Digital Diary

This image was a little too out of focus to use but I still liked the concept of a reflection of a reflection.










I used this image in the 12 i picked but I almost prefer how it looked in color so I thought I'd add it in here just to show how the vibrant the colors of the coy fish were and how the blue sky and clouds fade into the water.








I could not decide between this image and the other one because they both appeared to be something special to me but the reflection in the other image appeared to have more of a distinction from the sand. .
















These are three of the many images from the night of the thunder storm that I absolutely loved and had to include. The way the moonlight reflected off the water and the clouds lit up in the middle of the night absolutely amazed me.









This image along with others from this day had such a good reflection but it was overexposed. I had adjusted the exposure levels to make this image better but I still decided not to use it.



































the car window in this picture was very dirty and I just did not like the overall composition of it.

Rationale

For this project, I used a Nikon D-70 that I had rented out from class for a couple weekends along with a tripod, and my nifty little point and shoot Nikon Coolpix camera when I found inspiration for my project but did not have anything better with me. The first weekend I had rented out the camera, I was not sure what I wanted to do my project on but I knew that that weekend was going to be the perfect weekend to start because I was going to my friend’s house that is in Kempsey and would be seeing tons of new and beautiful places. Wanting to capture everything I saw, I just started taking pictures of everything that looked interesting to me. I tried to view things from different angles and perspectives that I might not have looked at without a camera in my hands. For some reason I realized that I seemed to be taking a lot of pictures of things with their reflections in the shot. That was when I decided that my project would have a theme of reflections.

The area around Kemspey had so many bodies of water everywhere and I found myself coming home with hundreds of pictures! The way the sunlight reflected off the water during a sunset or the moonlight during a lightning storm amazed me. I had never seen such miraculous things before. Playing around with the exposure on the camera by lengthening the shutter speed to multiple seconds long while using a tripod allowed me to take some of the most amazing pictures I had ever taken. I was able to capture a bolt of lightning hitting the horizon of the ocean. The use of a lengthened shutter speed and a tripod, in the middle of a thunderstorm, on a night with a full moon allowed me to capture some stunning sights that I was once did not have the knowledge or technology to capture. Unfortunately, these types of pictures did not seem to fit in with the rest of my pictures, but I was still able to use them to show friends and family my new found hobby.

I think my overall theme of reflections is not a complicated one, but it was a theme that made me pay more attention to my surroundings. Not planning where I wanted to go, but rather, just driving around until something popped out at me made the two weekends I went to take pictures very spontaneous. I would consider myself a pretty observant person, however, having to focus my eyes on finding particular things made me feel like a true photographer. I was not just snapping pictures of everything I saw, but instead looking for glassy bodies of water, light hitting a window, and silhouettes in sunglasses and then using my new knowledge of shutter speed and aperture to aid in the quality of the pictures when possible.

After traveling up and down the coast for multiple days, I found myself surrounded by numerous images and moments waiting to be captured and shared with the world. As an international student, I am constantly amazed at the new beauty that is just waiting for me to explore here in Australia. The project gave me an excuse to find it, capture it, and share it. Especially in the area I find myself living in New South Whales, the lushness of the forests and colors in the sky and on the earth never cease to amaze me.

Through Photoshop, I was able to make the reflections I had captured stand out even more by using the quick selection tool and then, getting it even more precise by using the paintbrush tool, and editing it in quick mask mode. Then, by selecting the rest of the image and the black and while option, I was able to leave only the reflected object and reflection in color. I like how this turned out in most pictures because it really made what I wanted the pictures to be about stand out from the rest of the image. However, there were pictures that did not turn out as I would have hoped they would have. Images that were mostly a black and white color did not have any change in addition to sunsets because they took up the entire picture anyways which leaves no room for a black and white filter. These pictures can be seen in the outtakes and digital diary along with other images that were captured but I decided not to use.

The final touches were tedious but, in the end, I believe it was worth it. The weeks of preparation and taking pictures, continuing on into the Photoshop editing, all came together to show the little things that are overlooked as well as some natural beauty we are surrounded by in this world.