Promo piece and other random things.

Well it's begun that time of year where I no longer shoot jpeg. I know this doesn't mean much to you but what it does mean that it is harder to update my blog. I have to change the file format to put it up on my blog. So what that means? I wont have as organized blogs as I once had. I will still post and will still be putting pictures up but the pictures will not necessarily be in week order.

So this week? It's Monday so nothing to post. Just kidding. The things I will be posting are from the last two weeks. I will explain each picture in the caption cause honestly I don't remember which ones I have to put up this week. One that I do remember is my promotional piece. We were given an assignment in our design class to design a self promotional piece. I am pretty darn proud of it for it being my first design piece. You have to understand that this piece was all made by me. There was no template that I put my image and name in. The piece started as a plain white 6 in. x 9in. file. Everything on it was thought out and placed there by me. It was a little nerve racking trying to pick your best image. I find it extremely hard to like your own work. It's a vicious process. You take a picture. You stare at it so long trying to figure out what to do to it. You hate the picture. You finally get it tweaked to where you love it. You turn it in feeling very happy. You get the grade back on it and the comments and suddenly the picture isn't as good as you remembered. So this means that in finding a picture for my promo piece it was hard finding one that you wanted to call your best and knowing all the things wrong with it. I have to constantly remind myself that yes the instructors know the flaws and I know the flaws but the general public has no earthly clue what is going on with the picture technically. I have to remind myself that after Hallmark I will be serving the public not the instructors of Hallmark Institute of Photography. So with all that being said, as of now before my grades come back I like my promo piece and I like the image on it despite knowing the flaws.

In other news. Tomorrow my great boyfriend comes up to see me and we head of to NYC. I have missed him so much. I am so excited that he is coming up and that we get to go see the Macy's parade but at the same time I miss my family and wish I were going home for Thanksgiving. I am so ready and excited for Christmas. Not just for the break from school but more importantly to see everyone back home. I will most definitely take pictures while in NYC and I have scheduled my first non Hallmark photo shoot with a non Hallmarker. I will be taking pictures of Cameron on Saturday. (I'm not sure this counts though?) I will post those wonderful works of art that I will create of him too.

 So here are the images from the past couple weeks

My self promotional piece

We had to create a catalog shot for a product of our choice

Create a picture using shape as part of your composition. (The colored squares are pieces of paper and the bows are hair clips)

Create a portrait in the studio using whatever method you wanted to do.

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Phase 1 Final Complete!

So I have been so busy these past two weeks. I finally got my phase 1 final done. There hasn't been much going on since my last post. I have been working on my final and other school assignments.
Today we were introduced to the medium format cameras. In the commercial studio we are going to start using the cameras that you may think of as old school. They are cameras that you put the cloth over your head and it's the accordion camera. These will be used from now until the end of school in the commercial studio. They help keep the product from being distorted by the 35 mm cameras we have been using, They are still digital and will still produce digital files. I am excited about using them but nervous at the same time. The image that we will see in the view finder will be upside down and backwards from what it actually is but I think it will be fun to learn. I am excited for our last full week before Thanksgiving when I get to see my boyfriend and go to NYC!
Here are the images from the final portfolio.

Shoot a product on location using a shallow depth of field

Shoot a natural portrait using the Home Depot lights outside of the studio

Shoot a picture of your hand

Shoot a self portrait that not only shows what you look like but also something about you

Shoot a picture using opposite color temperatures

Shoot a picture using the same color temperature

Shoot an environmental portrait while the subject breaks up lines

Shoot a portrait outside using subtractive and reflective lighting

Shoot a picture showing motion

Shoot a picture freezing motion

The day of 11/3/10

So today was a crazy day. I will just give the chronological account of the day. I had the first four hours off this morning so I got to sleep in a little. This was much needed after a night of like three hours of rollerblading to help some of my fellow classmates with part of their portfolio. I got up and met a girl at school to work on some pictures. I got some that I think will work but I probably will have to reshoot it. While taking those pictures I missed a call. I checked the message and it was a message from a local flower shop. He told me that he went to drop off some flowers and I was gone so he left them on the porch. I quickly ran home to find a gorgeous arrangement of flowers by my incredibly sweet boyfriend, Cameron. I then made my way back to school and hit a curb and busted my tire. I was stranded on the side of the road with a flat and the means to change it but didn't know how. If I would have know that information would help me I would have been more forceful in finding out how to change a flat but I know now. The man was very nice and actually kinda taught me how to change one if ever the occasion rises that I need to use it again. I got a new tire on and made it to school only fifteen minutes late but I called ahead so I am all good.  Luckily again I got done with school at three so I had time to get to the tire shop and got a new one put on in less than an hour. A crazy day in the midst of a crazy week but luckily I have beautiful flowers to make my day brighter.

Phase I Portfolio update: I think I have two of my shots already. If I can't get them to work I might have to reshoot them but I really don't have time to reshoot. I have plans made and I have a lot of work to do this weekend.

Bad picture but you can see the nice hole in my tire

My pretty flowers

I played around and took pictures with my rings and to this my room mate Carli's response was, "You are so going to be a wedding photographer"

My set up in my kitchen that I used to shoot my product shot. The reflector is being held up by string hung from the ceiling fan. The lamp was on my clothes drying rack. The lamp actually fell at one point and hit me on top of the head.

Crazy times and even more crazy ahead!

Whew what a week and some crazy times ahead! Since my last post I went to NYC! I am not calling it my first trip to NYC thought, that will be in Thanksgiving with Cameron. We drove into the city and went to the Photo Plus Expo and then my group walked like four blocks to a diner to eat then back to the expo. The bus didn't even go through any of the main part of the city. So my first trip will have to wait like three more weeks. While at the expo I got a lot of ideas for when I actually have my own business and ways to promote my self. I had a blast and can't wait till I have my own business.

So today. Man a big day! We talked about strobes (in case you don't know that's flash). I am excited but nervous about using the strobes. It can and will add a whole new dimension to your pictures and make you more professional. Today was also a big day because we were handed our Phase I final portfolio assignment. It's a really huge assignment. It is worth $12,000 Hallmark dollars (Not real money and not refundable in any way, they grade in money), to put that in perspective all of my assignments up until now have been worth between $500-$1,000. This is a big part of my grade! I am nervous but excited about it. I have a lot of ideas but I also know I have a busy two weeks ahead of me. We have ten images to create. The range in difficulty between taking a picture of your hand to a self portrait to freezing and showing motion. So here goes my first big assignment. We have been up until now handing in digital files. This one we have to hand in digital files and print the files. Printing may sound easy but it isn't. It will become easy after I do it more. The difficult part is the color you see and the picture you see on the screen is not the way it prints. The monitor and paper have different qualities so it may look good on the computer but that is not how it will print.

Here are some of the pictures from this week this is not all of them just some of the best ones.

Models at the Nikon booth in photo Plus

Outside the Photo Plus Expo

Out of the bus while driving threw NYC

A cool truck in the street of NYC

A pretty building in NYC

A picture I turned in for an image shot in daytime

The last picture in a series I shot for at night time 

Week 6 and part of 7!

Oops I kinda forget..ran out of time..and didn't post this weekend. I am so terribly sorry. I am starting to get busy and I have a lot of homework but tonight is a work night. I have four assignments due Monday. :/ Me and Carli were planning on staying in NYC Friday night cause we will be there already with school. After a while of arguing with myself I decided that spending money on NYC was just something that I could not do right now. So we will be taking a bus to NYC and arriving at 10:30 am and leaving back for Hallmark at 3 pm. So it's not a lot of time in NYC and I will be spending all that time probably in The Photo Plus Expo. I will get a real trip back in November which I am so beyond excited for, just need to get through these next four weeks. Which seems short and easy but it's not as easy as it sounds lol. The October graduates are getting ready for graduation on Thursday and they have the huge tent set up behind the Administration building and it's making me excited for June. We talked in record keeping today about the importance of keeping good records on where your money is going and how to do that. It is so very overwhelming and a lot of information but I think with some help (From my organized mother :) ) I will be ok in that department. I kinda enjoy the organization part just a tad.
Well onto what we have learned the past week and half due to the world of photography. Last week we talked about colors and their temperature. An example is like your reds, oranges, and yellows are warm colors. Then blues, and purples are considered cool colors. We had a field trip and we had to take four different pictures. We had to take pictures with the persons clothing color and the background color. They were as follows: warm on cool, cool on warm, warm on warm and cool on cool. That was my pictures from last week. I am including a picture I have already taken this week cause simply I think it is way too awesome not to share. This might be my favorite image so far. We learned how to make colored shadows. I have two more assignments to shoot this week so I will have an official week 7 post.
 Finally, There are going to be some images that were not for school but as I was leaving a friends house and looked in the sky and I saw a double full rainbow! Gorgeous! So there are those images

Cool on warm 

Warm on warm

Warm on cool

Cool on cool

Beautiful rainbow

Look to the left of the bright rainbow you can see the second rainbow

The full rainbow and you can see the second up on top of it faintly

My awesome shadow picture

Week 5!

Sorry with getting this up later but I didn't finish one of my assignments till this afternoon. I'm not procrastinating I have just been waiting for sunlight. Ya it kinda stinks when your assignments need sunlight, but welcome to the world of photography. This week we were talking about light again. We went over last weeks assignments on light you find (Which was the part I needed sunlight for) and we talked about light you make.We got to be in the portrait studio for four hours and the commercial studio for four hours. I took pictures of a box of Disney princess fruit snacks and a tube of bread crumbs. I am not going to post these simply cause it was a box and tube. We then got to work in the portrait studio lighting a model a specific way. I am very pleased to announce that the lights we used were from....Home Depot! Yes I will be buying part of my light set someday from Home Depot. (I bet Lowes has them too so I could make it a date ;) lol mom) Then we had a shoot for autumn in New England. This was for a class in stock photography so we had to shoot as if for stock photography. Me and my roommate carved pumpkins for our assignment that we had for the stock photography. It has been so long since I have carved pumpkins but it was so much fun! Then I went out on my own time today and went to Poet's Seat, Sugarloaf Mountain, and The Yankee candle Factory. Poet's Seat and Sugarloaf were to take pictures that were shooting down into a valley. The Yankee Candle visit was because it was five minutes away and I have always wanted to go there. The look out points were beautiful looking out over the red, yellow, and orange trees. The Yankee Candle Company was probably my favorite. I wasn't there to take pictures. I was just there to have fun and look at the amazing building all set up for Christmas! I have some pictures though from inside there. A discretion they were taken with my Iphone so don't down the photographer cause the quality is not as good. On the other hand you can applaud Apple for making a pretty good camera in a phone. So that has been my week. Fairly hectic but it;s good cause it means school is picking up. Here are some pictures from this week!

Another great use for the Iphone 4

One of my stock photography shots

My 'Crazy' stock photography shot. I like this one a lot.

In the portrait studio we had to make an 'edgy' image

I shot this one this afternoon for the light you find. This is a backlit portrait.

This is from the top of Poet's seat I believe

This is from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain

In the Yankee Candle Factory (snowmen for mom)

Again in the Yankee Candle Factory

A Random giant cow in the Yankee Candle Factory

the North pole line of village housing. There was so much in there I couldn't post nor take a picture of the sheer hugeness of the store.

One side of our pumpkin display on our porch

Carli's pumpkin with mine in the background

The pre-cut pumpkin