Assignment #5- Reshoot

**contented sigh** Assignment 5. How I loved Assignment 5. It was a fairly amazing confidence booster after portraits. :)

Picking the image I wanted to reshoot was easy. I remember the day when I uploaded this image to Bridge and Slade said, "Wow... sweet light!" He didn't even have to say that the actual image sucked. What was I thinking leaving the tutu in the drycleaning bag?? What was I thinking taking it against such a busy background?? What was I thinking taking it so far away?? I don't know what I was thinking... However, I did know that I liked the idea behind what I was doing and couldn't wait to attempt again.

Then, Assignment 5 rolled around. YAY! This time I knew what to do differently. And what to do the same.
Different:
1. platter tutu INSTEAD OF romance tutu
2. beat up pointe shoes INSTEAD OF less beat up pointe shoes
3. getting up close INSTEAD OF standing far back
4. bracketing so I could get optimum exposures
5. working hard for a long period of time INSTEAD OF rushing through just to get it done
6. not allowing anything distracting to get in the frame INSTEAD OF letting a million distracting things get in the frame

Same:
1. same room
2. same light (it's pretty sweet light in my humble opinion)
3. same concept

I learned A TON! I think the most important thing I learned was to just slow down and take my time. I think I spent about an hour or so shooting and only ended up shooting maybe 60 images total. But they were all pretty usable. I know some people will scoff at how few images I took but for me, I'd rather take less and have them all be good. It's a skill that took me a long time to master. What else did I learn? Well... I sure do love shooting in color. And I love being able to mess with the color levels once I convert it to black and white. That's how I was able to get the light and airy feeling in the retouched image. I also like shooting in color because it helps me to see better what I'm shooting. Seeing... that's something I learned about on this assignment. The way the light shines in that room it casts a lot of shadows. I had to figure out to use the shadows to my advantage. (One of the images that I really liked as well had a really nice shadow from the shoes.) However, the shadows were often a disadvantage... I had to keep me and my camera's shadow out of the shots.

All in all this was a GREAT assignment for me. And, Mr. Slade, I totally get why you had us do this assignment and why you only let us print it 3 times. For other assignments, we get to pick 6 images and sometimes we still have a hard time narrowing our options. For this assignment, we could pick ONE. That's it. I actually like that better I think... It makes me a harsher critic of my work. :) And the three pieces of paper thing... I know that I tend to rush through retouching an image. And then when I don't like the print, I go back and mess with it some more. It was like guessing and checking in math. With only 3 pieces of paper, I had to work on it for a while before I sent it to print. And I think I only ended up using 2. :)

I hope everyone else had as much fun as I did doing this assignment... :) We should do another one like it again very soon. :)

p.s. OK, you know me, I'm a harsh critic of my work, but I liked some of the images from this assignment so much, I printed them for myself to hang in my room. WOW!! :)
p.p.s. Mr. Slade: I did the photoshopping in 5 steps exactly. :) And I blogged a ton... Do I see two extra credits coming my way??? :)