Trip to Godley Head

These are all the photos I took on our trip out to Godley Head. I had never been to Godley Head before and had a lot of fun going through the pitch black tunnels that only fit one person wide when you hunched over. I think this place has a lot of history and a story to tell through the photos. I am quite happy with the shots I got.

Panoramas at Sumner

Our class went to Sumner for a Photography field trip to take some interesting panoramas. My camera died so me and Anna worked together with her camera and took a few groups of photos which we then stitched together in Photoshop. Here are the panoramas we created with our photos.

Inside my car

Inside the phone box

Icecream shop

Cafe seating

Ideas for Photographs

I started to think up all the things that I didn't like about girls growing up too fast and came up with some more ideas as to what my photos could be about. Here are the things I came up with:

- wearing labels/fashions (ie. big glasses)
- getting their hair dyed
- wearing makeup
- having a cellphone, txting/pxting
- playing playstation
- having mp3's
- wearing high heels
- talking to boys
- watching too much tv, programmes that are too old for them
- listening to music that has swearing
- measuring their body/weighing themselves
- wearing bikinis
- going on the computer too much/webcams
- piercings/earrings
- wearing innapropriate clothing (ie. tops with words on them)
- taking the pill
- using credit cards/spending lots of money
- straightening their hair
- wearing fake tan
- drinking
- smoking
- shaving their legs
- fake nails/eyelashes
- having a large collection of shoes
- getting tattoos
- dieting
- reading magazines/books that are too old for them
- cutting out pictures of models
- plastic surgery
- catching the bus alone
- walking the streets at night
- getting attached to boys/having relationships
- wearing lacy underwear

Some of these ideas work better than others. I think some have more to do with self-esteem than growing up too fast (such as plastic surgery or measuring their body) so I won't use these. My favourite ideas are smoking, labels, web cams, inappropriate clothing, talking to boys. I had a few other ideas of different ways I could approach my theme:

- dressing them as adults
- putting them in makeup but in innocent scenes (such as playing with dolls)
- make them look really innocent but put them in destructive scenes
- make them into barbie dolls
- dollhouse where each photo is a different room, could be shown as grown up

Out of these ideas, I quite like the dollhouse idea. My nana actually makes dollhouses that are lit up and everything, so this could be quite a fun idea to test out for the meantime. I don't like the idea of dressing them up as adults because I think it has been done before.

Studio Photography

Today in class we got the opportunity of going into the studio to practicing using the lights and learn a bit about how to adjust the camera settings to get different results. Me and Anna took photos of her horse toy. Here are just a few from the bunch I took. With these images we can now use mask layers and filters in Photoshop to combine the images by choosing the best sections from each photo.

Further Research into Children's Photography

The Ecstacy of Cecilia

Sophia's Mercurial Waters

Saint Barbie

Nurse Sue

Night Visit
Magic Circus

Little Boy Blue

Just the Girls

Jessica's Hope

Girl Eaten by a Tree

Clear Hearts Grey Flowers

Allegory of the Four Elements

These images are by Mark Ryden. I was shown his website in year one here at CPIT and fell in love with his work. I've always liked art that is a little bit twisted, and these certainly are. I love how these strange little kids are put into crazy environments. Although this is all illustration, I thought they were good to look at for inspiration. Creating these images as photographs would be really fun.

Airplane

Rose Garden

Walk

These photos were taken by Loretta Lux. I think these are quite relevant to what I am interested in doing for my theme. The girl in "Rose Garden" looks very grown up in the pose she is in and her clothing. It almost looks slightly inappropriate for her to be standing in such a way. The two girls in "Walk" also look quite grown up, and also a little possessed. I like the subtle colours used.

Three Witchery Sisters

Two Fluffy Kitties

Alice Descending

I have always been a fan of Jasmine Becket-Griffiths work. She paints creepy characters such as gothlings, fairies, fairy tale characters, mermaids and animals. I chose three images here that deal with children. I really like the first image, "The Three Witchery Sisters." I like the slightly evil look they have.

Researching these artists has made me start to think more indepth as to what I want my photos to eventually look like and say. I would like to create a slighlty twisted atmosphere to highlight my theme

An Email that was Sent to Me

The best natural exterior picture: 88.6% votes

The best natural interior picture: 90.7% votes

The best urban picture: 87.8% votes

The best "human" picture: 86.2% votes

The best "on the spot" picture: 86.3% votes

Special Catergory for best "human landscape": 87.7% votes

Special Category for best "animal world": 89.3% votes

Special Category for best "pets (dogs)": 83.6% votes

Special Category for best "pets (cats)": 82.7% votes

Special Category for best "urban painting": 88.9% votes

Special Category for best "body paints": 86.6% votes

Special Category for best "adventure sport": 80.9% votes

Special Category for best "transport": 86.7% votes

Special Category for best "public display (masculine)": 86.7% votes

Special Category for best "public display (feminine)": 86.7% votes

Special Category for best "public display (general)": 86.2% votes

The special mention: 86.7% votes

And finally the prize that leaves us with the last word: 92.6% votes

This email was sent to me by my sister. It is a look at the Top Internet Images for 2008. I thought that these images were really amazing. My favourites are the waterfall, the human landscape and this last image here of all the dolphins swimming with the wave. The animal ones are really cute too.

Brief Notes from Class

Photoshop: (for effects, colour correction, etc)
- Channel Mixer Filter, used to create better effects on photos
- Change photos from 8 bit to 16 bit. More colours in your images
- Masking: Using web colours makes it a bit easier.
White: Brings erased sections back, Black: Erases sections
- You can use gradients from white to black instead of masking to merge two images together softly. You can also use grey instead of white and black to slightly reveal images
- Use Levels to lighten, darken different layers

Mask Pro 4.0: (for easily eliminating sections of an image)
- Pen tool works like scissors
- Brush tool works with colours. Good for transparent images
- Keep/Drop eyedropper can be used for hair, transparent images
- Copy image in Photoshop and work on top image
- Open up the Mask Pro plug-in
- Highlight inside the outer edge you want to keep with the green marker, hold option alt to erase where you've highlighted or Apple Z which will go back in tiny steps if you make mistakes
- Use red Highlighter just along the outer edge of the area you want to erase, do not touch edge
- Options for Brush tool, tick "use tool decontamination"
- Use the brush tool to paint away the unwanted areas.
- Eyedropper: select colours you want to Keep (colours from inner areas) and areas you want to Drop (colours from outer areas)
- Save/Apply, will pop straight back into Photoshop
- Save as .tiff

Noise Ninja: (for removing noise from photos)
- Open file
- Profile Image
- Sharpening better than Photoshop

Lightroom: (for adjusting photos and easily exporting them in different ways)
- Never change shapening radius more than 1 pixel

Bridge: (for categorising images, adjusting them, etc)
- Metadata: use Keywords. You can go to Edit, Find and locate specific images (ie. sky images)
- RAW Files: a separate file is created which has all the edits you've made to the original, the original isn't effected
- You can open any file in RAW in Bridge or save as RAW in Photoshop