Reflections on these images

On Image 4 I think that I may have gone slightly awry with the midtone adjustment, because the background bin's orange side, just below the black lid, looks light it has a "neon glow" to it almost. Also, in its background it looks a bit blurry. It may not get through the quality control at the www.bitstockphoto.com website.

However, these images were taken largely to be a bit controversial and unusual with the theme of transport. As such, the train tracks, bins and carts seem to be not what you'd quite expect to see in a transport category normally, maybe the classic slow shutter speed image of traffic at night you might expect; but everybody's probably doing that and it's better to be original.

Fourth Image and selection

The fourth image was chosen from a selection of images based around "transport" themes in the middle of the city, including cranes, level crossings, and yep, even the odd dustbin. These wheelie bins are unusual for the theme of transport, and their distinctive orange and black colour makes the perfect photo.

ORIGINAL IMAGE FROM CAMERA:



Post Production:

I used photoshop to edit the photograph in the following ways:

1) I actually darkened it a bit because I thought that the colours looked a bit too bright (with all the orange). In actual fact what I did was I reduced the midtone to about -15.
2) It did need the odd little bit of sharpening so I applied this once. In fact it only needed a minimal amount of sharpening.

Post Production Image:



Here is the photograph and below that are some of its technical statistics.

File Format - this is in the JPEG format. It is the most common format, and also has a small file size, so it is ideal for internet use. A disadvantage is that its quality can be reduced when it is compressed or saved.

Aesthetic: The focal point of the image happens to be the two bins. There are no logos or anything in the way, and there seems to be good composition in this photo because it is centered well around the focal point without too much extra wasted space which might necessitate cropping and reduce the resolution of the image. The image contains a wonderful assortment of colours, including orange, black, green, gray and the red brick building in the background, and many shades of murky brown. Wonderful. I can't see why anyone on bigstockphoto wouldn't want to buy such an image.

BigStockPhoto.com:
With my uploading for www.bigstockphoto.com I used the following categories and keywords:
bin, bins, wheeliebin, dumpster, lid, bin, orange, black, brick, bricks, building, ground, weeds, litter, smell, garbage, scum, dirt, wheels, wheel, drain, water, dirty, handles, handle, dustbin, stains, drips, drip,

Categories: Transportation -> Miscellaneous
Categories 2: Objects -> Industrial
Categories 3: Places -> Urban

Technical Information:

Uploaded: 2006-11-13 11:28:37
Resolution: 2816x2112
DPI: 200
Size: 1,105 Kb
Orientation: horizontally

No release forms for anyone were required. No logos had to be edited out.

My third image is a railway track, however it shows it in a unique way. I have used an interesting angle, and depicted the typical scene of the modern railway: graffiti, rubbish and decay. I thought that this photo stands out from the rest of the railway photos because it is unusual.

ORIGINAL IMAGE FROM CAMERA:




Post Production:

I used photoshop to edit the photograph in the following ways:

1) I added a small element of sharpening to make differences in the image clearer.
2) I have increased the saturation slightly because overall this lacked colour.

Post Production Image:



Here is the photograph and below that are some of its technical statistics.

File Format - this is in the JPEG format. It is the most common format, and also has a small file size, so it is ideal for internet use. A disadvantage is that its quality can be reduced when it is compressed or saved.

Aesthetic: The entire image is important, so there is no particular focal point as such. The stones on the tracks make up a kind of texture, which I believe is quite visually appealing.
I used an element of angle, also not forgetting that the way I looked directly down at the ground, from a bridge. This makes for a slightly unusual angle, but "unusual" is what being original is all about.

BigStockPhoto.com:
With my uploading for www.bigstockphoto.com I used the following categories and keywords:
rails, track, metal, sleepers, stones, rocks, ground, gray, grey, wheel, grafiti, drinks, cans, bottles, transport, train, railway, slabs, sandbag, weed, rag, litter, rubbish

Categories: Transportation -> Trains
Categories 2: Abstract - Miscellaneous

Technical Information:

Uploaded: 2006-11-13 11:28:37
Resolution: 2816x2112
DPI: 96
Size: 2,264 Kb
Orientation: horizontally

No release forms for anyone were required.

The second image is of a couple of carts, adding a different element of tranpsort. I chose it because it stands apart from most of the modern transport we are used to seeing these days.

Post Production:

I used photoshop to edit the photograph in the following ways:

1)Crop out some of the extra plants and weeds and things below the main centre of the image, which was wasted space.
2) Increased the saturation of colours to enhance image.
3) I added a small element of sharpening to make differences in the image clearer.


Here is the photograph and below that are some of its technical statistics.




Other Information

File Format - this is in the JPEG format. It is the most common format, and also has a small file size, so it is ideal for internet use. A disadvantage is that its quality can be reduced when it is compressed or saved.

Aesthetic: The focal point of the image are the carts and old fashioned agricultural equipment that appears across the middle of the image. Using the "rules of thirds" principle, before I cropped it slightly there would have been some wasted space in the background so I cropped out a bit of the weeds which wasted some of this space.
I think that the brightness and colour balance of the image are OK, although the sky might seem to be a bit garish, but because of the clouds reflecting the light this is what it looked like anyway.

BigStockPhoto.com:
With my uploading for www.bigstockphoto.com I used the following categories and keywords:
Keywords: carts, cart, agriculture, weeds, plants, buildings, stone, ivy, grass, clouds, wheel, rocks, trees, boulders, rock, leaves, fields, soil, wood, equipment, metal, tiles, chimney, burgular alarm, satellite dish, rust, farm, plants

Categories: Transportation -> Miscellaneous
Categories 2: Landscapes -> Rural

Technical Information:

Uploaded: 2006-11-12 09:07:44
Resolution: 2811x1911
DPI: 96
Size: 1,681 Kb
Orientation: horizontally
File Format: JPEG


No release forms for anyone were required.

After making post production changes to the image this is what it looks like:

Workshop 6 Entering my first photo

So I took some photos of transport to count towards the four "main" photos which I shall be uploading to bigstockphoto.com having edited them.

One photo is of a boat, another is of a plane, a train and a cart.

This first one which I decided to upload is of the boat, and its reflection in the water.

Post Production:

I used photoshop to edit the photograph in the following ways:

1)Crop out some of the extra water below the reflection which was wasted space which was making an emptier look
2) Smudge out the face of the boat driver a bit, so he isn't recognisable
3) I increased colour saturation a bit, to enhance the colours and brint them out more
4) I hope this will be accepted by the staff at www.bigstockphoto.com

Here is the photograph and below that are some of its technical statistics.



Resolution: 2763x1743
DPI: 96
Size: 1,017 Kb
Orientation: horizontally


Available Sizes:
Small JPEG: 1 Credit
1200 x 757 @ 72dpi (16" x 10") 0.9 Megapixels
Large JPEG: 2 Credits
2763 x 1743 @ 300dpi (9" x 5") 4.8 Megapixels

Things that I didn't do that maybe I could have done:
I could have sharpened the image a little bit more, because when blown up there is a bit of softness, especially in areas where objects of similar colours/shades are near each other.

Other Information

File Format - this is in the JPEG format. It is the most common format, and also has a small file size, so it is ideal for internet use. A disadvantage is that its quality can be reduced when it is compressed or saved.

Aesthetic: The focal point is of the visible part of the boat and its interesting reflection in the water. It also includes part of the reflection which doesn't contain the boat but includes the interesting reflection of buildings otherwise not visible, against a blue sky. I think that this image was suitable to be chosen as one of my four submissions to www.bigstockphoto.com because it captures the boat's and buildings' reflection and all its complexity very well, along with the bright sunlight reflecting off the objects in the water reflection. I applied the post production cropping to remove extra water space below the boat and its reflection, which was where water was just reflecting blue sky.




BigStockPhoto.com:
With my uploading for www.bigstockphoto.com I used the following categories and keywords:
Keywords: boat, buoy, reflection, water, canal, river, wash, float, sink, drive, ship, motorboat, cruiser, minicruiser, transport, wood, fiberglass, ripples, rippling, colour, colourful, colorful, blue, bluesky, sky, buildings, sun, shadow, floating, moving, white, window, curtain, fence, concrete, cool

Categories: Transportation » Boats

No release forms for anyone were required, since the face of the driver is not recognizable.

Feedback from site: The image was originally rejected on the grounds of "Potential copyright / trademark / privacy issue with photo (could be: copyrighted art, visible logo, license plate number, etc) sorry...". I think this was because I forgot to edit out numbers on a license plate number, so I went into photoshop and edited out the numbers on the plate using the eyedropper tool to select its background colour, and the paint tool to go over the actual letters.



I removed the license number.

I resubmitted the image, and hope that this has sorted and the issues and that it might be accepted.

My Digital Camera

My equipment I shall be using for this assessment is a Samsung Digimax S600, with 6.0 megapixels, 3x optical zoom, 2.4" large LCD display. It features various modes for enhancing photos for different scenes and focal lengths. Here is a picture.

Workshop 5: Deciding on a theme for photography assessment

Our group chose a theme of transport and technology, the main reasons being that this topic covers a very broad area to approach from lots of angles. Looking at www.bigstockphoto.com, a large number of the top downloaded and most popular images are based around technology.
Some of those which were most effective include sharp close ups of computer technology, such as keyboard and mice. I looked at taking close up images of text on the screen from different angles.

Exploring Big Stock Photo

Today we explored www.bigstockphoto.com as it appears that it is some software that will play an important roll in our assessment for Creative Technologies. I signed up to www.bigstockphoto.com and we did the standard things such as read the info, tutorials, do the quiz at the end. Using this website one must adhere to stringent quality control rules before having their uploaded photographs accepted. The rules on what should be uploaded, and who should upload the image etc. were what was tested in the test at the end of the tutorial. Everybody passed the test because it was very easy.

Introduction to Adobe Photoshop II

In this session I eperimented with contrast, colour balance, hue & saturation, histogram, levels and curves. I attached some of the images I modified to this post. Some images in the examples were too dull colourwise and needed some added saturation, also colour balance was modified on some of them because on older photographs there was a yellowish tint.

Repairing broken images.

The following images were repaired using the Clone Tool, Dust & Scratch Filter, and Healing Brush.

Cloning/healing brush to repair these images:

First I actually had to rotate the image. Then I used mainly the healiong brush tool, set to a diameter of 10 pixels, on the black and white photograph. I fixed the cracks & tears in the old photo, although to start with I used an excessive brush size and created a lot of smudging.

The third image showed a family portrait which appeared to have been spliced apart. I selected each of the parts of the image with the magnetic lasso tool, and rotated and moved them into place. Visible cracks between the sections remained, however these could be got rid of using the healing brush tool.