Back to Black

Today was a really good opportunity to go out and take a walk over some previously unexplored hills. I took my 85mm lens with me in hopes of finding subject matter for my Photography assessment next week. Whilst out, I noticed that the weather kept on changing and being out on a higher ground, you can see just how much clouds block out the sun of areas below. I decided to try and capture some of this by purposely underexposing my shots. Of course, with the light constantly changing, I had different effects. Here are some of the better ones I had from today.

I really like how the sun is angled in this and the shadow of the Eildon's makes it look like the town is lit up.

Personally I find this boring, though it may appeal to someone (probably on Facebook)

I think this has to be my favourite of the day. I will agree with anybody that telephone poles in the country side are a bit of a distraction from nature, but I really like the way they fade off into the distance, giving additional depth to the area. I also like that the further I had walked, the hills had become somewhat hidden in sun glare.

While not the greatest of subject matters, I do like the leading lines here and the way the metal reflects by the sun, adding contrast to image. The detail in the wood also stands out due to the power of the sun too.

The reason I took this was simple; I liked the shadow cast by the tree. Quite a nice tone change between the light and darks.

Playing around with depth of literally a field. For me, I liked the idea that by having the distance out of focus, it almost blended the landscape into one and made it look semi continuous. I think maybe I should have edited out the black blob middle right however, I find it a tad distracting.

This tree on its own really stood out to me. It was old, crooked and branching off all over the place. It reminded me of the White Tree of Gondor from Lord of the Rings, overlooking the land. The hill behind myself helped provide even more shadow, so it stood out quite prominently against the town back drop.

Going Elemental

In my Visual Communications class, one of our current projects is to design 4 book covers with Tornado, Earthquake, Volcano and Flood as the themes. They are allowed to be any colour you wish, the only stipulation is that they cannot be representational. It was harder than expected to break away from doing something typical, but during the class discussion, my designs were well received and considered effective. 

These were made in Adobe Illustrator and then further edited in Adobe Photoshop. Initial designs and ideas were in a sketchbook. I tried to keep my ideas within a simple consistent theme, using only basic shape, line and colour to portray each disaster.

Can you guess which is which without looking at the file name?

It finally arrived!

After almost a year of waiting, Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo finally made it into my hands! This isn't on the shelves yet but as I provided work for the book, I was able to get one of the first factory prints from the USA. Here are some shots of the book itself!

Photography!

One of my current classes for Visual Communications is Photography and we have been asked to choose a theme in which to expand on. Last year in Art & Design, I got quite into detail during the Location Photography unit and wanted to expand on it further, so for this project I'm hoping to delve back into detail, coupled with nature. It might sound boring, but nature is pretty much anything that isn't man made, which leaves the options wide open...I just need to think of the ideas.

Yesterday we had an exercise where we went down to the river as a class to take photos. This didn't go too well for me because I was completely uncomfortable using a bridge camera. Today was different however and with my own camera in hand, I did a much better job and came back with some pretty nice images. A few didn't really fit my theme but it was good practice regardless as I haven't had much opportunity since being back at college to do any photography.

A few of these were purposely set up. I did get a little bit messy, especially when pulling the berries from the tree (a few exploded on me *sob*) I did edit these in class but I feel that they are better now that I got a chance to work on them at home. I believe they have a more gloomy autumn feel now that I re-approached them.

This final image I liked because of the relation between the colour of the trees and the colour of the car. Usually green is an overpowering colour in photography, but I feel in this instance it almost sets the mood.