Finished Fairytale and Botanic Garden pieces!!

These are my finished digital media project pieces. Using a postcard format, I have laid out the photos three on each page.

This is my finished piece from the Botanic Gardens. (above)

This (below) is my finished fairytale project, in which I chose Pinnochio as my fairytale.

Photo Montage....

Photo montage is the taking of one or more images, and placing them into another. This in turn creates a montage image that looks as if it has been taken by a real camera, and therefore the saying "a photo never lies" can now be taken as untrue as I am about to illustrate in these next few photos...

This is a picture of a landscape with a poor sky, so i used this in one of my layers.

This is the sky that I would like to place within the photo...

...and this is the wheelbarrow that I wanted to also place within in picture...

... all then combining to create this photo, that includes a new sky with the original landscape, and a wheelbarrow that fits in nicely at the bottom of the photo. This is an effect that is very easily achieved using layers, a low opacity soft rubber, and poligonal tool in photoshop.

The Photo editing phase...

Here is an example of an image that hasn't been modified in photoshop, paying particular attention to the darkness of the photo.

Here is the picture after it has been modified, the contrast is lighter, the colour is stronger, and a border has been added to create effect.

Over the past week, we have been learning in digital media how to use photoshop to manipulate and touch up a photograph on the computer. This includes getting the balance of the photo correct, adjusting the saturation levels, image size correct for the computer, the colour etc. 

Sneak preview of fairytale shots.

Here's a sneak preview of my fairytale photograph project. The fairytale that I have chosen is Pinnochio, the story of a toy puppet who's ambition is to become a real boy! These are just a few shots that I took...

The creation of Pinnochio out of wood. The wood underneath was an area in Marino which I found whilst wandering the grounds of Marino college on Griffith avenue, and I thought that it would make a perfect scene to depict the creation of Pinnochio.

This is another way that I shot the scene of the creation of Pinnochio. I like the fact that when playing around with the settings on the camera I came up with this dark image, and I feel that it portrays the story very well, as when it was written by Carlo Collodi it was portrayed as a very dark story, and night the bright happy ending story portrayed by the 1940 Disney film.

When you wish upon a star... this is the scene where Pinnochio wishes under the star to become a real boy. I had to use the moon as the star, as I havent been able to get a clear night where the stars are shining in the sky. However I think that the moon creates the effect of the north star in the image, so I feel that it turned out well.

When you wish upon a star, Makes no difference who you are....and so on and so forth! This is just a portrait view of wishing upon a star.

Botanic Gardens!

We recently visited the Botanic Gardens as part of our Digital Media module to photograph some of the gardens beautiful scenery. These are some of the shots I discovered on my wander through the gardens.

I really like this shot of the sun dial in the gardens, with the cross in the background from Glasnevin church.

Our tutor Tony Murphy, with the darkened sky over head, it looks like rain!

I loved the Daffodils that were in full bloom around the gardens.

The droplets on the leafs were evident from the overnight rain and the dew from the morning.

In the one of the glasshouses I got this wonderful shot of a droplet waiting to drop from this bud.

Again in one of the glasshouses, these droplets formed after the water spray had come on creating a lovely effect on the green leaves.

This was a gorgeous mirror image that I got on the river that runs through the gardens, with just one small ripple in the upper third of the photo.

We recently went on a photography trip to the beautiful setting of the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin. We met at 9.30 on Thursday morning, 10th of April, at the front gates. It was a fresh, crisp morning in Dublin, and the dew was still evident on the grass as we wandered through the gardens, which left lovely effects on the plants as little droplets of water formed and stood still on their leafs. The sun was shining, but not for long, once it came to 12 mid-day, the first couple of rain began to fall, however I had a good 2 and a half hours of photography at that stage, and I was very pleased with some of the shots I achieved. We had to gather 4 different shots, one long distant, one medium, one close up, and a final macro shot, which is my personal favourite, as I love love the images that one can achieve in a macro shot.

White Balance in a photo; get it RIGHT!

This Photo is an example of bad white balance in a photo, it needs to be adjusted in the white balance preset menu. This picture was taken on Auto, showing that Auto is not good and should never be used!
This would be an example of a picture with good white balance. This was taken in the setting Fluorescent light -1. I Really like this picture.
This is another example of poor white balance, it was taken on the setting Fluorescent -3, however even though the white balance isn't very good in it, I actually like the picture, and so this is why I am putting it in!

When learning about the white balance in a photo, it is essential to get it right, however the majority of people don't even know what it is! Our tutor has shown us, and so I decided to experiment on my little paper clip friend, and I came out with some brilliant results which I am delighted with, so know there's no excuses for taking a photo with shite white balance!

New Blog!

Hello! My name is Michael, welcome to my beautiful blog! I am a student in the National College of Art and Design, and I have set up this Blog as part of a digital media module that I am currently doing. As part of this module I will be learning how to use a camera properly which I am excited about, because I do love when I take a photo properly, it's a great sense of achievement when it looks so good. My tutor is acclaimed photographer Tony Murphy, check out his work if you can!