The power of sunlight and shade

Before Photo of "It's a Sunny Day"

This is digitally shot outside with the white board blocking the sun coming from the South. The focal point and object in the photo is me, myself, and I. The purpose of this project was to create photos similar to Richard Avedon's style of using the sunlight and shade to create aesthetic portraits of people in the Midwest.

The picture is only lit by the power of the sunlight and it creates a "blank" background that works to illuminate the model.

Outside lighting makes the appearance of the photo soft and makes the model glow overall.

During the process of shooting the photo, a white or gold reflector was used to control the sunlight that slipped over the boards.

It's a Sunny Day- Photoshop Design

This photo was shot digitally outside and then I decided to use photoshop to design it. I did not have any idea what kind of design that I wanted to do and my clothes were so plain jane that it was hard finding brush designs that collaborated with my photo. In the photo you can see me with a red t-shirt and a black hooded sweater just cheesing real hard. In the background I used five different type of brushes and three different colors (red,blue-violet, and yellow) from photoshop to create my designs. I started using the brushes where the focal point is (me) and then I worked my way down. At the last minute I decided that I wanted the top portion to be different so I grabbed a huge brush and smacked down over my head. The result of the design was circles, angelic winged brushes, and and paint smears. The big circles above my head actually pulls the attention away from me, which is not what I wanted to focus on. I was really trying to make the photo look like an advertisement magazine page that promoted drug prevention for teens, but I failed to make that communication and it looks more like I am in cartoon land!

This is my first studio lighting group photo. I arranged purposefully to have an ensemble but have them all looking in a different direction. There are stripe and checkered patterns in the photo that don't pull too much attention away from the overall photo. The contrast in the
The focal point is on the guitar that the girl holds up in her hands.
The feeling in the photo is greatness in the hands of the girl. The boy on the left creates an implied line connected to the guitar while the boy on the left creates the impression of a "whatever" attitude. The three harmonize letting the guitar take center stage. The value contrast did not come out exactly the way I wanted, but it was close to successful. I wanted the left guy to be as dark as the guy on the right. The photo leans more on the low-key side of light value which was intended in the process of printing it. Overall, I think the photo was composed very well and I am happy about the instructions I gave to my models in the photo. I love this photo because it fulfills the intentions of making the models look like a teen band on an album cover. I wanted to create an album-like photo of a band that was out of the norm and grabs attention. The only thing that could have been better is the lighting, but it was a success regardless.

Influenced by Tomoko Sawada

In the first square you can see a granny with cat eye glasses and in the square next to it you can see a school girl with more modern glasses cheesing as she takes her school i.d. picture. The girl with the sloppy bangs (below granny) looks grouchy and the girl (girl with hair all down) with the mole looks incoherent and dazed. The process of putting this together in photoshop seemed hard at first, but after I was given the instructions of creating the photo then I was able to do it easily on my own. I actually had fun changing my appearance and I wish I could have done more of a variation with my clothing. I usually dread self-portraits, but for this project I was actually excited about creating a self-portrait of myself as more than one person. I was able to go from an elderly women to a little school girl. In addition, to creating multiple disguises I was also able to learn more about using photoshop.