Meet Betty Wisse. She decided that she wants to hone her photography craft in 2010. To achieve that goal she has set out to take one photo per day. She joined the Project 365 group on Flickr to get encouragement and inspiration from other members with the same goal. Believe it or not, as of today there are 16,436 members in the group!
The photo above was taken on Day 1. Betty writes, “it is a photo of a plastic snowflake, which I zoomed out on, added a slightly out of focus one on top, then added some texture and vignetting. Once I was done I decided to play with hue/saturation because it was a golden color and thought blue would be more appropriate for a snowflake.”
And look at what she took on Day 14!
And this was one of her first attempts with textures in Photoshop. I’d call it a success!
On Day 18 Betty decided to learn a little more about type and textures in Photoshop.
She writes, “I added a photo I took this afternoon of a horse statue in my house and worked around that.
I have to admit I did get lost in the layers, but also learned a lot.”
Betty said that she is going to try HDR this week. For those unfamiliar with HDR, as I was a mere six months ago, it enables you to achieve beautiful detail in both the highlights and shadows of your photos (with a lot of help from editing software). I’m sure someone will correct me if I explain this incorrectly. But here’s the gist of it.
You know when you take a portrait outside on a sunny day and you either lose the details in the subjects face, or you lose the details in the sky? This is because the camera has a limited dynamic range. With HDR, you expose one shot for the shadows (blowing out the sky), one for the highlights (making the subject a silhouette), and one in between. Photoshop (or the software of your choice) will then combine the 3 photos, giving you details in most regions of your photo.
I have not tried it yet, but I’d love to see some examples from some of you who have successfully achieved the HDR look. It’s used extensively in real estate photography to take interior photos without having everything look drab.
Here’s the gorgeous photo Betty is going to try with HDR:
We’ll check back in with Betty periodically to see how she is doing on her photographic adventure. If you have a goal you’d like to share with the group, please email a link to me at blog@my-photo-video.com. Make sure it is a measurable goal that can be documented with your photos and video. For details on this challenge check out the goal setting post.
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