Final Project Proposal

For my final project, I was thinking of doing the song "Play it Again, Sam" by Manchester Orchestra. The song has always meant a lot to me because the feelings and colors associated with it.
One of the major pictures I get when listening to the song is images of body parts. The artist refers to many different body parts in action during the course of the song: "You lift your skinny fists up in the sky", "Your skinny legs bounced up into the sky", "With your fingers crossed you fall against the ground", "Your eyes were glazed and honestly can you remember anything?", and "your prodigal son is on his knees".
I also really like the lyric "When the red and blue lights meet the sea", but I am not sure how I could tie that into the rest of the photos. 
I'll likely have my little sister Brooke for my model because she is still pretty childlike and skinny. Maybe I will do two sets of photos with two different people: Brooke, and someone older (maybe a male) to symbolize the person who is writing the song. I definitely know I'll be dressing up Brooke as childish and feminine as possible, and editing all the photos to look foggy and sad-ish. Lots of greys and blues. 

Week 9 (I think): Self Portraits

Pattern Collage

Color Collage

Week 5

My original idea was to do a fashion editorial-style shoot with a "model" doing everyday things... something that looks absolutely ridiculous. Things didn't turn out exactly how I wanted, however, so my theme ended up just being "morning beauty".

Week 4: Panorama

Week 3: Movement

I spent a good hour or two trying to clone this wall over the window in the background. I ended up having to crop it because it didn't look believable. I used the multiply blending mode (as a copy of the background), a curves layer, a color balance layer to reduce the redness, and sponged the jacket and feathers to make them stick out a little more. I also used burn a little on the left side so the wall looked like it was further back.

I used two curves layers- one to lighten the whole photo and one to fix the contrast afterwards. I had to use the dodge tool to lighten up her whole body and face especially... not sure how I feel about that. I made two gradient layers (one pink-to-transparent and one orange-to-transparent) and set their blending mode to screen. I also used the sponge tool to increase the saturation on the sunset and scarf.

I had to crop this one too, which sucks. I used a curves layer to fix contrast and a color balance layer to make the color a little more orangey-golden. I used an orange-to-transparent gradient and set the blending mode to screen. Finally, I saturated the sunset with the sponge tool.

I really liked how this turned out. I used crop, obviously, then a curves layer, a color balance layer, and a multiply blend layer (on a background copy). I also used the sponge tool to saturate the feathers better, and used dodge to whiten the whites of her eyes.

Assignment 2: Lighting and Space

Changed the color with two curves layers, one two darken the whole photo a small bit and the other to lighten the posts and the snow. Changed the color balance a little and put on a vignette with levels. Used the heal tool a little in the background to give it more bokeh (although it did absolutely nothing),  blurred it a little bit more, and used the sponge tool to saturate the water, rust spots, and straight line of pavement on the left. 

Used two curve layers, one to darken and one to bring out highlights. Used a saturation layer to saturate the whole photo a little and another to saturate her lips more. Used levels to create a subtle vignette. Sharpened the focused part of the hand and the blanket, blurred the background a little more, and tried to desaturate the hand a little bit because it's obnoxious. 

Two curves layers, one to lighten the sky and one to darken the trees. One color balance layer to change the hue to a bluish tone. One thin saturation layer and a vignette/levels layer. Blurred the back trees, sharpened the front trees, and used a gradient on the left.

Used a curves layer to darken the photo a little bit, a saturation layer to desaturate, and a color balance layer to yellow it more. Healed the crap out of her face, put another gaussian blur layer over it, dodged and burned her eyes, and sponge/saturated her lips.

Assignment 1: Framing and Form

Used a black to white diagonal gradient, and dodge, burn, and sponge for the pot to increase contrast and saturation.

Used the heal tool a little bit on the top book and did a rainbowy/pastely diagonal gradient. I would have preferred to use contrast or curves instead to lighten up the photo and I don't really like the gradient very much.

The top is the edited photo. I didn't want to do anything to this one, really, but I ended up using the sponge tool to enhance the reds and oranges in the photo under the orange and the sharpen tool to sharpen the closest edge of the orange.

I added a light orangey gradient to mimic some sort of weird flare or something. I also sharpened the handle at the top.