Web Site Critique

For this assignment I found I website I really liked and one I was not crazy about. A site I am crazy about is the NBCOlympics.com site for the 2010 Winter Olympics. This site has everything you want to see and navigates the way a website should. A site I did not like so much is the Pictures of the Year POYi.org. This site is sometimes hard to navigate and does not live up to a site representing award winning photography and multimedia projects.

NBC’s 2010 Winter Olympics site has everything to do with everything Olympics. The main navigation bar at the top of the page is on every linked page and includes tabs such as schedules, sports, tweets & blogs, mobile alerts and photos. This navigation bar never changes and is always visible while you are at the site. This makes navigation between different sports simple because each sport is has the same appearance scheme.

The main page displays photography and information on current events and past events. Preloaded rollovers for different stories let you navigate away from the main page to view a number of different stories or events. These stories are all contained under the main domain so the appearance of the nav bar never changes. The video tab enables viewers to watch live HD events or past events in their entirety. This is great when you do not have access to a TV and you really want to watch an event while sitting in class.

In addition to the great multimedia appearance and easy navigation the site also has a wealth of information on counties and their athletes. On the main page for each sport there are inside look stories into each sport along with portraits and information about athlete.

I don’t know if it is the magic of the Olympics that makes this site interesting or just the sites effectiveness to deliver interesting stories.

The University of Missouri’s POYi.org is run by staff and students and represents award winners of many different categories including news stories picture stories and multi-media projects. Although the POYi site does not reach nearly as many people as the Olympic site, it does represent an organization judging art and should reflect artistic intent on the site.

On the main page there is too much text and one large photo. At times the site is hard to navigate and make you commit to looking at all of the images to find something you are looking for. There is no clear way to navigate the site. When looking at a photo gallery each image is represented by red dots rather then thumbnails. Thumbnails and preloaded images of each competition should be represented visually on a podium 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd with awards of excellence underneath.

The POYi website should have a standardized nav bar and less red text links. I know POYi does not have a very large budget and has to be updated everyday but it could be made to be more visually appealing.

Color Correction

I decided to shoot my Color Correction assignment at Cold Stone Creamery on Elm and 10th. The point of the assignment was to use an orange or green gel to balance light inside of an area lit with incandescent or fluorescent light.

Aaron Vance Scoops ice cream for a 1/2 pan to a 1/4 pan between rushes. They use smaller pans because of all the seasonal flavors they offer.

I really like to shoot people especially with a strobe. Unfortunately the strobe I use takes 30 seconds to recycle. It is really irritating to try and take a picture of someone when your equipment is holding you back.

This photo was taken using bounce flash off the wall in front of him. The exposure I used was 1/180 @ f2.8.

Painting with light.

For the painting with light assignment we were assigned to groups by our instructor and worked together to make some neat shots. The group consisted of Erin Hendry Christina Manolis and Lillian Kelly.

After being run over and chopped up by a tractor one stormy night in 1832, the young girl's ghost returns every dark and stormy night to seek her revenge on anyone who crosses her path. Many people have ventured out to this farm to see if the story is really true. Nobody has ever heard from any of them again.-Erin Hendry

My group member Erin Hendry used this anecdote for her blog so I decided to use it for mine as well. Erin also played our ghost.

When we first arrived on the scene we saw this old tractor and we knew that we had to incorporate it into our shot. First we experimented using flashlights and strobes to illuminate the scene. As the night wore on we decided to forget flashlights and use only strobes. There is a total of 8 strobe flashes that took 66 seconds to make. We used f8 to keep the foreground and background in focus as much as possible.

This is another shot we made using the strobes. I like this shot because it is simple and the lighting is nice. I dislike this shot because their is no subject and it is kind of boring. A good example of lighting though.

We wanted to keep it scary for Halloween so here is another shot we tried to pull off. Erin is again our ghost.

We could not find a lighting set up or angle that we all agreed on so we decided to move on after making a few shots.

This is an original shot out of the camera but I did not like the composition. It is too loose. I decided to use photoshop to move the elements closer together.

I changed the composition but I am still not satisfied with the shot.

Single Flash

It is tuff to find subjects to experiment on with a bright flash in their face so I chose a statue of a person on the MU campus.

I used the flash to fill the dark side of this statue. I made this shot in the late day and the sun was already setting behind the subject. I used the flash to balance and fill then dark side.

I shot this at 1/180 @ 4.5.

Metal and Glass

Metal
For this assignment we were assigned a partner from class to grip for the other person. Jessica Barnet and I were paired together to see what we could come up with. Unfortunately I came down with a severe case of swine flu and shot my portion of the shoot before it became too serious. About a week later I was feeling good enough to make it to the studio and contribute to Jessica's efforts.

From the begging in knew I wanted to do something with cooking and food. I had some

pork fillets I would put on a wood cutting board but I thought it was going to neglect metal as the subject so decided to keep it simple and go with the peppers and parsley.

I started by laying out a black piece of 1/8in black plexi glass on a table. The black plexi acts just like a piece of metal or glass, it will reflect the surroundings in this case mostly the background. I lit the bowl all by itself until I found an exposure and lighting set up that worked. I shot this at 1/250 @ f9.5. When I was satisfied with the composition I added the food elements and spritzed the outside of the strainer to give it a wet appearance. I added the orange gel at the last minute when I was being kicked out of the studio.

Glass

My partner and I worked on this shot together when I was still a little sick from swine flu. We tried many different

techniques until we decided to go with all wood. There was an old wooden desk in the studio and a wooden door we used for the background. We used a yellow and orange mixed gel on the background a front fill spotlight bounced off a white piece of plexi for the foreground and a snood on the glass. I would have liked to have seen more fire in the glass but when we looked at it on the LCD it looked o.k. We also used fake ice and spritzed the glass to make them look cold.

In Photoshop I shortened the bottle because we should have used a 1/5 but all we had was a handle. I added the text just to show what this could look like in an ad.

Classmate Video Project

I interviewed Katie Wood for my Classmate video project. It went well but neither one of us like to be in front of the camera.

Classmate Studio Shoot

I had a lot of fun doing this assignment. Its nice to get into the studio and make some pictures every once and a while. I do wish we had some newer power packs but the ones we are using work just fine. The studio has a wide selection of lights, diffusers, gels, light stands and backdrops.

Classmate portrait-Katie Wood is a wedding photographer who likes to take pictures with her Fisheye firm camera. For this shot I only used one light. I used a large soft box and a couple reflectors to get the soft lighting.

I have been working with Katie for a while now. We were assigned together for the classmate interview where we use video to interview a classmate and the final project as well.

We decided to shoot her in the wedding dress and holding the camera because she used to work for a wedding photographer.

Classmate portrait-Katie Wood is a wedding photographer who likes to take pictures with her fisheye film camera. This shot was composed using multiple lights. I used a soft box to light the face with a reflector on the opposite side. I used a hair light with a snood behind her and also help light the dark side of her face. Then I used two background lights to make it high key.