Revision: Added captions
In this first photo, I thought it would be nice to try to bring out some of the colors. This was taken in winter when the trees and plants were still mostly dead, so I thought to increase the saturation and the luminance and vibrancy of the green in the photos would make it pop. I also wanted to lighten it a bit more, because the trees in the foreground gave the photo a dark kind of feel. Overall, I really like this photo because of the way the trees guide the viewer to the deer, who seem to be busy looking at something else.
This second photo I took back at the end of the summer before the first semester. I wanted to edit it because it is one of my favorite photos, as sunflowers are my favorite flower. In the original, I thought the colors were kind of washed out because it was a relatively bright day. Because of this, I decided to darken and saturate the colors of the photos to really make them pop and contrast with one another.
When playing with editing this one, I noticed that you can alter just specific colors of photos. I was playing with how the orange and the red of the building looked, and discovered that by increasing the luminosity of the orange, I was able to alter the photo to make it look like it was taken almost at sunset, with golden sunlight hitting it, instead of the middle of the afternoon where the bricks were mostly washed out. I also liked how this upped the contrast of the blue reflection of the sky in all the windows, because to me it made them stand out more.
I took this photo in Quebec, at Montmorency Falls. The mist from the waterfall, not pictured here, was being struck by the light of the sun and was creating a rainbow as the light refracted through the water. I really wanted to bring the colors of the rainbow out and make it the focal of the picture. However, I noticed that there were a lot of details in this photo behind the rainbow as well, in the ice and stairs of the walkway on the hill behind it. I increased the blacks and contrast in this photo to really set some heavy dark lines and accentuate how detailed the photo is.
This edit happened by accident. I was playing around with the saturation like I was doing for the sunflower picture, and I decided to go over and look at some of the presets that Lightroom already has. I was looking at the vintage ones when I accidentally clicked on black and white. I immediately was drawn to how the image seemed to invert, and how even though the colors were gone, you could still distinguish between all the flowers and the grass. I also really liked how once I made the photo darker, it seemed to change the feel of the photo to something darker and more ominous, like the remnants of a beautiful flower field.
Sunset photos are my favorite to take and work with. I am always drawn to trying to make them look as beautiful as they are to the human eye, and in order to do that with this photo, I had to increase the exposure and saturation to bring out all the colors. I also liked how then you could see me in the mirror of the car taking the picture because it was nice to see how I placed in the setting and highlights how this picture was taken in a moving car.
This was a favorite photo of the ones I took at a Paramore concert in Boston. I captured this photo by accident because I was just pointing and shooting with my phone. I really loved how the lights drew lines outward from the center where the band was for your eyes to follow.I thought that the colors in the photo were kind of dull, and this did not capture the energy, excitement, and overall feel of how Paramore is at a show. So, I decided to change the temperature of the photo to increase the blues in the photo, making the photo pop even more.
I really liked brightly colored images. By the time I was editing this photo I realized that increasing the saturation so that colors really pop out is a style that I really enjoy using. I liked how even in the background, in between the branches, you can see that the dark shadows and the path behind the bush all seem green as well, and it makes the photo seem wilder and full of life than before when it was duller.
After using a black and white filter for the flower images, I realized that this photo would be pretty cool to try black and white. I really like how the branches cut across the sky as a shadow, so that you are looking at the negative space between them and it’s not a conventional way to look at a tree. I wanted to change it from color to black and white so there could be more focus on the pattern and the lines of the picture than the color of the sky behind it.
I really like this picture, and when I took it, it was the first sunny day we had seen in a while. I was walking through the woods and felt at peace, warm with sunlight. I wanted to capture that here in this image, with the sun rays coming through the branches, and the branches answering with their own reaching out from the central log. In order to portray this idea more clearly, I upped the temperature of this photo to make it warmer. I also really liked the sun flare that I captured on the log because it adds a pop of color that you know is from just the sunlight, so it’s capturing something usually unseen.
Revision: new edits
I was drawn to this bridge while walking under it in downtown Bangor. I really like trying to find leading lines in everyday settings, and I found that the way this bridge curved in contrast with the straight line of the building and the connecting lines of the wires were very interesting. This photo was relatively dark when I started, so I decided to increase the exposure to bring out some of the light underneath the bridge and get rid of the shadow. I also wanted to bring up the color, because colorful photos are prettier to me.
This is one of the photos I used for my final. The original picture has a very dark background, that is hidden in shadow, and the colors are washed out because of the bright sun. I increased the exposure and lowered the shadows so that we could see more of the texture and detail of the forest behind the mirror. I also made the image warmer, because it seemed more inviting and nicer to look at, and really brought out the colors.
This photo was really fun to edit, because it was the one that made me discover where I wanted to go with the photo narrative. While trying to use a focal circle to just increase the exposure of the mirror, I realized that in that circle I could decrease the saturation enough so that it was in black and white. I then inverted the circle, so that all the edits were outside and the original color was on the inside of the mirror. I thought this was so intruiging because it looks like a portal to a different, more colorful world, and highlights the idea that the mirror can show us things we don’t normally see. I also increased the saturation of the color in the mirror, to make it stand out against the black and white even more.