Apparently, every spring on the Medicine Hat College Campus these mushrooms appear seemingly overnight. They disappear just as quickly. After just receiveing instruction on how to create bokeh in photography class I was climbing into my car and I noticed these. I wasn’t going to photograph them at that moment, but something in me said to do it right then and there. So I grabbed my camera and got down on the ground and photographed these mushrooms from various angles, focus and zoom. I chose these as my top three not just because of the bokeh but also because of the detail of the mushroom. The colors ended up being quite vivid and the basic structure of the mushroom is well seen allowing the viewer an up-close and personal look.
The challenge behind this next set of photographs was to create a sense of atmosphere and a feeling. Initially, I struggled with this as I hadn’t found the right situation. I did what I usually do when I hit a block and that’s to just take my camera down to the park and go for a walk. I decided to wander off the beaten path, not something I usually do, and that’s how I came across these beauties. Using my macro lens (my favorite lens) I got down in the cold and snapped several close-ups of different microscopic environments. Later, I further added to the natural, cold atmosphere of the photograph by decreasing the temperature in Adobe’s Camera Raw filter.
These two pieces were about creating a high key (bright) photograph. This was also a challangeing assignement and I actually shot several different times to achieve the look that I wanted. This image came from another project I was working on at the time. I had bought several different bouquets of flowers and was photographing them, against the snow, thinking of photoshoping them into a third image. After photographing the flowers, I realized that it would be better suited for my high key photo so I used it for that instead.
The second image is a close up of a Christmas decoration that I found laying on a shelf at work. I thought the blue piece of glitter amongst the white was interesting.
Similar to the previous photograph project, this one was about capturing a low key image. I originally thought of Finlay Bridge, an interesting location in my town. While I was attempting to photograph in my car while driving across said bridge (not a recommended course of action) I heard a train whistle. Being familiar with the layout of the area I thought of a spot where I could photograph the train as it went underneath a walkway. What I didn’t know at the time was that at night, the train goes back and forth several different times on the track, to load cars. I tripped running up the stairs as I was in a rush to get to the top of the walkway and I had a wonderful bruise for the next week as evidence. I snapped the shots of the train from that bridge. When I showed it in class to my peers one comment I recieved was, “How did you manage to get on top of the train!” I told him it was my secret.
The other images in this set are photos taken trying to create that "low key" atmosphere that my instructor was pushing us for.
