Category: portrait

Portrait: So emo…

iampotassium1 Comment


I think it’s time for a self portrait. Also, this is one of my favorite pictures that I’ve taken of myself. This was taken in October 2009 with my DLSR a few weeks after getting it. I did NOT use autofocus so I had to focus on a cup on my desk that was about the same distance away as the camera would be away from me/my tear when I set it down and took the picture. I took this picture partly because I was procrastinating on my biophysics homework (you can see it lurking under my arm) and partly because I was actually really frustrated with my biophysics homework (hence the emo picture). For the record, that is not a real tear (it’s water) but I can pretty much guarantee you that that emotion on my face is still genuine. Anyway, I just love this picture because it is so nicely focused even without using autofocus.
No worries, I am not feeling emo right now. I am really excited for this week. Should be a lot of fun. Speaking of fun, I will only be posting pictures today (obviously) and tomorrow this week. I figure that I should be spending my time enjoying the Thanksgiving season (/getting more exciting pictures) instead of worrying what to post every day! I hope you all have fun things planned for your Thanksgiving weeks too!

Photoshop
I don’t think I did much to this picture besides crop it and then desaturate the colors a bit to make for a more dreary picture. Goes with the emo-ness.

Portrait: First Snow

iampotassium2 Comments


Welcome back to another week! I hope you all had lovely weekends! I know I did… Anyway, today’s portrait is a picture of my friend Meghana showing off all the snow we got last week. Yeah yeah, I know… it’s not very much snow but run with it! It was our first real snow of the season! So we thought we’d celebrate it by taking a few pictures! Meghana was worried she wouldn’t look good in the snow but I disagree… :)

Portrait: Do You Like My Leaf?

iampotassium1 Comment


I have decided that this week is going to be Leaf Week in honor of all the gorgeous trees out there right now. Also, I took some leaf pictures to submit to a photo contest and was so inspired by it that I decided to post (other) leaf pictures in my blog too! So starting out this week is my friend Janet, who works in my lab with me and who is also awesome. Janet has been crazy stressed lately writing her thesis so that she can graduate. It’s due today so yay Janet for getting it done! *round of applause for Janet* Anyway, on Friday, she took a break from writing and went outside in the gorgeous fall weather (it was 70 degrees outside… in November!!!!) to take leaf pictures with me! This one was my favorite.

Photoshop
First a note: (I have had a suggestion that this photoshop section takes away from the magic of my pictures… Do other people feel like that? Should I just include a brief summary of the picture and that is all? I have been posting the photoshop section because it is kind of a record keeper of what I actually did do to each picture and I thought people might be curious about how I process my pictures… but discuss!)
Today’s Photo: When I take pictures on my DSLR, it saves the picture both as a JPG and as a raw NEF file so that I can have multiple ways of editing my pictures. I’ve been working on learning how to edit the JPGs on their own since I can apply those skills to any picture taken on any camera but for Janet’s picture, I actually used both NEF and JPG editing techniques. Janet’s face was a little underexposed so I fixed the exposure and the white balance of the NEF photo. Then I switched to editing it as a JPG. I cropped it and darkened those bright leaves above Janet’s head because let’s face it, they were outta control!. That’s it! :)

Happy Birthday, Mom!

iampotassium5 Comments

And now for my special surprise! Today is my mom’s birthday! I decided that birthdays top black and white day any day (for my black and white picture, please look at yesterday’s post)!
I took this picture during Thanksgiving break last year. I had had my DSLR for just about two months and I was excited to show it off to my parents. So pretty much as soon as we got into the house, I pulled it out and Mom and I rushed outside to take pictures of ourselves and whichever of our three cats were around. My cat Smokey is in this picture with my mom (and by the way, Smokey LOVES to be held… I think she hates being photographed though because she always looks very upset with everything in pictures). I chose this one because I think my mom looks really pretty in it. :D
Anyway, Mom, I hope you are having a wonderful birthday and I hope that you know what an awesome mother/woman you are. You are smart, talented, beautiful, and friendly and I am glad that I am your daughter! Looking forward to having many interesting and insightful conversations with you when I get home in December. Love you. :)

Photoshop
I used Shadow/Highlights to lighten up my mom’s face a bit and then I cropped the picture. That’s all!

Portrait: Trash Can Man

iampotassium1 Comment

                             
Because yesterday was Halloween, I thought I would post a picture of my favorite Halloween costume from this weekend! On Saturday evening, Cobalt and I dressed up like a member of Devo and a demon hunter, respectively, and headed out on the town. We ended up at Pearl Street which is where the people of Boulder go to show off their costumes en masse. There were all sorts of costumes: Lady Gaga, aristocrats, pharaohs, the three blind mice, guys dressed up as cheerleaders, etc. There was even a group of people dressed as Tetris pieces that all fit together. Fun times. I know that this isn’t EXACTLY a portrait in that the photograph doesn’t focus on his face but I hope you’ll forgive me this time. :)

Photoshop
The guy’s trashcan was a bit dark at the bottom so I used Shadow/Highlights (one of my favorite Photoshop tools) to get rid of some of the shadows. Then I cropped the guy and also darkened some of the bright lights in the background.

Happy Monday!

Portrait: Zombie Shark

iampotassium2 Comments

This Saturday I went to Denver’s annual Zombie Crawl. Last year, they had 4000 zombies roaming their downtown walking mall but then Seattle beat them for the world record with about 4300 zombies. This year apparently was no contest: there were at least 7300 zombies wandering around, searching for brains. Obviously, this was a great place to go take pictures….
I chose to go as a zombie instead of a photographer because I was worried that being behind the camera all the time would make me miss out on some of the zombification. After all, isn’t zombification the point of a zombie crawl? So I brought my baby camera (I was worried about getting fake blood on the DSLR – that stuff gets everywhere it turns out) and gurgled down the street with the mass of zombies, snapping pictures as I went. This little shark zombie (today’s picture) is one of my favorites. I found him just as the crawl was starting and we were all ambling slowly towards the street.

It turns out I still learned a surprising amount about photography, even as a zombie. There were a LOT of professional photographers there with their HUGE cameras (I was drooling) snapping tons of zombie pictures. So… I got to watch their photography techniques.
I recently took a creative digital photography class at The Boulder Photo Center. In class, we talked a lot about how to take candid pictures of people in public and how to address your subjects. I caught myself watching the photographers using those techniques in action. People would either politely ask if they could take your picture or they would just candidly snap a few and then wander away completely nonchalantly. If we addressed them, they would ask us if we wanted a copy of the picture and then jot down our e-mail addresses so that they could send us one. It just seemed so easy. Can’t wait to try it out myself now!
I actually got to experience a little bit during the crawl because I took a picture of one of the zombies near me and he REALLY liked it. So I got his e-mail address and, after a bit of fixing the photo in Photoshop, sent him the picture. I hope he liked it.

Photoshop
As for our little zombie shark in today’s picture, I actually didn’t do anything to him. He is as shot. Craziness…

I think that is all for today. I hope you all have excellent Mondays! :)