And breathe...

Sometimes it takes making mistakes to realise exactly what you want. In September last year, I felt like the biggest failure since I finished school in 2010... I had gone to Wellington to study Photographic Design in 2011 and didn't like the city and left. I had then worked full time for the remainder orf 2011, studied a Diploma in Professional Photography through the world renowned Photography Institute and saved money to take with me to Hamilton, where I would study at Waikato University, doing a Bachelor of Communications. I then left for family reasons at the beginning of semester two and tried to continue with the degree extramurally, only to realise that this wasn't what I wanted. That was 2 years of my life, where I was jumping around, changing my mind and changing it back again. By September 2012, I felt like the biggest loser. Here I was unable to complete a degree and my friends were completing their second year of University, what the heck was I doing?

What the heck was I doing?

What did I want?

Why couldn't I make up my mind?

One day I decided I would clean out my waredrobe and in the back of the waredrobe was my big pile of art boards from high school. I got them out and had a good look at them and had a eureka moment.. 'Hey I am really good at photography'... Yes I had completed a Diploma in 2011 since I finished school and I still constantly took photos, but I never took myself seriously.  Until now. I then got my computer out and had a good look through all my work I had done since I first got my hands on a digital camera. Why had I never taken my talent so seriously before? I then proceeded to make a Facebook Photography Page and started to push my work out there and before I knew it, I had photoshoots with Florists, 5 weddings on my plate and event photography up my sleeve.

With my page becoming successful, I made the decision to push my knowledge even further and now study here at Witt doing the Certificate in Photography, the Diploma in Digital Photography through the Southern Institute of Technology and the Diploma In Professional Photography through the New York Institute of Photography.

It's going to be a tough year, with lots of work to do but in the end it will all be worth it. This week has been an example of how much work I have had to do. I've had three assignments due, 33 hours of work, been moving house and have two photoshoot this weekend. BUSY!

Design and Digital Media have been beyond helpful this past couple of weeks with all the courses as I have learned many new photoshop skills that coincide with lots of the work and assignments that I have to submit.

Design has been particularly beneficial in helping me understand the elements of an image and how they make an image successful.

My favourite topic in this project was definitely the movement and emphasis brief as I stuck with the theme of Port Taranaki and took many images that allowed me to show movement. It was a stunning time of day, so the light was beautiful and I was able to capture some great images I could use. In the past I have used Adobe Illustrator in Art Design in 7th form and really loved working with it as I also enjoy drawing on the computer and working with text. I am not a strong hand drawer but I do like working on design in Illustrator. I found the contrast minibrief the hardest as there seemed to be a lot of images to make so I tried to push the boundaries and have my own take on some of the ideas of contrast. The fact that I have been able to document my work on this blog has made me more organised as I can go back and edit posts and everything is shown in a sequential format. If I did this project again I would manage my time more effectively, it made it difficult as I was trying to move house all while doing this but fortunately for the future assignments I will be settled in to my new house. I am proud of my work that I have produced in this task but I am aware of a few images that I most likely could have done a little better.But all in all, I think I have done a pretty good job.

All I know for sure is that I am looking forward to a really good and long sleep once I have submitted this assignment after this presentation.

My favourite design images.

Balance by Value and Colour

Contrast by value  (light vs dark)

Contrast by scale

Contrast by Shape

Motion

Design -Minibrief Four, Unity / Gestalt

Unity and gestalt are elements that are crucial to design. Unity can be described as the presentation of an integrated image, elements of an image that look as though they belong together, similar components of an image and showing that the whole is dominent over the parts. In design we typically tend to close space between nearby objects and there are usually clues to be able to understand the unity, which is known as Gestalt. (See class resources document)

The following images are my taken on unity and gestalt.

Proximity: proximity of water drops.

Varied of repetition: same shapes and colours repeated variously throughout the image

Continuity: The same shape continued throughout the image.

Repetition: Repetition of shape in tessilation

Grid: collage grid with continued and repeated shapes.

Pattern: unity of pattern, repeated shapes and colours showing they belong together. Gestalt by closing the space between the shapes.

Design - Minibrief Three, Emphasis and Movement.

Emphasis and movement are extremely significant aspects of design. The ability to move the viewers eye around an image are crucial design elements and to emphasise certain parts of the image is even greater.

For this task I went down to Port Taranaki and took a series of images and then for my drawing and collage images I stuck with the same theme of the the beach and the port.

Absence of Focal Point: Four circles of the same image, crossing over with no focal point. 

Emphasis by contrast: Contast of the silhouette vs the flat light background.

Alternating Rhythm: alternating shapes with reducing opacity.

Mood of motion: dark areas moving eye into the light areas, with a very strong mood.

Speed of motion: photo taken of the port while zooming in really quickly.

Progressive rhythm: pattern created in the image that progresses.

Emphasis of isolation: lonely looking image with a blurred isolated silhouette.   .

Motion: Right angle triangle with movement of water photographed, collage in a triangle to show direction.

Motion: Movement 

Motion: Motion of the zoom lens at speed photographing this scene.

Design Minibrief Two - Contrast

Contrast may seem really basic.. but is it?

You might wear contrasting colours, you might have a contrasting personality with someone or you might have light and dark area of your home that contrast with each other.

Contrast in design is very important, it implies that one element is very different from another. For example, something in juxtaposition or something close by.

In this brief we had to explore several aspects of contrast through images we created in illustrator or hand drew. The following images are what I did.

Contrast by Hue: Reflected the image and changed one half at the -100 hue side and the other half of the +100 hue side.

Contrast by light and dark: Black areas vs light areas.

Contrast by Texture: Texture of the moss vs the flat and smooth areas of the background.

Contrast by Focus: Flowers fully in foucs while the background in blurred.

Contrast by Scale: Little cocktail umbrellas vs the beach.

Contrast by hot vs cold: Red hot colour vs Blue cold colour.

Contrast by Shape: The shape of the tree vs the couple.

Contast by light vs dark: white negative space vs black space

Contrast by colour: Two contrasting colours, yellow vs purple.

Contrast by hue: Red vs green and contrasting ideas of stop and go.

Contrast by symbol: happy vs sad

Contrast by pattern: Flat green vs busy contrasting colours pattern.

Contrast by shape: Black square vs lines.

Contrast by emotion: love vs hate.

Contrast by direction: up and down, opacity changed on each side to give change of direction.

Design Minibrief One - Balance

Balance is a big part of my life at the moment as I work to balance three photography courses and all their assignments, my job, my training for running and at the moment - moving house.

Balance is a very important aspect of design. In everyday life we might think of balance as a way of distributing weight evenly, juggling different aspects of life or to be mentally steady. In design however, it can mean many things - whether its making parts of an image work together, balancing out the positive and negative space or making something symmetrical.

Below are my 12 balance images:

Balance by symmetry : this is an image of a ferm reflected and then I have reflect an image of some lights on the top and changed the opacity.

Balance by horizontal and vertical placement: I created an evenly balance grid for this image. It is made from a layer of images.

Balance by Value and Colour: This is an image which as been altered in photoshop to emphasise the colours on the CD and then I made a series of circles around the CD. Then I got the eye dropper and matched the colour on the opposite side of the CD to create balance by value and colour.

Balance by pattern: This is a pattern I created of an image of a friend. It is balanced out by all the images being in a series of patterns - across ways, length ways and diagonally.

Balance by texture and shape: The square textured image balances out the flat circle. 

Balance by eye direction: The Te Rewa Rewa Bridge multiplied and layered on top of each other slightly off from one another creates balance by eye direction as the image leads the viewers eye from the left to the right.

Radial Balance: Agapanthas evenly placed throughout the circle with a lens flare in the centre.

Pattern balance: Patterned circles balancing the image with each circle in line and clipping the same part of the image.

Asymmetric Balance: Two separate components of an image with different pictures balancing each other out. 

 Balance by position: Each squigley line positioned in the corner balances each other out and leads your eye from one to the other.

Balance by asymmetric and symmetric: This is symmetrical with it being the same on each side if you divide it in half but there is different pictures in the images.

Balance by Shape: Each opposite corner balances each other out.

Mini brief 5... The next big thing.

Lights Camera Action.

OKAY! Photoshop actions = definitely new favourite thing.
Yes, I had heard of them, yes I knew what they did. But I didn't know how to make one.
Correction, I didn't know how to record one.

I am in love love love with photoshop actions. Anyone who wants to know how to make one should click here

Our task was to photograph an object at different angles etc and then when we got to class we would create an action to edit all the images in the same way. Best. Idea. Ever. Hello absolute consistency!

I photographed some old blank CD's in the bathtub, with food colouring and flowers to create some abstract and pretty images!! Then we recorded an action to create consistency throughout all the images and then we put them together in a grid format.

Here's mine!

Now I am very much looking forward to doing my next shoot to create a great action to apply to some images! Yay! :)

Mini Brief Four. The realisation that photoshop is a digital darkroom.

Slowly my mind is filling up with more and more photoshop information. Which is amazing, the things I have learned are beyond anything I have ever dreamed of! Like I have explained in previous blog posts, I have always loved photography but I always thought that photoshop was kind of like cheating and that to be a good photographer you shouldn't have to use photoshop to make an image amazing. But then I realised that photoshop is essentially a digital darkroom.

In high school, I spent countless hours processing images in the darkroom. Developing, stopping, fixing, washing, cropping, adding effects, burning, dodging and I always thought it was magical. Now we can do those same things on photoshop and never have to worry about wasting chemicals because it didn't turn out right... that's why we have a history button.

Right now I feel like I am back in high school, doing some persuasive writing, but really I am just telling you about my eureka moment during mini brief four.

It really started when I added an adjustment layer and I remembered making an imaging and laying a OHP copy of a news paper article over the image so it looked like a layer of news paper was covering my face. Then I thought... oh onions have layers, oh wait, photoshop has layers!!!

Adjustment layers quickly become my next favourite thing on photoshop. The ability to change a particular layer only was so amazing and I had heaps of fun pushing my photos to their absolute maximums.

This is a before and after example of an image I manipulated in photoshop.

Personally, I think that the original is nicer but it was still heaps of fun to push the image to extremes and make it look completely different. The before version looks like a dry winters day and the after version looks like a lush winters twilight.

Oh photoshop yay for you being my new darkroom.... wait a minute that's obviously where Adobe got their name for the 'Lightroom' software....