Final - Part 2

"Majesty"
Add caption1/4000  f1.8  ISO100  35mm.
I love clouds.  I took this picture last week before the big storms rolled through.  You know, the ones we didn't get?  This sky was amazing that night. I really liked the way it looked after I pulled the blue out of the sky through the gaps in the clouds.  Where the sun is shining through is a lot blown out, and because I was basically shooting right into it, I just couldn't quite get it to quiet.

"Solitude"
1/1250  F1.8  ISO200  35Mmm.
I took this picture of my daughter while we were walking around town one night.  (Our town has exactly one square block of downtown.) I loved the way she paused to look inside all the storefronts as we pass by them.  She just looks so wistful, and deep in thought. When I was working on these images I was looking for one where I could pull her reflection out.  I adjusted the red in the brick, and the blue in her dress.  I also desaturated the yellows, and that made the background images in the reflection fade away, to highlight her more. 

"Anger"
1/250  F5.6  ISO400  280MM.
Well, I'm a kind of literal person.  I took this picture of my nephew, Charlie, about a week ago, and kept going back to it.  I guess you can call it a snapshot, but these are the kind of portraits I hang in my house.  Smiling, happy kids are boring.  I love taking pictures of tantrums.  There are about 50 images in this set.  He was fighting with his twin over a big magnet on a stick (the kind you use to find nails you dropped in the grass, etc.)  I adjusted the exposure and contrast, this was taken right after sunset.  Then, I desaturated the green of the grass a little bit, so the image looked a little more solemn.  

"mono no aware"
1/4000  f4.5  ISO100  35mm
This was my attempt at mono no aware. Usually I intentionally underexpose so that I have more to work with as I am generally trying to lighten images.   For this one, I liked the darker background and I used a mask layer to lighten the flower. I think I lightened the flower a little too much and ended up blowing it out,  but I spent a LOT of time and ended up with many versions of this same image.  This is the one the best expressed the solitude I wanted to convey. 

"Justice"
1/4000  f4.0  ISO100  18mm.
The reason I picked this image for my final portfolio was two-fold.  I  love old cars and what says justice better than a police car? (I am a kind of literal person, after all.)  This is one of the automobiles from the Andy Griffith Show - parked in front of where else?  The Mayberry Cafe in Danville.  I took a lot of pictures of this car, but it wasn't parked in it's customary spot on main street. Without having to photoshop out a lot of detritus, I settled on this image of just the bumper.  After I converted it to black and white, I adjusted the blues and greens out of the image, and super bumped up the contrast to make the chrome pop.  I love the old neon sign in the background.