The first week of my internship has been really engaging. All the things that I have learned are a great addition to my photography skill set. The main focus for this past week has been lighting, composition, a bit on retouching and the alteration of those three through post processing. Being able to work with professional lighting equipment and at the same time being taught by a professional photographer is a really great experience and is super beneficial towards my knowledge of photography. These basic skills I have learned are going to be extremely helpful towards my role as the Photo Editor of the Animas Quill. I will also be able to apply these skills towards my own work as well as give other aspiring photographers some tips. One of the biggest challenges I faced this week were getting some of the photos the way I wanted them to As this week comes to a close I have been able to put a lot of thought into the specifics of my project and how I am going to present what I did and learned over the course of my internship. Next week I hope to expand upon altering the color in an image through the photographing and the post processing to make it as visually appealing as possible.
Throughout the morning Allison, Nicole and I spent time going through all the basic lighting patterns for lighting a face during a portrait photo. We used Nicole as the subject while Allison set up the lights for each photo and taught me what the basic patterns are and why different setups are used for different types of portraits. I photographed Nicole for each lighting pattern as well as the wide angle view of the studio to capture exactly how the lights were set up. These photos will be part of my final project to represent what I learned. I will also include photos in my final project that show how I have applied these skills.
Today was a little laid back. I spent most of the day editing and retouching photos from yesterday's shoot. I was able to go over all the photos I had previously edited and make a few minor adjustments to get them to be more visually appealing. I also learned a new skin smoothing technique in Photoshop that would even out the color and reshape the shadows on a persons face but still maintain the texture to keep it looking realistic. I was able to practice this skill on a few of my photos.
I started off the day with practicing and learning how to replicate a few lighting setups I wanted to try out. For the entire morning Allison, Nicole, Lexi (another employee at the studio) and I practiced high-key and low key-photography. A high-key photo is one that has a completely overexposed background where the subject is the only thing that is dark (see an example of this and the light setup below.) A low key photo is the opposite, the background is completely underexposed and the subject is the only thing that is lit up. Then the entire afternoon I spent time editing the photos from the shoot. I turned most of them into black and white and tweaked their contrast and exposure to achieve a perfect of balance of black to white.
First thing I did this morning was go over my schedule for the next 3 weeks with Allison to narrow down the times that I would arrive and leave the studio every day. Then she showed me around he actual photo shooting section of the studio and taught me how all the different lights and strobes worked as well as the basics for what position to put them in when shooting portraits. Around midday Allison, Nicole and I went on a field trip to Rotary Park to practice outdoor shooting using the Sun and an artificial light source. We tried out many different photo angles and lighting patterns to be able to have a wide range of options to select from during post processing. When we got back to the studio I went through and chose a couple of my favorite photos from the shoot; Allison's husband Matt then showed me an interesting Photoshop technique for facial retouching on a portrait. I finished the day with sorting through and choosing the best photos from a studio shoot that Allison had done that day. See below for the before and after from a simple editing process of color, exposure and slight retouching for one of the photos I took of Nicole: Today was the first day of my LINK internship. I was introduced to the employees at the studio and they gave me a quick rundown of how the process of sorting and choosing photos from a wedding photoshoot using Adobe Lightroom worked. My mentor Allison was gone from the studio all morning so I mostly worked with the office manager Nicole. When Allison got to the studio she went through the wedding photos we had sorted and she showed me the process of sending them to a photo retoucher to edit them. Finally she showed me how the photos usually turn out after being edited and how they are sent to the client.
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Charlie Malone |