Making Quality Pictures with what I've learned

So this week I took one of my first pictures that I had to take for the beginning of this class and made alterations. I think that I improved this image a lot and will more than likely include in my end of year portfolio. I am also looking at getting the same picture but with less clouds and the sun either rising or setting to make it even better. This is my picture before making any corrections.

As you can see in this photograph It is really cloudy and does not offer a lot of color. Also it is really pix elated, I went through and reduced it. I also took a bit of time sharpening the pictures so that the letter on the sign are more clear before it was too blurry which if blown up to a larger size would be easy to see. Here is how it turned out after those corrections were made.

As you can see I made the theater the center point a little more by making the color in the building stand out over all other colors. I think the picture turned out well and I might keep tweaking it here and there.

Blurry?

Blurry images are extremely difficult to fix I think. The image I chose was an image from my trip at Motanoma Falls. It was a blurry picture as you can see below.

This was my picture before I made any changes to it. First off I made it into a smart object before I did anything else with the image. After I messed with the smart blur which helped a bit but not what I wanted. Then I messed with motion blur to see if that would help with the water but that one did not work at all for this picture. I used sharpen blur which gave me a good effect in my opinion. I increased it's blur so that it wouldn't look so rigid. I made it so that it would more blend together.

Image Noise

This is a picture that captures a lot of noise. It is the picture of the Boxer Statue in Vandervelden Court.

This was a very difficult image to adjust. There is nothing I can really do to make it look good.This next image was my attempt on improving it.

So I started out with brightening the whole image by using curves. I then used the selective colors palate to bring out some of the surrounding colors better mainly the yellows, reds, magentas, and blacks. After doing that I selected boxer using the lasso tool and I then used selective color then on him alone to make him darker and bring that object more as the subject of the photo. I also increased the yellow so that the light reflecting on his chest could give more since that the photo could've not been altered. I then tried to use the noise filter which worked a little but was not too successful. It would blur too much of the image to where it didn't look well.

Picture Critique

I really like the time of day that this picture was taken at. I appreciate how the light hits the flower offering areas of shadows. The shadows give it more character than say it would if light was directly on it causing no such shadows. The light kind of glowing through the petals gives the flower the essence of how pure it is, it is not plastic, and it does not have anything out of the ordinary.  The angle that the picture is taken from is a good chose because it allows one to see all the layers of the flower and not just a side view of it.

The part of the photo I dislike though is the amount of clutter under the flower and in the window. I think it distracts a little bit to much from the subject. I like the idea of having a couple other things in the background so that your eyes can wonder to other areas of the photo. I found it just a little overwhelming, otherwise with a few less items and placed strategically you could give the photo that little extra to make it even more appealing. This is a great image a few different corrections for next time and I think the photo will be even better. The flower would receive all of its glory as the subject of the photo.

Mitch Graham