed that in doing this the beach definition became lost. So I did a quick select on the top part of the image as well as the rusty pipe and just lighten the selection. Saved at 60% quality for a final file size of 108 KB.
There were other images that I shot using the camera options to adjust the lightness and darkness that turned out must better as far as contrast and color balance, but I cut off the top of the mountain in those shots.
I would consider formatting this image for print to use as a background image for a poster or flyer and putting a layer of text over the beach between the bottom log and the upright log.
Prepared for Web: Seaweed
What beach walk would be complete without an image of seaweed!
Original specs: 2448 x 3264 22.9 MB
Edit notes:
cropped to 4 x 3 or 480 x 640 px
Made some individual adjustments to the seaweed, bottom log and to the entire image to help brighten things up. Saved as a web image at quality 60.
and just so you know that I made it to the beach…here is the payoff!
heidi olsONID 