Portraits

 

This non-flash portrait is of Richard Kong. All of these portraits were taken under the parking lot structure at Sunvalley Mall. This particular picture shows Richard's positive and outgoing personality. He is "looking up" things.

In this picture, supermodel Richard shows his urban lifestyle. This is directly under a sunlight of the parking garage, throwing lots of diffused light onto Richard, while maintaining a dark background.

These two pictures are both the same concepts as the above portraits, just taken a little differently. This one also shows his ability to be serious.

Connecting to a Place

For this picture, I used the brush tool to make everything but the lamp black and white. I then enhanced the lamp and its glow with multiple brush enhancements and color adjustments. 

When I walked by these stairs, I saw a mix of both welcoming warmth and a "do not disturb the grumpy old man inside" kind of feeling. In fact, there is a private sign right in the middle of the stairs. To help communicate what I saw, I made everything black and white except the lamp on the wall. I also gave the lamp a happy and comforting glow.  

To be honest, I barely even retouched this picture. I enhanced the light a little bit and brightened up the shadows, but not much else. The natural light and shadows did most of the talking.

To me, this scene was reminiscent of of town friends and family. People get together and everyone knows each other. The lighting is perfect and the texture of the patio behind it work together well. The dimly lit bulbs can also represent the lost dreams of actors.

Clarity was increased. The window on the right had a lot of color reflections so I desaturated them. I also tried to perfectly center the door. Vignetting.

This picture summarizes the abandoned feeling that is Port Costa. Paint is terrible, doors are rotting, and 

colors are faded. Also, the lack of technology contributed to the old timey feel.

Clarity and sharpness was increased. I tried to crop the center bulge exactly in the middle because symmetry. I also saturated the blues in the window trim and brightened the shadows. It almost looks HDR.

As more of an abstract picture, this angle on the building could be interpreted as a positive look into the future of the pace. It also shows imperfections and dirty walls, but it shows it in a beautiful way.

Paper

This was transformed with a crumpled texture and backlit with a purple light. I increased clarity and vibrance, I also reduced shadows.

This is just simplcity and a focus on edges. It is emphasized with sideways light. I increased clarity and shadows. 

Carefully crumpled and placed near a window later in the day results in emphasized features and texture. Same as the others, I darkened that shadows and put more detail in the highlights. Clarity is also increased.

What a difficult tutorial. To start off, you create a white layer so you can easily draw the outlines of the face and hair with the pen tool. You have to get used to the pen tool. after yo have all outlines, you create a layer to fill in the colors of the face, hair, lips, and eyes. When you have all the colors in, you then use the dodge and burn tool as well as the smudge tool to make the skin and hair more realistic. 

Light Beams

 Beams of Light Tutorial

This one was difficult. In order to get this effect, you use a combination of gradients and custom shapes.   You use the gradient to create a hazy effect behind your more pronounced beams. The more prominent beams are formed by adding a custom shape (lines) and warping their perspective to look realistic. The rest are finishing touches with eraser tools and paintbrushes. Light beams that are farther away are much thinner etc.

Warhol

This is my try at a Warhol styled ilustration. The subject is a picture I took of a sunken boat at Point Reyes. The subject and background are duplicated and are edited to change to colors of each duplicate. once you have your subject and background, you double the size of the canvas and then duplicate the image with Ctrl+J. You then take this duplicate and change its appearance with the hue slider. Do this two more times and put them in a square pattern.

Music Project

This is an image of my sister playing her guitar. The camera angle helps bring all focus to her playing the instrument. Also, I made everything except her hands in black and white to help this cause. This concentration on her hands communicates that when she plays the guitar, everything else "is in black and white."

Going along with a similar message of the last picture, this image communicates the feeling that when she plays the guitar, the rest of her world is shut out. I chose this style crop because it aids in this feeling. I also blew out the whites to give it more of a dreamy feel.

This image shows my sisters ability to express herself through playing the guitar. I purposely made her face obstructed by the reflections of the plant in the window. Like the first picture, I brought more attention to the player and the instrument by making the rest of the photo in black and white.

This photo of my sister shows her love for her guitar. For the most part, throughout this series, I  purposly excluded her face in the picture. This brings to light the idea that the guitar is a part of her, it can serve as the face to her personality.