Assignment 1: YELLOW
Plan:
My plan for this assignment was to focus on the color yellow in nature by taking photos of yellow trees with the sun rays behind them
My Photos:
For this shoot I waited for the sun to go down/ come up. Once the sun was just barely peeking past the mountains and hills I went out to take photos. I did it at this time to get a really distinct yellow glow from the sun. The sun also lined up very well with the trees during this time so I didn't have to use a more upper looking angel to capture the glow of the sun behind the leaves.
Edits:
To edit my photos I first opened them in lightroom to adjust the light of the photos to create more contrast between the yellow of the sun and the leaves between what was behind the trees, the white trunks, and the few green and brown leaves. I then added darkened/ lightened corners which worked really well with the photos that had darkened areas with the backlit from the sun and highlights on the leaves and tree trunks. Once I decided on the photo that I wanted to print I opened in photoshop (with the Lr edits) then added a lens flare onto the sun area which brightened the photo a bit more than I wanted so I went into levels to bring out a bit more dark areas. This caused the excessive brightness to go down and created more contrast in the photo between the yellow and the dark areas.
Printed Photo:
This is the digital photo that I printed and matted. I really like how the sun rays shine in between the trees and bring out the yellow in the other leaves by making them almost glow. One reason why this photo really stood out to me was because of the clear contrast between the highlighted yellow leaves and shadowed leaves and branches. This contrast helps the viewer to see mainly two colors that go well together and help the photo stand out. The darkened edges in this photo worked really well because they began to blend in with the rest of the shadowed areas. With the darkened edges, it brought more attention to the the sun and leaves and their color yellow, which I was really wanted to emphasize and show. The yellow glow from the leaves and rays from the sun help to create a very happy and serene setting. The colors and the mood also bring attention to the beauty of fall through its color, disregarding the 'death' part of it by shadowing out the dying leaves and brown background. This can help show the idea that light will always overcome darkness wether that be real light like the sun, or the beauty of nature overcoming the dying thoughts of fall. I think that this photo was very successful in meeting my plan because the only color that is seen in the photo is the color yellow which was the only color that I wanted to capture.