Archive
Reloaded
Ah. That last post left me with a lot to think about, and even more to do. I vowed to change my approach to the Mac Lab by reincorporating learning into my schedule. Mission accomplished. All is well inside the double doors of room 246, for me anyway. And let’s leave it at that.
As opposed to last year’s frantic mission to churn out as many posts as possible in as least time as possible, this year I have tried to listen to some advice that Philip gave me a while back and am now only posting when I have something important to say. The problem is, its been seven weeks since my last post and I have not found much to say. I have found that so much has happened, that it is difficult to wrap it up into a neat little post. Last time, I had my anger to drive me, this time I have a promise.
I gave a speech today in my second period AP Literature class about the impact photography has had on my life over the past 454 days since I first borrowed a camera. I have always been a gifted public speaker, and I have to say that I pulled out all the stops to blow the doors off that classroom. The strange thing is, when I went to bed at 11pm last night, I had absolutely no idea what I was going to talk about. By 11:08pm, I had figured it out. I started with a single word – photography – and in eight minutes drafted a five and a half minute speech that would determine my grade for semester one of AP Literature. You see, this speech was the Final Exam. The only reason I was able to pull off such a good speech in just eight minutes while lying in bed on a Sunday night is that photography is something I am passionate about. There were no drafts, no rewrites, no brainstorming sessions….I just laid down and started talking. Eight minutes later I had a speech.
At the end of that speech, I spoke about the power of a single action to transform someone’s life. This observation became the revelation that nicely tied up my anecdote. Another observation that I could have talked about was the power of passion to drive a person through even the most trying times. Interestingly for my posting career, the past seven weeks have been a very trying time and it’s my passion for photography the both has me posting now, and had me writing poetic phrases in my mind last night. Good things have a way of running my mind in circles.
Anyway, back to the promise that has me seated here instead of watching the second best television show of all time (that would be The West Wing – the first is Battlestar Galactica). It wasn’t really a promise, but if I tell myself that it was then I am more likely to sit here and not go grab some chocolate. In third period AP Calculus, my friend Chris C. asked for the link to my website, this website, which I had mentioned in my speech. I gave him the link but respectively asked him to wait until tomorrow to visit my site. The reason for this, I said, was that I had new content to upload. And boy is that true. Now I have no choice but to get up off the sofa, put down the Sees Candy, and give my keyboard a workout.
“How about that new content?” Well, here’s the story. Over Winter Break, my partner in crime (the 5D Mark II) and I took a trip across the country to the frozen winter wonderland of Northern Wisconsin and the two of us had some good times playing in the snow. Well, I had fun playing in the snow. The 5D spent the trip safely in my backpack inside my grandmother’s warm house. My Mom, sister Emily, and I have been to Wisconsin over a dozen times, but since this was our first time going there in the winter in a few years, I was especially excited. The 5D was excited too.
I spent the first third of our nine-day vacation taking pictures, but the harsh conditions outside confined the camera to the house. So I shot through the windows. I only actually took the 5D outside one time, at night, to capture the beauty of my grandmother’s old barn covered in snow. I took extra care to cover the camera, as it was still snowing out. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
And then school started and my life was kicked back into high gear. I had three weeks to solidify A’s in four AP classes as well as Honor Spanish. As far as I can tell, that speech signaled the successful completion of that solidification.
Two weekends ago, Philip, Kyle, my Dad, and I spent the day taking pictures at Gillespie Field, where my Dad keeps his Piper Cherokee, and Mission Trails park in Mission Gorge. Our first stop was the airport, where I treated my friends to the best hamburger the world has ever seen: the B-52. One half-pound patty + two slices of ham + two cheeses + sautéed onions + lettuce + tomatoes + barbecue sauce + a toasted bun = the burger built to win a nuclear war. We spent a few minutes taking pictures around the tarmac, in the “Authorized Personnel Only” zone, before driving a few miles to Mission Trials park. We walked first to an old dam, photographing every rock, foam bubble, and disgusting puddle of ooze that we could find. Before calling it a day, we walked for about a mile on a beautiful trail and I took a picture of every manhole cover I could find.
I have spent the past two weeks editing eighteen of the three hundred, thirty-nine pictures I took that day. Here are the best four, in my opinion. I took a different approach when I Photoshopped these images than I usually do. Instead of going for realism, I experimented with blurs and blending modes to create heaving stylized works of art. Well, what do you think?
Be sure to check my photo gallery for the other twenty-one pictures from my trips to Wisconsin, the Gillespie Field Airport, and Mission Trails park.
Also, Mr. Skocko was so kind as to print the featured image from my last post. It is the eighteenth picture that I have had printed and marks the beginning of a new era in my printing practices. I plan to print fewer images, but frame the ones that I do print. This tumultuous image of the sunset is the first of my pictures that I have ever framed. It really is beautiful.
Ultimately, these past three weeks since I returned from Winter Break have been a transition period. I am waiting with bated breath for second semester, when I will charge forward with a single goal in mind: be the best that I can be. I am reloaded, re-energized, and reawakened to the magic that reverberates through the walls of the Valhalla Mac Lab.
Three, two, one…
Fireworks Photography, Part 2
Well, I wish I had better news. My second try at fireworks photography did not go as well as my first, even though I lugged two 5D Mark II’s, a Rebel T1i, six lenses, and three tripods for what felt like ten miles up, down, and around the USS Midway for six hours on the 4th of July.
I was completely prepared and knew exactly what I needed to do to capture great pictures, but three things got in my way: clouds, smoke, and people. Fog started coming in as soon as it got dark and so the fireworks were exploding inside a bank of haze that was impossible for the camera to penetrate. I tried things like increasing the f-stop to 22 so as to capture as little surrounding light as possible, but to little avail. Second, there must have been five hundred fireworks going off every minute from nine different locations around the bay, so the fog was compounded by an impregnable layer of smoke that never blew away. Third, I had a great location to shoot the fireworks but at the last minute decided to move because I was standing in people’s way, and that proved disastrous. Most of my pictures have a line of heads along the bottom that obstruct the lower reaches of the fireworks. Oh well.
I took over 400 pictures in six hours, and less that 20 are worth editing. Like last time, here are the first four.
Most of the time the smoke was a nuisance, but sometimes it added to the composition.
Those fireworks with exploding bulbs make for interesting pictures.
Brief moments of clarity and a lot of Photoshopping produced some smokeless images. Notice the Coronado Bridge at the bottom of the next two pictures.
Fireworks Photography, Part 1
If you have been following the Mac Lab Blog and the happenings of the 2010 Mac Lab Summer Academy™, then you know that I am determined to capture some amazing pictures of fireworks this 4th of July. Today, the 3rd, I went to the top of the hill in Cottonwood and watched a fireworks show over the Cottonwood Golf Course. My goal was to test the new advanced shutter button and experiment with the techniques I had learned here and here.
Well, I had moderate success. The button worked well once I figured it out but I ended up not using many of its cool features. As for what I had read, well only about half actually proved to be applicable to this particular shoot. Focusing turned out to be more that just throwing the dial to infinity and the 4 seconds and f/11 trick that Scott Kelby suggested didn’t work very well. What did work phenomenally though was the baseball hat trick I read here. Yes, you are going to have to read the article to find out what I mean. The most important thing I learned, however, is that experimentation is key. There is not a single group of settings that will yield perfect pictures every time and so you must be willing to experiment and find what is best. That goes for everything in general.
I took 92 pictures in a twenty minute time period. About 25 are good. About 20 are great. Here are the first 4. What’s really good is that there is very little post-production work to be done with pictures like this. It took be under ten minutes to edit these 4 and most of that time was spent in Camera Raw.
More info here.
Big Update Time
Just so you are forewarned, this post is designed to beat Christian’s latest super-post as far as word count is concerned. Here we go.
Philip, I apologize in advance (he doesn’t like lengthy posts).
Light Painting Update:
As I have mentioned many times before, I went through a dry spell as far as new work was concerned during the time leading up to AP Exams when I spent all my time studying and working on the 840 Poster. Well, as the AP Exams are over and the 840 Poster is slowly coming to an end, I have had time to consider and complete new light painting projects. As this post explains, I went to Harbor Island a few weekends ago and took 28 pictures of downtown and the sights of the city from afar. Since that post, I have edited two more images.
I think the first is good, but not spectacular.
I was getting bored with making realistic pictures of Dowtown over and over again, so I threw the “Fill Light” and “Blacks” sliders in Camera Raw all the way to the right, added a few extra crazy adjustments, and got the second image. I have no idea where the halo came from or I would have gotten rid of it (it’s not from “Clarity”).
After the District Art Show, Kyle W, Philip, Christian, Zack, and I went to Tidelands Park in Coronado to take pictures, and we had great success. Read more here and here. After browsing through my images, I counted 24 that were good enough to edit and eventually narrowed that down to nine.
Here they are:
I kind of like this shot of the Coronado Bridge, even though it didn’t turn out as good as I would have liked (I was using the wrong lens – Christian was using the right one).
With these next two images, I decided to listen to Philip’s advice and make them not as warm as the others. This forced me to approach them from a different angle and I think they turned out very nicely (some of my favorites). Thanks for the advice Philip. (But there is a point where cool (blue) turns into unrealistic (too blue/bad).)
This next one was out of focus and I tried to compensate by adding lots of different effects. I don’t really like it.
The next image is my favorite. I really like the contrast between the bluish background and orange foreground (complementary colors), even though the frame isn’t great.
I tried a lot of new techniques on these pictures, including using the “Threshold” Adjustment Layer for the first time. I also ventured deeper into Camera Raw than ever before and used the “Split Toning” panel for the first time.
I was all ready to post this post after three hours of writing, and then I realized I had forgotten to add vignettes to my new images. I had to go back and fix, re-save, re-upload, and re-add twelve images (it turns out the Dip wasn’t up-to-date too). Argh!
With more free time (now that most of my classes have toned done the workload) I should be able to produce more new work relatively quickly. I continue to get better at using the 5D Mark II as well as my Rebel T1i, which has translated into better pictures than ever before. I remember from the beginning of the year how out of two hundred pictures, maybe ten would be good. Well now maybe one hundred would turn out nicely.
The District Art Show:
As you all read here, Superintendent Collins surprised everyone when he awarded my already 1st place Dip picture (named “Night in the Light” for the Art Show) one of the biggest awards of the night. I was surprised my pictures won anything at all because they printed horribly bright (I had tailored them for the big Epson in the Mac Lab and not the small Epson at Mr. Skocko’s house). The actual print from the Art Show is hanging in my living room, and looks just fine in the dim lighting. I gave the “Navy Lights” picture to Kyle R because he hadn’t gotten a print of it yet.
For me, the greatest feeling of accomplishment in the Mac Lab is seeing something of mine being printed, and so to have had eleven things receive that honor, I feel pretty good about my year so far. Oh, and just to set the record straight, the bigger the print the better!!!!!! At only 20 inches by 13 inches, this image looks like a postage stamp next to this one and this one, which are both 30 by 20 inches. (I want my copy of the District 840 poster to be 44 inches by 70 inches, one square inch for every hour I spent working on it.)
The District 840 Poster:
The third thing I want to give an update on is the District 840 Poster. It is currently on its fourth version, which is two more than it was on when it was submitted and mass-printed. After a marathon Skype video conference and some last-minute tweaking the day before it was due, this is what the poster looked like. We (Kyle W, Philip, Mr. Skocko, and myself) all agreed that the sky was just awful and needed to be replaced, so I added some Photoshop clouds that night, which is version two. At that point, we had no choice but to submit the poster but we vowed to make it better. The poster was mass-printed 11 by 17 inches and distributed around the school and a 44 by 70 inch giant was printed for in front of the office. However, as time went on the sky looked worse and worse, so I began the process of finding somehow to make a new one. I decided to look at old photos and try to find one with an acceptable sky (we realized that the idea of making a sky from scratch in Photoshop proved futile). I turned first to the pictures in this post, and combined the skies from the two images (one, two) in Photoshop. Because the stars in the two images are different sizes, the result had a feeling of depth. I liked this third version, but had to agree with Philip when he said that it looked too peaceful. Also, adding a night sky created a different problem: night means the buildings need lights. Making that happen proved impossible with our current skills, and so I continued my search for an image that could work. I stumbled across this one while going through some old files and knew instantly that it was the one. Unfortunately, two problems arose: first, it was a JPG and second, it was VERY noisy. We had no choice but to live with the first problem, and the wonderful noise reduction features in Camera Raw beautifully solved the second. Instead of trying to add the new sky to the same file with the other two skies, we went all the way back to the beginning, to the version two trips through Camera Raw before this version: the big 1.38GB main file with all the components on their own layers. This made adding the new sky a piece of cake and also allowed some problems with the edges of the buildings to be solved relatively easily. However, this also meant that we had to repeat the Camera Raw steps, but in the end that proved to be a good thing too. After a week of work, Kyle and I managed to get the new fourth version looking much better than its predecessors. A few last-minute fixes made for a truly great poster, but since the Mac Lab is out of paper it will remain solely digital for now.
Looking at all the versions of the 840 Poster side by side, I think that the buildings in the final version need to be darker. That’s an easy fix, but I need to run it by the group first.
Photoshop Update:
Over the past couple of months when I couldn’t go out and take pictures because I was supposed to be focusing on my other classes, I turned to Photoshop. I learned dozens of new skills and have become truly great at using Photoshop. The District 840 poster taught me a lot about image correction and the healing tools, which gave me a new appreciation for a different side of Photoshop.
Also, instead of trying to push my images to the brink of destruction, I have really tried to reign in my enthusiasm and not over-process my images. When reworking the Dip and Cars images, I took special attention to this and ended up decreasing the vibrance on both images quite a lot. This took the edge off the bright and somewhat blinding colors and created two images that were pleasant, not painful, to look at. The main thing I fixed in the Dip image was severe over-processing, and it was only through some creative Camera Raw-ing that I was able to same the image. I experienced a moment of desperation and hopelessness while working on that picture, when I ran out of ideas and felt the pain of failure. Then I reached for the Adjustment Brush and blurred/desaturated/darkened the over-processing away. Miraculous, in my opinion anyway. Just look at the road in these two versions (one and two). See the difference? In this post I called the previous version a masterpiece, and now I feel foolish for doing so. There is a point when too much of a good thing (like Photoshop) can be a very, very bad and very, very destructive thing indeed, and that is something I have been trying to avoid in my latest images.
The new tools in Photoshop CS5, like Content-Aware Fill, the Content-Aware Spot-Healing Brush, Puppet Warp, Lens Correction, and the new blending modes have come in extremely handy and have changed the way I work with my images. The new skills that I have learned through thousands of hours in front of my computer have truly transformed my skills as a digital artist in the past six months. (Example: in three days I was able to capture, edit, and print a District Art Show-worthy picture. Unfortunately, when Mr. Skocko learned he could only submit eight things, he had to cut it, leaving only two of my images in the Art Show) Now I feel like whatever the challenge, I have the skills to overcome it.
Also, I have been using Camera Raw on a scale I would never have imagined before. I was just starting to really appreciate the power of Camera Raw 5 in CS4 when Camera Raw 6 was launched with CS5. The new version has a totally new engine that allows for better edits than ever before. The new noise reduction features may be my favorite, but then again the new lens correction software in the 6.1 update just may be cooler. I never realized just how distorted the images straight out of the camera really were until I tried out this new feature!
I almost forget to talk about the wonderful Adobe Digital Negative file format that I discovered a while ago but only started using with CS5. The Digital Negative format allows for increased compression without data loss (which is great when taking high-quality 30MB pictures) and does away with the old XMP sidecar files that CR2 files had. I especially like how if I start editing an image in Camera Raw but don’t finish, I can save the image directly in Camera Raw as a DNG without loosing any edibility (or the edits I just made). Basically, if it’s a picture and it’s not a PSD or a web-ready JPG, it needs to be a DNG. It’s that simple (in my opinion). DNG’s are smaller, store more information, and are more versatile that CR2′s, so why not use them?
Blog Update:
I haven’t done much to CRDESIGNLAB in the past months except remove all of Kyle R’s work. That means all the Digital Art pages are looking quite empty, which is likely how they will stay for the rest of the year (along with the 3D pages). I have been searching for a new blog theme, but have not found anything intriguing yet.
I think I will hold out on making new tutorials until summer because I don’t see myself as having any time before the end of the year. I plan to make dozens of new tutorials over the summer (on light painting, Photoshop, and photography) in order to build a wonderful student resource for next year. Speaking of next year, I will be a Senior but I will not be taking any Mac Lab classes. Don’t worry though, I will go periods one through five and spend six and seven in the Mac Lab anyway helping students and working on projects. I hope to be a resource next year both through my direct aid and the tutorials on this blog.
By the way, this is the 72nd post on CRDESIGNLAB. That’s a lot of posts. (Other stats: 550 comments, 6,736 hits)
Current Projects:
I am continuing to make final changes to the 840 Poster, but as soon as the Mac Lab gets paper it is ready to print.
Also, I have volunteered to set up fifteen new iMacs for Mrs. Ormsby and the SAGA. I have been working on just one of the computers and plan to build a master disk image that I can then transfer to the others. After some initial difficulties with InDesign, which is the primary program the journalism students use, Mr. Skocko suggested I bring the computer down to the Mac Lab for the setup process instead of working in Mrs. Ormsby’s room. Having access to a reliable internet connection allowed me to download the required updates to make InDesign work, and I was able to complete the installation of all the applications Mrs. Ormsby needs. Now I just need to here back from SAGA on what specific files need to be standardized across all the computers. Hopefully I should be done with the setup and ready to create the image using Carbon Copy Cloner within the coming week. That means that hopefully all fifteen new computers should be up and running and ready to replace the ten year old Macs in room 322 before too long.
Plans for the Rest of the Year:
Well, I have only 2 days left on my trial for CS5, so my plans for the next few weeks must include buying the CS5 Master Collection. Mac Lab Media needs to produce a video advertising next year’s Blood Drive, which I will be very involved in. I need to learn more about Final Cut Studio in preparation for leading Mac Lab Media next year. I need to continue to learn how to use the new audio/video equipment, which will be invaluable for all future video projects. I hope to work with Christian on a stop-motion light painting video, but that might get pushed until summer. The District 840 poster needs to be “finished” and printed for in front of the office. I need to finish setting up Mrs. Ormsby’s new computers. I need to edit my newest light painting pictures and capture new ones. The Mac Lab iDev Team has yet to get off its feet, but I hope that in the next few weeks I can put my iPad to good use and start working my way through the tutorials. And that’s just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head. There’s a lot more, but I think my subconscious is not letting me remember it.
Oh, I almost forgot: Kyle W and I have to assemble the Mac Lab iBook for the Final Exam. That’s going to take a while and teach us more about InDesign than we will ever wanted to know.
Sunday night I will attempt this challenge, which will help me appreciate the skill required to be a photographer before the invention of digital cameras. Plus, getting a free print isn’t bad either. My strategy is to pick four shots and take nine picture of each with different settings hoping to get something good. I will probably work with Kyle W and create some light painting masterpieces the old-fashioned way.
On Monday I have to film a group English project, but because my group didn’t want to step up to Mac Lab standards I am not allowed to use Mac Lab cameras. That’s too bad because I was really hoping to make a phenomenal video, but it looks like I am going to have to settle with what the group want, which isn’t phenomenal.
This year has been much more that I envisioned it to be. My first year in the Mac Lab (as a Freshman) was quite uneventful and, honestly, I expected this year to be the same. When I enrolled in the Mac Lab a year ago, I had no idea that I would have five things on the Wall of Fame (I think it’s five), have eleven beautiful prints hanging in my house, or have stood alongside Danny and Christian and received the ROP Champion of Champions Award (and then that totally unexpected follow-up award from the California Legislature). And as a math and science guy, becoming one of the most decorated recipients at the 24th District Art Show was something that I would never have expected in a thousand years (me, winning art awards, you can’t be serious!!!). This year has been more fun than I could have possibly imagined, and I plan to end it on a high note. I have learned so much about myself and grown so much as a person in the past year that I would not trade my time in the Mac Lab for anything.
And the crazy thing is that something tells me that next year will be even better.
Christian, I cut down the length of this post by over a thousand words because the general consensus seemed to be that I write too much. But at 3014 words this post stills claims the trophy.
Harbor Island
Yesterday at 8 pm, after more than a month of waiting, I got an opportunity to capture some new images. My family and I drove to Harbor Island, and I photographed downtown San Diego through the quickly forming haze. I spent about an hour taking pictures of downtown, the USS Midway, planes landing at Lindbergh Field, the Coronado Bridge, and Naval Air Station North Island, with lots of success. I took 28 pictures total, and over half of those are good enough to be taken through Photoshop. So far, I have worked on two.
I couldn’t make my tripod level to save my life, so I gave up entirely and decided to rely on the Ruler Tool in Photoshop. I also decided to manually focus all my images (it’s not that hard, everyone), even though there was plenty enough to let the camera do it. First, there is this picture. I set the f-stop to 11, and 36 seconds later I had a beautifully crooked image with the front of a boat and three tree branches in the frame. Good enough for now. Now I repeated the process a more dozen times.
When I had exhausted the location directly across the bay from the city and taken enough pictures of the Naval Air Station North Island to make the Navy suspicious, we moved to a part of Harbor Island parallel to Lindbergh Field. I set up the camera and while waiting for an airplane, took this picture. Wow, I wonder if it has a white balance problem? I took a few more and then turned the camera to the sky, and captures about five airplanes as they came in to land. Those pictures are coming soon, if I decide they are good enough because they aren’t very interesting. After frantically running after some fireworks, pictures of which are also coming soon, we headed home.
Now time for Photoshop. Today I unloaded the pictures from the camera, 648MB for just 28 pictures. Each of these two images (one and two) went through the following process: Camera Raw, Photoshop, Camera Raw, Photoshop. I have sort of developed a workflow that I like for CS5. My exact methods will remain a mystery for now, but I will say that I am REALLY starting to like the new Subtract blending mode. Oh, and I should mention that this helped a lot, especially with the second image. And here are the finished products: one and two. Quite an improvement, if I do say so myself. After finishing the first image, I realized that I should have used a different one of the dozen or so similar shots I took, so I will probably be redoing it in the near future.
More images from yesterday’s shoot coming soon. Next weekend I will hopefully get the (focused) shot of the Coronado Bridge that Mr. Skocko has been asking for. Now I have to decide which one of my images to submit to the District Art Show.
Catching Up, A New Focus, And The 9 Days of Light Painting
This is three mini-posts smashed into one.
1: Catching Up.
It has been over a week since my last post. That’s just deplorable. I all honesty, I have lacked inspiration over the past few weeks. That might be partly due to the increasing workload as AP Exams approach. I will be taking three AP Tests in late April: AP Language, AP US History, and AP Chemistry. I have tried my best to manage the massive workload these three classes place upon my shoulders while at the same time trying to find time to work on Mac Lab stuff as the projects are only getting larger and more numerous. People don’t appreciate just how difficult it is to get an A in an AP class until they try. I have had to take a sort of break from my usual Mac Lab work to focus on maintaining my straight A’s, which has not always been possible. Unfortunately, I will have to find a way to work more on both regular classes and my Mac Lab projects at the same time. Oh, and I have to learn Final Cut Studio and After Effects as part of my duties to the video team, which I am now a member of. I have Adobe CS4 Design Premium and Apple Final Cut Studio on my home computer, but I don’t have After Effects, which means I will have to work on that during class.
While on the topic of video, I have to say that last Saturday was quite the day. I arrived at school at 5:30am and was the first person there, other than Mr. Skocko. A minute later, Danny and Cody arrived, followed by Philip, Fadi, Kyle, Aaron, Nikki, and a few others over the next three hours. We light painted for a few minutes while it was still dark, but the pictures didn’t turn out. When the filming for the Dodgeball video started, chaos broke out and it took us five hours to film a commercial that is less than a minute long. The finished product looks great, but it didn’t always look so good. Danny saved the day in Final Cut and After Effects. The best part of the day was that I learned a lot about video. I was Assistant Director (Danny was Director) and I set up about a third of the shots without his help. By the time the filming was over, I had gained a new skill and the confidence that came with it. High resolution version: right-click and download | Low Resolution version.
At 2pm, Danny and I filmed the Theater Department’s production of Thoroughly Modern Millie, which was fantastic. I had never been to a school performance before, and really liked the play. Fadi tagged along but didn’t really do anything. By 5:15pm, after 11 hours and 45 minuets of work, we all left school and went out separate ways. Twelve hours working for the Mac Lab was a lot of fun.
2: A New Focus
Quite simply, my focus in the Mac Lab is changing. CRDESIGNLAB started out as a photography blog, but I think it will follow me and transition more towards other forms of media, most importantly video. Changes might be coming.
3: The 9 Days of Light Painting
Over Spring Break, I will have three tasks and only three tasks: finish Specialties for AP US History, read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck for AP Language, and devote every other waking moment to the Mac Lab. As for the third of those tasks, I intend to spend most of my time light painting and working on tutorials. It’s about time I stop being lazy and actually get something done. Other than creating tutorials for light painting, I will try the new techniques Mr. Skocko has been urging me to employ over the pst few months. I will completely revamp my approach to light painting, and will hopefully produce the best work the Paint the World With Light project has seen yet.
As for these tutorials, I will use a combination of screen captures that explain the basics and camera setting and actual video footage of a light painting shoot, which should be filmed tomorrow.
I also have to work on the Valhalla 840 poster, which is coming together slowly. I am in charge of the Photoshopping, which is the majority of the project. Zack, Fadi, Philip (I think), and Kyle are also helping. We will have to combine our skills in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Cinema 4D to create a realistic poster. I don’t know if I am supposed to keep the theme a secret or not, so I’ll take the safe route and let you all just guess as to what masterpiece is sitting behind this Safari window on my computer right now. (Hint: if it works, it will be AMAZING!!!!!!) Photoshop CS5 and these tools would make the job infinitely easier. If only I knew someone with CS5…
That’s it for now. I bid you farewell for now and start planning the screen capture portion of my light painting tutorials.
Fun fact: for a few hours tomorrow I will have both of the Mac Lab’s 5D Mark II cameras. I will be carrying around $12,000 of technology as I go the site of the light painting tutorial.
Let the 9 Days of Light Painting begin!!!
The New and the Improved
This post is a week overdue. The main topic of this post is actually what we did last weekend. Between working on Specialties for AP U.S. History and a pre-lab for AP Chemistry, Kyle and I found time to capture some new images as well as return to some old ones.
The New:
On Saturday, after we were done working on Specialties at the SDSU Library, Kyle and I got our camera gear and took a few photos around the campus. So far, we have only had time to edit one of them, which is the photo of a bridge seen to the left. During our numerous breaks from working, we also returned to an image we had taken on January 16, the same day we captured the Dip image that is on the Wall of Fame. Kyle really liked a building that was lit with purple spotlights, so I took a few photos of it. We messed with the best one in Photoshop, cropping it down and adjusting the contrast, among other things. The result will be printed in a few days (hopefully). That’s it for the new images, now on to the improved ones.
And the Improved:
Kyle and I went to Mac Lab Saturday School™ in order to catalog the contents of the camera cabinet, and ended up spending a lot of time working to get the Dip image ready to print. In the two and a half hours we spent going through multiple versions and generating over 4GB on new data, the image was greatly improved.We darkened it a great deal, as well as sharpened the foreground and cleaned up the sky a little with the patch tool. By the time it was printing, Kyle and I were sick of Photoshop, but had a new appreciation of its power. Finally, two copies were coming out of the Epson, one for Kyle and one for the Wall. We didn’t print one for me because I want to frame my copy, and I still need to buy a frame.
During our endless hours at the library, we also improved the Cars, Red Flower, and Seed Pod images, all of which we hope to print eventually. The Cars image, especially, was completely reworked and the result is spectacular when compared to the original. As for the other two, they underwent minor corrections and both are better for it.
Last weekend, we got a lot of work done, and I hope to do the same this weekend.
Weekend Update, 02
This explains it all.
(Record for shortest post ever)
In Addition to Today’s Stuff
As Christopher mentioned, I did spend the entire 6th period working on the CRDESIGNLAB logo, which is to the left. Today, I had the assistance of James Wirig, who helped me with a few final touches, along with the colors (which aren’t white). Although Christopher believes it is not good enough, I, along with James, don’t thinks it’s too bad. Does it need a little tweaking? Of course. But as it stands now, I’m pretty happy. Oh, and of course it needs a background image, something besides black.
I’ll be back to talk about it more later, but for now, let me move on.
Today, after Skocko needed me to find a power adaptor for one of his 500GB external hard drives, I thought it would be wise to make an inventory sheet of everything in the cabinet. We had been tossing around the idea for a couple of weeks, but now we realize just how necessary it really is. Considering now that we are aware of everything that’s in the cabinet, it would be wise to have it all listed out on paper. So, Christopher and I plan to come to Mac Lab Saturday School™ for a few hours to get the inventory list completed.
Oh, then of course, after that, Specialties! If you don’t know what that is already, I’m not going to ruin your day.
A Weekend Alone
Can I tell you, spending the entire weekend with hardly any use of technology, only the occasional check of the email, is quite nice. Today’s society is so wrapped around the use and reliability of technology, that no matter where you go, it will always be there. When you do find time to spend a few days away from it, for the most part, it turns out to be very relaxing.
This weekend wasn’t a complete waste of time because I was able to snap a few decent pictures. If anyone has ever been you’ll know what I mean, but Ladera Ranch is a fantastic place to go outside and take pictures. It’s a great neighborhood which produces great pictures. I have not looked through any of the pictures that I took, but when I do, along with some editing, I’ll be sure to share.
By the way, GO SAINTS! I was very excited to see that they had won. In my opinion, with it being there first time in the Super Bowl, they played a great game. I hope that everyone got to enjoy the game as I did, along with today to recover.
While Christopher and I were setting up the camera and equipment for our light painting on Friday, I was able to take this picture. In it’s unedited state, I thought it was fairly interesting. That is Christopher’s hand grasping the flash light. Kind of random, but I needed to have something to feature with this post.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with that.
