Special Lighting Improvement

Sometimes I'll take a really good picture of something(say a flower or a bug) and I'll find that it could look a lot better with just a touch of improvement lighting. Let me show you what I mean.

Take this flower for example.

It's an ok picture to start out with(the top), but I think a bit of special lighting could really make it stand out. Add some flashlight effect to it and we get the picture on the bottom. The special lighting effect draws the eye towards the actual flower, which is the main subject of the photo. It also makes the picture appear a lot more dramatic, which I love.

Another example where lighting comes in handy is this...

BIG difference in these 2 photos! The one on the top is slightly washed out and the shadows don't really look all that great. I added some special lighting, and now it looks a lot more like it did in person. The shadows look great and the colors are a lot more summer-y.

The last special lighting improvement I want to show is this one...

This picture wasn't bad to start out with. Actually, I almost left it how it was, but then decided that I really wanted to draw attention to the way the sun was shining. Not only did I enhance the light, but I also got rid of the super distracting wire that was in the top right corner of the original picture.

The main point I'm trying to get across is that before you declare your picture a piece of art, mess with the lighting a bit and see if you can't make it better.

iPod Pictures

I've made a few of the ever popular 'iPod" pictures, the ones where you make the subject completely black with a bright red, orange, blue, neon green (or any other color you fancy) background. The first one I ever made was iJump...

Even though this isn't very good, I'm still quite proud of it because I made it using just the simple "Paint" program. I took a picture of my on a see-saw and spent probably a good hour and a half working on it. I even made the iPod and my thumb around it myself. Not bad for a first time, I think.

Aha, now we have a better iPod picture! I tried another picture a few months later, this time of my cousin Brittany doing the splits. I used PhotoImpact's lasso tool to trace out Brittany's body, then I converted the traced image to an object. I dragged the object onto a new document, then used the paintbrush to turn it completely black. I then softened the edges(probably to about 2 or 3, I can't remember on this one) and added a funky light behind. I used Comic Sans MS font and typed out "iBrittany". Merge all objects and there you have it! These only take about 30 minutes to make, an hour if you really want it nice.

2 other iPod pictures I made are of myself and 2 of my best friends. The one of myself I realized that you don't have to make the subject be holding an iPod to make it an iPod picture.

The one of Tonya & Kirstin is kind of cool because you can tell some small detail even though you can't see their faces. For example, you can tell that Tonya's hair is long, Kirstin is looking up, Tonya has on jeans, Kirstin has on capris... In the original picture, Kirsitn is holding a water bottle, so that made it easy to place an iPod in the picture.

Another picture I made is a bit of an optical illusion...

Is it an old boot? Or is it Yoda & Obi Wan staring at each other? Really, if it didn't say "iForce" at the bottom, it would probably be hard to tell. I didn't even see the shape of a boot until I sent the picture to my brother, and he asked me why I sent him a picture of a green boot.

The latest iPod picture I made(which, by the way, I made today) is made up of 4 different pictures of my friend Kirstin playing soccer.

I did 4 different pictures separately and was half way done when I decided that leaving her jersey number in white would be a nice custom touch to the picture. I made the shin guards white as well, so as to make it very noticeable that she is a soccer player. The balls in the pictures I added in(except for the ball in the green picture). The orange one is my favorite, mainly because I love how you can see her number very clearly. This iPod picture is my first sports one. The Fall season of soccer will be starting up at the end of the month though, so I'll be able to get some up-to-date pictures and then I can have another go.