Recipe 4 Zachary Van Heel

Recipe Crit 4

Zachary Van Heel

I honestly am not a fan of filters, some minor editing and correction is fine, but none of my images I would ever look at and be lie, I want to make it look vintage.

I don’t really care for this image honestly. I do not think that it is my favorite, but was choosen as POW

The app I used was snap seed I would use either vintage or else the grunge filter. I would then usually raise brightness and increase contrast, trying to blow out some whites and crush some blacks giving an appearance of a smaller latitude. Then would just add texture over it. Raising contrast by itself already raises saturation so I didn’t touch that.

Brittany-crit 2- recipe

 

This was the photo that was voted as number one for the color photos in crit 2.  This one was definitely my favorite.  For this photo, I had been working with food coloring and noticed these splotches after I was finished and thought it looked really neat.  After taking a few shots and deciding what angle looked best, I enhanced the colors very slightly on snapseed.  I felt like the colors were already very vibrant and didn’t need to enhance it too much.   This photo makes me think of painting and leaving messes with the tools, especially with how the colors bleed together in some areas. 

 

Brittany- Crit 1- recipe

For Crit 1, this was voted as my best photo.  I definitely feel like it was one of the stronger ones from this week.  While attending a concert, I could help but notice all of the really cool lights and how they were reflecting off the audience.  During a song that I wasn’t all too familiar with, I was able to take out my phone and snap this photo.  I feel that it this photo looked much better in black and white.  It certainly gives off the effect of an alien abduction, so there was a little mystery.  I just used snapseed app to change it to a black and white filter that I felt suited the scene. 

Kat- Recipe Crit 3

For my pic of the week, I was able to use my mediocre phone to my advantage. It seems to pic up oddly-refracted light that I otherwise don't see with my naked eye. My boys and I were at a soccer game, and there happened to be a laser and fireworks display after the game. We had a full moon over the pitch the entire evening, and in an effort to capture that during the fireworks show, I caught this image. There's no editing here, just "right place, right time".

Taylor Donges - Crit 3 - Recipe

For this photo, I spotted a vibrant, colorful flower that was growing next to an old, broken piece of pipe. I wanted to get the contrast between the metal and natural color of the plant. After I took the photo, I played with the different values in the Photoshop Express application. I boosted the brightness, the contrast, and the saturation. I thought that by boosting the values I would exaggerate the difference between the flowers, the pipe, and the leaf caught in the middle.

Bill Wilson - Crit 3 - Recipe

This photo was voted my best in Crit 3.  It was the middle of the day and I working and looked at the window across the room and thought it might make a good picture, so I walked closer and snapped a single shot.  My immediate reaction was I didn't like it, so I only took that single shot and forgot about it.

When reviewing all my photos for this Crit, I revisited it based on its good level of natural light and color, and began to experiment with some different types of processing for the photo.  I decided to go with a lomo-ish filter (using Google Picasa app) that boosted the color significantly, and blurring the edges gave the photo a mysterious feel.  The photo really came alive with the filters.

Gabriella: Recipe 3

For the passion assignment, my most voted photograph is the one of the purple/pink sky. I was taking the trash out at work and when I came outside and the entire sky was lite up purple/pink and bright as if for a few minutes we lived inside a beautiful, florescent light bulb. I remember in elementary school I read the book The Giver. There is not much I understood at 10 years old but I remember the feeling when he experienced color for the first time, and it was how I felt walking outside. I loved the way the street lights illuminated the tree just enough to remind me of reality. The photograph, without a doubt does not do it justice. I wish I had been in a different location other than next to the Chuck E. Cheese dumpsters. 

Dann - Crit 3 - Recipe

 

For this photo, I didn’t get crazy with trying to position the camera in a certain way. I didn’t stand there and try to frame the picture in twenty different ways for at least ten minutes. I just saw an interesting composition, waited for the right moment, and then...snapped!  This was very different from my typical twenty or more shots I take of one subject. Doesn’t hurt to break habits, whether they’re good or not every so often!

Jess 3 - Crit 4 - Recipe

For my Passion photos, this picture of a seal was voted best. Interestingly, some people weren't sure what it was (one commenter called it a foot) so I think I did better on the mystery aspect this week. I took this picture at the Philadelphia Zoo at the seal exhibits, so this seal happened to pass by at the perfect moment for me to get the underwater portion of his body in focus. They were swimming so fast, it was hard to get anything in focus at all, but I like the way it turned out. I edited the photo in a free online editor, called iPiccy. I boosted the contrast, and made the colors a bit greener.

Jess Fred - Crit 3 - Recipe

For this critique, I tried a new process of toning. First, I used the vintage filter on the iPhone app, Snapseed. Then, I took the saturation down and added a slight blue tone and a slight green tone on top. I really like the way the final tone came out; it looks slightly vintage, but the cooler colors on top give it more of a laid back, cool feel. The comments on my blog post also agreed; they thought that the tonality gave the piece a relaxed feel. I think this type of toning will be very successful for our next critique on Memory/Vintage.

Lauren W. Crit 3

For the photo below I increased the white balance so to evoke a vintage feel because the composition itself felt the same.  I focused on angles and line in this photo and pushed them further by increasing the contrast to provide strong lines with dark shadows or bright light that creates the lines.

The photo below was one of the first I shot for this critique.  I adjusted the focus to be on the grass to emphasize the depth of field.  I am very satisfied with the outcome of this photo. I increased the saturation to get the true green and yellows in the grass.

Amanda- Crit 3 Recipe

My recipe for this photo was based on angle. I spend a lot of my days and nights in this alley way and it holds a sort of nostalgic, personal meaning for me. I kept trying to capture a photo of it for Crit 3 but I kept feeling like each shot was just a typical "alley" photo. I happen to notice the beautiful red building across the street reflecting in the puddle and took shot after shot for the perfect angle to explain the space using a reflection. I did not use an app for this, or edit this at all. I felt as if the subdued colors did this photo justice without amplifying anything.

Joshua Feo - Crit 3 - Recipe

For this series I used Pixlr Express app which was free for my Android phone. I wanted to use an app because I've never edited photos that way before. Pixlr is very simple and easy to use and has all your basic adjustment tools for editing. For each photo I used the Sharpen tool to sharpen the images, Contrast to adjust the contrast and brightness, Color & Vibrance to adjust the hue, saturation, and lightness, and then Focal Point to create depth and blur the edges around what I chose to be the point of focus. These photos came out a lot more soft and grittier using the app, but overall I liked using it.

Bennett - Crit3 - Recipe

I discussed this picture a bit in my self-evaluation, but I suppose there's always more to say. People really liked this one. It was very "in the moment" in that smoke is constantly changing and this exact plume was different the instant my shutter clicked. What a lot of people didn't seem to notice was the cigarette butt in the bottom right. Initially I was trying to frame the shot so that some of the smoke seemed to be originating from it. This wasn't successful, but the subject being the smoke itself came across. I cropped this photo somewhat, and increased the contrast slightly. The increased contrast is most evident in the wood chips on the ground. I like that the smoke is thick enough to hide what is behind it because it enhances the sense of mystery which is so critical in all of these.

Jake - Recipe 3

For my picture, I used the app "Camera +". The app changed a bit after the iOS7 upgrade, but only in a positive way. Now there are more filters to play with, although I didn't end up using them for this picture. People seemed to like this photo, and I think it has a cool mystical feeling to it. I was driving up to Ithaca, NY last weekend and while in the passenger seat the fog looked really great outside. I put my phone against the window and waited for subjects to contrast the fog. I used the new iOS 7 feature where you can hold down the shutter button and it takes many photos a second. This was one of them and it looked great in my opinion. I liked the balance of the van and the tree. Then, for effects. I opened it in Camera+ and added "clarity" to pop the contrast up, and added "vibrant" and "HDR". I played with the amount sliders and it resulted in this picture. The yellows really add an interesting look, in my opinion.

Crit Three Recipe Zachary Van heel

Was mostly just capturing it at the right time. No real effects added. I was at an outdoor concert and the lighting was insane. i got up to the front and it kept pulsating to where I couldn't even see the stage with my eyes. I took a few photos and this is the one that finally captured the light at its full intensity.

Bill Wilson - Crit 2 - Recipe

There really wasn't anything special with this photo, other than I had the unique experience of being near the top of the tallest building in the western hemisphere.  This photo was taken over the "glass floor," and was one of several shots I took.  This one in particular I took from overhead and slightly tilted and off center, which I think contributed to the disorienting feeling of the photo.  No color filters were applied after the fact, but when taking the photo I did experiment with different focal points for brightness (which I learned recently is possible with my iphone), and this one resulted in the color you see.

Personally this was one of my least favorite photos in my collection, mainly because the word "Aquarium" is visible making it look sort of tacky.  If I could go back and reshoot it I'd move six inches to the right or choose a different angle so that wasn't so obvious.

Bill Wilson - Crit 1 - Recipe

The recipe behind this one was pretty simply.  This was one of the first shots I did, so I tried to remember the basics of framing.  Keeping the picture "level" was tricky, so I to look toward the background for guidance.

I used the Photo Fx app, first to make it black and white, then I applied the red filter to give it this look.

In a "live" shot everyone is moving, so I tried to wait for the right moment, I definitely didn't want anyone looking at the camera, or in the middle of making a loud gesture, laughing, etc.  I wanted to capture a calm stillness in a scene that naturally had more energy than the photo lets on..  

Logistically, a challenge with this one was getting it right with only a few tries.  Normally I'll take about dozen shots of a particular subject/scene so I can choose from the best later, however constantly snapping photos in a public bar is kinda creepy, so I only took two, and this was the best one. 

Taylor - Crit 2 - Recipe

For this photo, I wanted to experiment with the way the light was reflecting off of this tall grass. I was taking a bunch of photos of this fountain that was lit up at night by lights that changed color. I took a few straightforward photos of just the fountain. However, I saw that the way the colored lights would shine through the grass planted around the fountain produced an interesting effect. I got as close to the grass as I could while still managing to take a decent photo. I waited until the light was changing from one color to the next. In that small, transitional phase, the light on the grass looked extraordinary.

Daniel Peterson, Recipe 2, Smartphone Photography F13

My main challenge with taking pictures like this, is to stay away from the obvious. I'm afraid I might have failed at this since many of the comments indicated that they could tell what the subject in this picture is (keep in mind I did get the most votes for this photograph). My goal was to stay away from letting people know what the subject is that I was shooting. I did have a few pictures with better angles of this watering can which might look a little more abstract. However, they were pretty out of focus. 

Now I'm thinking I should have given the blurry ones a run on the blog. I think this photograph is  somewhat abstract and creates a little mystery, but not to the extent that I wanted. Having said this, I think I need to get back out there and push this to another level!

Jamie - Crit 2 Recipe

This photo was taken outside on my playset. I used the app Afterlight in order to increase the saturation and contrast. Pretty simple- but that is all I did!

Pam - Crit 1 & 2 recipe

Hi all! I thought I would do a double post since I was late in writing up my first recipe. 

A few seemed interested in this image. I think this was one of those instances where I got lucky noticing how animated the sky looked against a mundane backdrop. I uploaded this image as is and did not do much cropping in photoshop - but I use the  Adjustments < Black & White settings with this entire set. I like my darks to be really dark so I simply played with the levels until I was happy with them! 

With my self portraits I'm actually attempting to not show my face in any of them so there's some mystery. Here I thought of to only show my silhouette. I waited until I knew the sun would be the brightest at this window and clipped my iphone to my tripod. There's a few camera apps that feature a camera timer. I use this one: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/timercam-self-timer-camera/id494952699?mt=8

After quite a few tries I was able to get the figure dark enough. I uploaded it in Photoshop and toyed with the levels to get a better contrast and that was it! Oh and there was a lot of cropping here to get the furniture and things out of the way. I guess that's cheating huh? :)

Jess D - Crit 2 - Recipe

In this photo, I was most excited by the juxtaposition of natural vs. unnatural colors. I also noticed as the children were exiting the water that they were creating ripples, which were interesting in texture and shape next to rigidness of the dock and it's lines. I wanted to get an interesting angle of the shot as well, so I took the picture from a top-down perspective, which I think is what makes the photo most effective.

Amanda Viens- Recipe Crit 2

For the color series, my most successful photographs were taken in an old warehouse that a friend just moved into. I was admiring the old architecture and the layers upon layers of paint throughout the hallways. For the first one, I found a green window that was swung open and decided to take photographs almost like a color study of the different colors the wood has seen. I did not enhance the green color or edit this photograph at all as I think that the understated greens really show a natural tone. For the second, I started taking photos of the walls and the colors reflected on them when I found this pink feather sculpture which caught my eye. I experimented with including numbers on the black door on the left in the frame, but decided that it would be too distracting to the object and the brick wall behind it. I did not edit this photo from its original either.

Jess Fred- Recipe 2

I tried a new process of taking a photograph with my phone, sending it to my computer, and then shooting the photo displayed on the computer with my iphone. I got this weird rainbow color added to the top of my piece from the computer screen reflection. Students mentioned on my blog post that they really like how the composition turned out in this weird “trippy” way.  I think I am going to use more of this process and see what else I can create with it.