Critical Mass - Contact Sheets

Project 3 - Critical Mass

In this project, I focused on analyzing the different shapes and textures that surround me in my everyday life. It was interesting to see how shapes compliment each other naturally and how they contrast as well. I am very excited to see this actually put together because I believe there is a lot of power in the collection of images. I feel like I learned a lot while shooting this project, and trained my eye to see compositions and elements where I might not have looked before.

Project 2 - Singular Image

For this assignment, I experienced some technical difficulties early on, which included my hard drive crashing and losing the first 100 and something shots I took. However, despite the frustrating loss, I believe I actually gained a lot from going out for two other shoots and rethinking my project process.
I was very set on doing an HDR image of somewhere in Eugene that means a lot to me at first. After shooting at a few locations, I decided that the river/Autzen footbridge was somewhere that I have frequented over the past 3 years, and it has delivered me to and brought me back from many exciting football games. I actually live right near the river now, which is really nice because it's one of my favorite places to hang out.
After getting menial results with my HDR setup, I explored the possibility of doing a panoramic image. I used my fisheye lens for most of my shots in this project, which allowed me to capture as much as I could in the frame. I really enjoyed how the footbridge looked through the viewfinder, so I started thinking about the extremes of what I could do with the shot. Seeing as how I couldn't fit the whole bridge in a single shot even with the fisheye, I starting taking photos to set up a photomerge panoramic image. As soon as I starting working in Photoshop with the images, I knew that I had found my source images.
I really think that this panoramic captures the feeling of crossing over the river and the length of the bridge. I was impressed with Photoshop's ability to merge the photographs, even though it took a while to find the most successful merging option. After some retouching of the curves and color balance, along with some helpful clone stamping, I was done!