Vodcast: Capture the Moment

Using iMovie, I created a two minute video that shows a variety of my photographs that have been taken over the past couple of months. Throughout the video, I use transitions, titles, and the Ken Burns effect. The video uses background music from the artist Kate Voegele with the song "Manhattan From the Sky." The video is titled "Capture the Moment". I edited, produced, and directed the movie myself, exported it as a Quicktime file, and then uploaded the video onto YouTube and posted the video onto my blog. You can view the video below:

Indesign Brochure

Photography opens a lot of doors. With a degree or experience in photography, enthusiasts can choose from a long list of careers in which their talents will come to use. Because of this, I created a double-side brochure that contains six different photography careers, with a small paragraph about each. This brochure was created in Adobe's Indesign program. It can be folded into thirds as a brochure and distributed. In addition to the explanation paragraphs, each type of photography has an example photo. After the project was completed, the brochure was exported as a PDF file. Click on the link below to view the PDF brochure that I created! Once on the Box.net sight, you download my brochure. After viewing, make sure to press the back button to return to my blog so you can explore the rest of my online portfolio!
http://www.box.net/shared/8p0m2i9g45

Website

Focused on the topic of photography, I created a five page website using Adobe Dreamweaver. This website covers four different topics of photography. It provides pages dedicated to the history of photography, a gallery of famous photographs, careers in photography, and additional resources to explore. Several of the photographs on the site were taken by me, and the ones that were not, are followed by a citation. Once I had finished formatting the project in Dreamweaver, I uploaded it to the class web page using Filezilla. The website contains links to many of my other projects, including my Indesign brochure and this blog. Also, there are several hyper linked links that take the viewer to sites that will further advance their knowledge and curiosity about photography. Take a look at my website by clicking HERE or following the link below! After viewing all pages of the website, there is a link on the "Additional Resources" page that has a green highlighted link that will bring you back to my blog.
http://jmcnewmedia.com/jcollins/

Photoshop

One of the first projects of the season was created using Adobe Photoshop. I took a personal photograph and then condensed it in size, and exported it for both Indesign and for the web. Then in addition, I used a filter to give the third photo a more creative and artistic look. The filter that I used was called "Smudge-Stick" and is represented in the bottom photo. The original photograph was taken in 2006 in Kenya, Africa, when I traveled there for a volunteer opportunity. The first photograph in this sequence is the one that was edited for Indesign, the second is for the web, and the third (as mentioned previously) was created using a filter and exported for the web.

Team Wiki

As a course requirement, three of my classmates and I created a Wikipedia page. This project is the only part of my portfolio that is not dedicated to photography. Instead, it discusses President Obama's administration. The page covers the many topics of the Presidential administration, from how people become appointed to the administration to the different members of the administration. It also discusses the plans the Obama has for different parts of our economy and country welfare. Each of the four members of this Wikipedia contributed equally to this project, by doing approximately four posts each. Each post contains a signature at the end that ties the post to a certain member. The following four posts were created by me:

• The Home Page
• What IS the Obama Administration?
• How Members Become Appointed to the Presidential Administration
• Barack Obama's Plans for Energy and the Environment

Click HERE or follow the link listed below to view the Wikipedia page:
http://barackobamaadministration.wikispaces.com/
After exploring the wikipedia page, you can either press the back button to continue viewing my blog or simply exit the internet. The Wikipedia page does not have a link to this blog and that is why I saved it for the last posting of my electronic portfolio.

Vignetting

Vignetting is a technique in photography that is used primarily to add depth and creativity to a subject. It requires reducing the brightness and saturation on the outer edges of the photograph instead of in the center. The word vignette originally referred to a decorative border in a book. Vignetting is usually unintended and often undesired, but is sometimes purposely introduced for a creative effect. A photographer can specifically choose a lens in which to produce vignetting. Special filters and post-processing procedures can also create this effect. In addition, in the area of digital photography, some photo editing programs have the availability of a vignetting tool that can be added after the photograph has been taken and imported.

There are four types of vignetting: mechanical, optical, natural, and pixel. The first, mechanical vignetting, occurs when light beams from an object is partially blocked by external objects such as thick or stacked filters. The darkening can either be gradual or abrupt, depending on the aperture.
Optical vignetting is cause by the physical dimensions of multiple element lens. Rear elements are shaded by elements in front of them which reduces the effective lens opening for off axis light. The result is a gradual decrease in the light intensity. This effect is sensitive to aperture.
Natural Vignetting is unlike the two previous types. It is not due to the blocking of light rays. The falloff is approximated the angle at which the light hits the film or sensor. It is affected by the cosine of the angle of the light.
The last kind of vignetting, Pixel, only affect digital cameras and is cause by the angle dependence of the digital sensors. Most digital cameras use built in image processing to compensate for optical this vignetting when converting raw sensor data to standard image formats, such as JPEG or TIFF.
Whether you mean to have vignetting in your photograph or it comes as a mistake, this technique can draw the viewer to the center of the photograph and can add interest to an otherwise dull photograph.

Photographic Printing

Photographic printing is the process of producing a final image for viewing on paper, using chemically sensitized paper. The paper is exposed to either a negative, a transparency or slide, or a digital image file.
Photographs can be printed on color or black and white paper. Printing on black and white paper consists of four major steps, performed in a dark room or with a printing machine:
1. The image is exposed onto the paper using a contact printer or enlarger.
2. Processing of the latent image using the following chemical process:

• Development of the exposed image reduces the silver halide in the latent image to metallic silver;
• Stopping development by neutralising, diluting or removing the developing chemicals;
• Fixing the image by dissolving undeveloped silver halide from the light-sensitive emulsion:
• Washing thoroughly to remove processing chemicals protects the finished print from fading and deterioration

3. After fixing, the photograph is cleansed using a hypo clearing agent to remove any fixer that could damage the print.

4. Prints are then chemically toned or hand colored after processing.Printing on colored paper requires the use of processing with certain propriety chemicals. The two main processes are RA-4, which is used for printing color negatives, and lifochrome, which is for printing color transparencies.

RA-4 prints are color negatives printed on RA-4 paper and produce a type-c print. They consist of three emulsion layers, each sensitive to red, green, and blue light. During processing, couplers produce cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes, to represent the true colors of the subject. The combination of all of these colors is what give a photograph its final look.
Lifochrome prints use a specialized Lifochrome paper that use the dye destruction process to produce prints from positive transparencies. The color dyes are induced onto the paper and are bleached during processing.
Aside from printing an image in a dark room using chemicals, photographers can also print photographers from a digital computer file. The artist can view his or her photographs on the computer and edit them before they decide whether or not to print them. They can then be printed using Ink jet printers or specialized photo printers. Image files can also be taken in to labs so that professionals can develop your images for you.