Rare Species: Typographic Dragon

So this is one of my more recent projects in school. I was pretty proud of this one. I had to post it. 

New Creation

My newest creation that I made for my photography class

Those of you who are very familiar with Star Wars will appreciate it. For those of you who are not familiar, I shall explain. In the second movie, we learn that all of the clones are clones of Jango Fett. It is also presumed that his son, Boba, is a clone of him as well. We later realize that the stormtroopers are a newer version of the clones. Therefore, all the stormtroopers are clones of Jango. We are also very aware of the notorious bad aim of the stormtroopers. Since "Bad Aim" Jango didn't sound right, I thought it still appropriate to have Boba as the name, since Boba is still Jango in a way. 

The second part to explain is the reward. The standard currency in the galaxies in Star Wars is Galactic Credits. The symbol is not the typical dollar sign ($). Shown above is the official symbol for the Galactic Credit. Therefore, that is not "75,000,000" you are reading. It reads "5,000,000 Galactic Credits. Just to clear things up.

B&W Photography

 This photo is definitely better because it is colorless. With the colors, the picture would be too busy and very distracting. The color of the background would take away focus from the subject- the button. I like this one because the fact that the background is busy makes it so the one simple thing stands out. 

 This photo is better in black and white for the same reasons as the first one. This one also gives off a feeling of aging. The picture itself seems old (just in really high quality). If this were in color, we would focus on each individual house and the colors. Black and white makes us see more of the scene itself.

 This is going for more of the rustic look. The B&W enhances the aged and distressed look of the photo. If the colors were shown, the whole emotion in the picture would be lost. It would simply be a picture of a lantern. Now it looks like an abstract and well-thought-out emotional shot.

 I think this is better with no color for one main reason: It looks pretty ugly with color. The sun comes through at an awkward color and it fades the detail. Without color, we can focus on the repetition and the balance offset with the chords hanging at different heights. 

 NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

This was my first real attempt at night photography. This shot could have worked in color and for some uses it might be better in color. However, I did not like the color of the sky so I like it better in B&W. I like my skies to be the color they really look. Either blue or black. No orange. All of these night shots will count as my fifth picture. I wanted to show them all. This is when I noticed the streak in the sky. When I first saw it show up on my camera screen, I thought maybe I somehow caught a meteor. Nope. Just an airplane.

 I decided to experiment with the streak in the sky. No, I was not experimenting with moving the camera. Tripods usually work but this time I accidentally moved it down when I opened the shutter. It looked neat so I just ran with it. From here I changed my experimental focus.

 This is a pretty basic shot. Not much different from the ones above. I still liked it.

 Major experimenting here. I panned the camera from side to side a few times while the shutter was open. One thing I notices that you can't really tell without color is that the trees at the bottom of the picture and a few other things didn't get motion blur. In fact, they were in complete focus. However, all the lights got streaked across the screen. I don't know enough about how cameras work to understand how that happened, but I intend to do more tests to find out why this happens.

This was just another area of the city lights. The lights were a little more densely populated so I wanted a shot of it. 

Banner

This is my newest graphic designing project. It's a banner for a photography club.

Lighting Experiment (and some leaf bug)

 Artificial Lighting

Sunday afternoon-ish and I find a leaf bug taking a stroll across the road. This one just makes me laugh. It's just looking at the camera like "Hey, bro." I got this shot on accident, actually. I usually try to stop the flash from going off but it did. I like the leaf bug shots because you can actually see his eyes looking at the camera. (More of the leaf bug to come!)

 Back Lighting

It was kind of dark in the house and there was light pouring in through the curtains. I had to take advantage of that and take a kind of shot I had never done before, a silhouette. Obviously, this is back lighting for literal reasons. The light is coming from behind. 

 Dusk Lighting

Once again, this is pretty literal. I decided the best way to capture the essence of dusk lighting was to take a picture of the light source. There also happened to be a cool-looking sky at the time.

 Front Lighting

Yes, I know, I have a lot of pictures with me as the subject. Having two people in the house most of the time makes me the only subject available when I want pictures with people. I wanted a flashlight-in-the-dark shot for the front lighting because, I mean, it's literally front lighting.

 Hard Lighting

This is when the leaf bug was on the street. I liked the sun reflecting off the street in the background. With so much sunlight taking over the shot, I think this is an example of harsh lighting. I wouldn't say it's soft lighting in there.

 Midday Lighting

I loved this shot. It looks like the leaf bug is taking a step off the ledge. Or like he's taking a step of faith (Indiana Jones reference to the Bridge of Faith). I took this one around midday so I would say this is midday lighting.

 Side Lighting

Leaf bugs are great at showing side lighting because they are vertically flat, thus clearly having two separate sides. This shot looks like he is cleaning himself or having an afternoon snack (on my hand...)

Soft Lighting

With an overcast day, light was distributed through the window equally. That was a call for the silk flowers to come out and do some modeling for me.

Just for Fun

This one wasn't chosen for any of the lighting experiments but I still thought it was a great shot for the Finale of the Leaf Bug. If I hadn't put the bug there, I never would have noticed it there.