Photography Resources

I found some useful sites to help improve my photography skills.  Below are their links.

http://www.prosphotos.com/

http://tlc.ousd.k12.ca.us/~acody/digi1.html

http://42explore.com/photog.htm

Halloween

Halloween is a holiday celebrated every year on October 31^st.  It started as the Celtic “Samhain” festival.  Samhain roughly means “summer’s end”, also sometimes celebrated as Celtic New Year.  The Celts believed that the border between the spirit world and ours wore thin on Samhain, allowing spirits, both evil and harmless, to pass through.  Most would disguise themselves in costumes and masks so that the spirits would see them as spirits as well, and not harm them.  Jack o lanterns also were used to the same effect, but made of hollowed out turnips for the ancient Celts. 

Modern Halloween includes themes of death, monsters, evil and magic.  Jack o lanterns are made of pumpkins and places near the front door with comical or scary faces.  Many people of all ages like to dress up in costumes of pop culture figures, animals, monsters and the like.  Some Halloween games include bobbing for apples, playing practical jokes on the neighbourhood, telling stories and attempting to communicate with spirits. 

With a little makeup, anyone can look like a zombie.

A green skull shaped fog machine.

My Jack O Lantern... Made in the image of the average truck driver.

A witch tearing off her own head next to her cauldron.

Lastly, a skull shaped Jack O Lantern.

Metal Casting

Last week Mr. Wilander's class did some silver casting. 

First, silver pellets are                      
placed into the spinner




Then the pellets are heated with a flame until the silver is molten.

Then they allow the spinner to spin, therefor pushing the silver into the cast.

Then the silver cast is removed from the spinner, and shaken in a bucket of water.

Once cooled and removed from the cast, the silver ring only needs to be polished up.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in Canada originally started as a celebration of the successful harvest season, to be held on the second Monday of October.  My family, like most families, celebrates Thanksgiving by having an enormous family dinner of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and so on.  I personally see Thanksgiving as an excuse to get together with the family, and spend some quality time together over a fantastic dinner. 

The recipe for stuffing that my Grandmother uses has been passed down in the family, and now you can have it too! ;

You need to have 5 cups of mashed potatoes at the ready, cooked, then fry 8 strips of bacon.

Next, fry ¾ cups of Chopped Onion and ¾ cups of Chopped Celery together in the bacon grease.

Drain the Onions and Celery,  then chop the bacon.

Add this mixture into the mashed potatoes, add three eggs, and whip it all together.

Add three to four teaspoons of Poultry Spice, one cup of diced onions (raw), a teaspoon of pepper, and mix all together.

Next, simply stuff the stuffing into the turkey and cook.

Here is a picture of Pumpkin Pie and Coconut Cream pie before whipped cream, then a picture of them both with whipped cream, and Lemon Merangue pie.

Digital Manipulation of Photographs

Today we were messing around with the special effects in photoshop, and I got some very interesting results.

First, I took my hallway picture from my last post.  I used the glowing edges effect, and voila, a psychadelic picture.

Then, I took my courtyard picture and adjucted the colors, and put an effect on it similar to plastic wrap.

Lastly, my parking lot/ baseball diamond picture, I used "Liquefy" to melt the picture around until I got an image that was interesting.

Different Lighting Conditions

All of these pictures were taken in different lighting conditions, and with a little photoshop I was able to clean them up nicely.

First is a picture taken from the floor of our school's math wing, darkened with accentuation on the shadows\

Next, the courtyard, with additional saturation and darkness in the midtones.

A look at the baseball diamond and the community center from across the parking lot, I took away some of the light.

And, of course, the iconic Totem Pole.  Fixed the glare, and made the color more dramatic.

Lastly, a photo from just outside the school, with some extreme editing into both light and shadow.