Best of 2013

 Best of 2013

I love this picture. I like the little frozen drops at the ends of each thingy. I also like the contrast between the bright red and the quieter green and gray. I think it has a nice composition.

I love the story behind this picture. I like how it shows the terrible spring we had this year. I also love the composition and the eggs in the background. It was hard for me to decide between this photo and the photo with the closed egg. But I think the candy adds to the photo.

This is my favorite photo of the whole semester. I like the lighting. I love the flower. I love the colors. I really wouldn't change anything. I like the focus. I like that the leaf is in focus and the plant is not. When the plant was in focus it looked... odd. I love this picture!

This is my second favorite photo of the whole semester. I love the story behind this picture. It's the first self portrait I'm actually proud of. I love the reflection. I think my photoshop skills are improving, since I thought this was one of the easiest projects.

Personality Portrait

I love this picture, because it is calm. I added a filter to soften it, which I think helps. I like the dramatic lighting even though it isn't a low key. I boosted the red and took out some of the green- but it didn't do much. I like the difference in texture. You can see his skin compared to the tree. His skin to his shirt. I think this picture turned out well.

Shutter Speed 1/160

Aperture f/5.6

ISO 800

I thought I'd play around with high key. Yeah- that didn't go as well as I thought. This is defiantly a good "personality" portrait seeing as Zach has his crazy eyes on for this shot. I hate facial hair- especially his ;) So that is one of my pet peeves for this shot. If he had a full on beard it might help the craziness of the shot... But is little stubble doesn't do much. The hardest thing for me with high key is my problem with the whites. I think it looks really bright and unnatural- which is the point- but I don't really like it.

Shutter Speed- 1/60
Aperture- f/5.6
ISO- 800

Self Portraits

I love- LOVE- this picture. It is amazing! I like the whole mysterious mood. Sadly, this wasn't my original idea- Thanks for the idea :) The reflection picture itself is a really dramatic picture with one light source. I did this in photoshop by pasting the original picture into a new layer and then erasing the picture until it looked like a reflection. I used to hate using photoshop, but after this year I'm realizing it's a great tool to help tell a story.

I'm less excited about this picture. This is my original idea. It is supposed to be me drawing myself. I think the face is too white to look like it was drawn on this paper. There was also some trouble with the angle of the paper and the angle of my face. To get the pencil and hand over my face, I just pasted into a new layer and erased around it. This is a very dramatic picture.

Arboretum

My favorite, FAVORITE shot! I love how the Trillium isn't in focus it's the leaf instead. I love the light shining through. I love the different levels of blue in the background. I like how it's kind of like a silhouette, but not really. I just love this picture. One thing I don't like is the thing in the right corner... But that's not a big deal. I still love this shot.

Shutter Speed 1/320

Aperture f/5.6

ISO 100

I love the veins in this Blood Root. I like the different shades. I wish there wasn't spider webs in the top, just because I think it takes away from the pattern of the leaf. I cropped this super close since it has a really shallow depth of field. I like how there is nothing distracting in the background.

Shutter Speed 1/200

Aperture f/5.6

ISO 200

This is a very springy picture. It looks great in black and white as well as color. However, I like the bright colors. I tried to get the contrast between the soft, curvy leafs and the tree in the background. I like the budding flower things. I wasn't sure how to crop it, so I tried to frame  the background tree. I have many of these types, even ones with huge bee hives, but this is my favorite one. I love the different shades of green caused by the shadows.

Shutter Speed 1/320
Aperture f/9.0
ISO 800

Ferns! I love taking pictures of ferns- especially when the light is pouring through them! One of the things I like about the picture is the background and foreground. I like how things are blurry and some are sharper than others. I also love the different levels of gray in the subject. I like that there is an uneven number. The one thing I don't like is the plant in the bottom right corner that is half in focus. I wish the top of the ferns were in focus, I'm getting used to manual with my telephoto lens.

Shutter Speed 1/640

Aperture f/9.0

ISO 800

This is my second favorite photo from the shoot. I had to clone the flower on the right closer to the flower on the left due to this ugly red thing right in the middle of the two. I think it turned out fantastic! I love the different levels of in focus and not in focus. I like how there are repeated curved lines throughout the picture and the blotches of purple-ish flowers.

Shutter Speed 1/640

Aperture f/9.0

ISO 800

I always, always take pictures of Trilliums. I like their perfectness. However, I've found a lot of them with spiders and other gunk all over. I love  this picture for the veins in the leafs and light in the background. I hate the little black dots on the flower, it takes away from the perfectness of the flower. At first I thought it was something on me computer screen, then I realized it was in the picture :(

Shutter Speed 1/80

Aperture f/10.0

ISO 800

Decay

Decay. I think this is my favorite photo of the shoot. I love the pattern in the paint and metal. I love how the pealing paint is in focus, but you can still tell this is an abandoned area from the old structure in the background. I turned it back and white because the colors were all the same- Yellow paint, Yellow rust. I love how you aren't really sure what is in the background, but you know it isn't something normal.

Shutter Speed 1/320

Aperture f/9.0

ISO 100

I took out the roof part, but I couldn't take out the ground area. I'm not sure why. I think I like the little extra at the bottom. This is my least favorite from the post. I'm not a wide angle type of person. I like the little things. This photo has rule of thirds and repeated lines. I wish the dark window wasn't write there, I think it takes away from the shadow. I wish the colors were brighter. This wasn't an accident shot, but it wasn't one I had intended to turn out good. Surprise!

Shutter Speed 1/200

Aperture f/8.0

ISO 100

This shot is a great pattern. I like the flaking paint on the washed out wood. I wish the wood had a more contrasting color. I like the harshness of the shadows. I wish the depth of field was wider. I took a lot of paint shots and I think this is the best.

Shutter Speed 1/320

Aperture f/9.0

ISO 100

I love this shot. I think it portrays "decay" well. There is repeated color and contrast with the blue and yellow. I choose to keep the nail in the middle of the shot, because otherwise it seems too... Cluttered. I like the emptiness of the lone nail in a piece of rotted wood.

Shutter Speed 1/320

Aperture f/9.0

ISO 100

Silhouettes

Over the weekend, not only did I get pulled over for the first time, I also had some- not so rewarding- progress with startrails. This is the moon, although you can't really tell. I like this shot because you can still see the stars around the moon. I like the contrasting trees. I hate how noise it is (I swear the shutter wasn't open that long!). 

Shutter Speed 18

Aperture f/4.5

ISO 100

This is the sun. I love the eeriness of this shot. It's very scary looking with the bright sun and dark background. I honestly didn't intend for this to be a silhouette, I was just figuring out my camera settings. I think it turned out well. I'm still deciding whether or not I like the sun flare. The blue it adds is nice, but it looks a little funny. It also doesn't add the the composition, in my opinion. If you look at the photo info you can tell it was a VERY bright day.

Shutter Speed 1/4000

Aperture f/29.0

ISO 100

I like the contrast from the wild tree to the straight lined and uniform power line. It has some leading lines going on and rule of thirds. This shot is noise, too. Silhouettes don't like me apparently. I took this mid afternoon when it was extremely bright. I didn't want to risk waiting until the sunset since all weekend the sunsets were cloudy.  I wish the sky was more dramatic with the clouds or in colors.  This is my favorite of the silhouettes!

Shutter Speed 1/1600

Aperture f/11

ISO 100

First Silhouette

This is not my finished assignment, but it is a start. I took some photos yesterday. I was testing my camera. I'm getting impatient with this weather. I'd like a nice sunrise/sunset... Anyways, here is one of the best photos for silhouette last night.

Addie

So, I have this amazingly smart, sneaky, lovable pup named Addie. She's almost three and we adopted her from CCHS. She's a Australian Shepard-Border Collie mix. We volunteer at the Humane Society and we knew her mom and all the other puppies since the first week after they were born. Although most of the litter grew into fluffy furred dogs, Addie has thick short (almost wire-y) hair. She doesn't sit still, and she hates being my subject :)

Juxtaposition

So, some of you may not know what juxtaposition is. Well, it's something unusual. It's something you wouldn't expect to see, or you don't see every day. I chose Easter eggs in the snow, because Easter is a big symbol of spring. I can't remember an Easter when I had to hunt eggs in the snow!

 I like this picture, because it add variety to the group of pictures I took. I had the egg open, because I think it adds just a little bit more. There shouldn't be candy in snow. I hate how you can see me in the reflection of the egg. I tried to clone it out in photoshop, but the apparently I have a few different shades of dark blue. It ended up looking funny, so I just tried to darken it as much as possible.

I love this picture for many reasons. The first being- I like the snow on the egg. The second being- I love the composition. I like how it fallows rule of thirds, and how you can see the other eggs in the background. I think this picture tells a better story than the one above it. Again, you can see me, but you have to look harder!

This is just a different shot of the open egg. I like it because you can see the other eggs in the background. You can't see me as well in this shot, which is nice. I like how in this picture you can tell the snow is snow. Overall, I think I had a great shoot.

Doesn't Belong

  I love these shoes. However, they make my feet hurt- a lot. These were taken for the assignment "Doesn't Belong." Although it's pretty obvious where the assignment and pictures relate, I will explain. They are pretty, "dress" shoes and they are in the mud and water. These pretty shoes don't belong in the gunk.

 I've taken pictures of my flip flops in mud, but never this type of shoe. I kept striving to get a different position. This photo is what you would expect from someone who is taking a picture of their shoes. Although it's a plain photo, I think it gets the point across.

Shutter Speed 1/160

Aperture f5.6

ISO 200

I love these bottom two photos.  I love the closeness of this photo. It's like you are right in front of the shoes too. This picture would probably be better if there were more mud on the foot closest to the camera. Otherwise, I love this shot.

Shutter Speed 1/160

Aperture f5.6

ISO 200

I love this shot, too. There isn't any specific reason I turned this black and white, the colors were good. Now looking at the photo, I am happy I turned it black and white, because I think it adds emphasis to the lines. There is good contrast between the sharp jagged likes of the rocks and the soft lines of the shoe. I like the bow with the rocks and water. I wouldn't change anything about this shot, except for maybe more mud on my foot.

Shutter Speed 1/160

Aperture f5.6

ISO 200

Hello, I'm Robyn And I have an Obsession...

So, I really have no big preference to what I take pictures of. But, after going though pictures from the summer, it's apparent I am a flower violator. I have a good 100 pictures of flowers, from one day alone. I tried to pick the most interesting ones for this post. Hopefully, my obsession will die. But until then, enjoy :)

Animal Morph

This animal morph turned out way better than last year's. You can look at last years on my other blog and compare. This one wins. This is my brother's dog Murphy. He is an ugly, mean, old thing that we adopted from the Black River Falls Humane Society. When he got him, he was even more mean and his teeth where bad, so my mom took him to the vet. The vet said that not only were the going to remove his teeth, they had to remove one eye as well. He is really old, and the Humane Society said to put him down as well, but when my mom called the vet they were half way through surgery and she would of had to pay all the cost anyways. So, here he is. You can't really tell he only has one eye, because his hair is so shaggy. The kids that live by us thought that he was nice, but they soon learn the opposite. He doesn't bite (often/hard), but he has a mean bark. He only has one or two teeth left, so sometimes we call him scragle tooth.

My eye on the right is a little off, because when I left it straight it looked even more unnatural. I made a few different mouth poses, but this is my favorite- I think it fits him.

Extra Post (Flowers)

These are from my trip to California a few years ago. They have some oddly shaped flowers there...

Show & Tell

Evidence of Winter

This photo was looking really good, but now it's like every time I look at it I like it less and less. Converting it to Black and White was difficult, because I wanted the needles darker and not that splotch in the background. When I darkened highlights and lightened the shadows, it made the white a grey-ish color. So, eventually I found a happy medium. This is a photo for evidence. It's evidence there is a lot of ice and snow, and will probably have a snow day (which we did).

Shutter Speed 1/60

Aperture f4.5

ISO 1600

This was a difficult photo. Thinking I had nothing, I nearly deleted it! But, I figured I'd mess with the highlights first. I actually got a good photo! It fallows rule of thirds and I like the contrast in it. This is also evidence of a snow day! Wooh! 

Shutter Speed 1/125

Aperture f4.5

ISO 800

 This isn't my favorite photo from the shoot, but it's editing turned out the best. I like the contrast and the darkness of the pine needles. There was a face in the leafs in the left bottom corner. I tried to get rid of it because it creeped me out- bad! I like how there is a line of imperfect symmetry (on one side you have the pine, and the other you have the maple, or whatever). This is also evidence of snow! 

Shutter Speed 1/125

Aperture f5.0

ISO 1600

Reflections

Reflection

     I was sitting in class wondering about how I was going to do reflections. I wanted to do something more original then the average water/ice shot. At first I was thinking, I can take some pictures of some melting ice that have a reflection of something in it. Then I was like, No- that's not original. So, I was left with nothing. I started of think of things that have reflections: glasses, televisions, eyes, windows, and last- but the most obvious- mirrors. I wanted something creative. I was going to take pictures of some lonely glasses with the reflection of a book inside. Once I set the shot up, I hated it.

    After many long hours of thought, I realized I was a reflection of my mom. I was going to take a picture of me and then her looking into a mirror- my body with my mom's reflection. This would be a symbol of how old she is, how young I am. And how, one day (far from now), I will be old like her. It's like a flash forward to the future. When I told her about my amazing idea, she refused to get her picture taken (thanks, mom)!

Finally, I came up with similar ideas to this picture. Me in normal clothes, and then looking all bad- because girls spend forever getting ready and they feel like they look the same as when the wake up. Me in a martial arts uniform (all serious), and then me dancing all wildly- because sometimes you have to keep yourself composed and calm even when you want to fidget and dance. This picture was by far my favorite idea. We spend forever getting ready for the dance, but in the end you still may feel like you look bad (even though it's not true). Something I wish I would have done differently, my hair. I wanted to curl it, but I took a shower and didn't have time. At the last second, I remembered my flower thingy from prom.

Shutter Speed 1/40

Aperture f7.1

ISO 200

    This picture didn't turn out as well. One, my arm is in the way of the mirror, which made this a harder edit. Two, my arm (not in the reflection) is shaped a little off, because I erased part of the reflection to fit it into the mirror. In between my hand and my pants, you can see the mirror reflection from before. When I tried to clone that part out my hand morphed into this deformed mess... So I left it, in hopes no one notices. This picture doesn't have as much value "emotionally" value as the one above. I think this is just I'm going to school, but I'm super tired and I want to lay back down. I tried to pick a picture with a reflection that looked less distgusted and more tired- hence the hair in the face.                 

Shutter Speed 1/40 

Aperture f7.1 

ISO 200

Patterns

Note: For some reason the blogger is messing with the color of the pictures when I upload them. Some are darker or lighter than they were meant to be, just hang in there. :)

This picture is best for this assignment because the pattern is out-right. I've taken at least million pictures of this stupid fire ring thing, and none of them look great. I think this is one of the better ones. I like how there are big differences in the top and the bottom of the picture (the top has the thick black line and the bottom has snow). I think that makes the picture more interesting so it's not just dots all over the place. I also like how the snow is sticking to the dots, it was very wet snow.             Shutter Speed  1/60       Aperture f5.6                          ISO 200

So when you are at a lighthouse in the winter, there isn't every much to take pictures of. There were picnic tables, the lighthouse, trees, and snow. The lighthouse photos were more for my family, the picnic table photos didn't turn out, and the snow is below. You couldn't get too close to the water because the drifts of snow ate your legs right up past the knee.

Shutter Speed 1/125

Aperture f5.3

ISO 400

So I like this picture, and I don't. It has a huge amount of noise- in the sky, in the water... And the original picture didn't have as much noise, but there was absolutely no contrast. The lumps of snow were all the same color, and that is the main subject. It has nice pattern in the snow and water- if you can tell. The soul reason I took this picture was so I could adjust the camera settings, but I like the pattern better then most of the others.

Shutter Speed 1/60

Aperture f6.0

ISO 400