Waste Not
This photo series was about expanding my skills in editing software as well as covering littering and consumerism in an abstract way. I have become very interested in recycling, reusing and avoiding buying to many packaged goods as part of my personal Zero Waster journey. These images embody how beautiful shots in nature are being bombarded with packaging and trash. It is portrayed neatly however, so that the individual will have to think about what he is looking at.
Unwanted Packages
These boxes falling from the sky are unwanted by nature, however nature is forced to have them because people put them there. This photo abstractly shows nature harboring and receiving boxes as if they had fallen from the sky.
I had a lot of fun with this image. I held each box individually in its place and took three photos for an HDR. Overexposed, underexposed and regularly exposed. Afterward I merged the HDR's in Lightroom. Then I synchronized all the images as I made color corrections and edits. Then I brought each HDR into photoshop and cropped them into their image. This helped keep the image consistant with lighting and with editing style. I also was able to capture the sky, so that it was not blown out. Extensive edits were required to keep the flow running smoothly and avoiding oversaturation of the image since there was so much information in the three photos.
Nature Disturbed
This was project was about having an interesting, colorful nature shot, with trash subtly interrupting it. Interestingly enough, not all of this trash was edited in. There is a coke bottle used multiple times in the photo which actually was caught in the image floating in the water, not placed by me. This emphasized the importance of the project.
I held each item of trash in the place where it would be put in the frame so as to keep it consistant with the water. Once again, each object is its own HDR. I used the same process as the first by taking three shots, merging and synchronizing in Lightroom. I multiplied the images and cut them in half where they would be floating down the water, then used the soft light overaly with a low opacity to create the image that they were indeed in the water.
As I said before, the coke cup already was floating down the stream so in editing, I actually flipped it around several times and hid it in various parts of the image. when the image was done it was extremely over saturated and green. I decided not to fight with the saturation, because part of that was just how the camera did the HDR and I felt that I could make it work if I added more color.
The whole image was made up of hues and shades of green. So I brought in the whole image to light room and used several photos with orange highlights and shadows and yellow higlights and shadows and emphasized that by masking them into the water. With the right side of the image being very green and the water being orange, yellow and brown, I felt it added to the effect of the trash.
This was project was about having an interesting, colorful nature shot, with trash subtly interrupting it. Interestingly enough, not all of this trash was edited in. There is a coke bottle used multiple times in the photo which actually was caught in the image floating in the water, not placed by me. This emphasized the importance of the project.
I held each item of trash in the place where it would be put in the frame so as to keep it consistant with the water. Once again, each object is its own HDR. I used the same process as the first by taking three shots, merging and synchronizing in Lightroom. I multiplied the images and cut them in half where they would be floating down the water, then used the soft light overaly with a low opacity to create the image that they were indeed in the water.
As I said before, the coke cup already was floating down the stream so in editing, I actually flipped it around several times and hid it in various parts of the image. when the image was done it was extremely over saturated and green. I decided not to fight with the saturation, because part of that was just how the camera did the HDR and I felt that I could make it work if I added more color.
The whole image was made up of hues and shades of green. So I brought in the whole image to light room and used several photos with orange highlights and shadows and yellow higlights and shadows and emphasized that by masking them into the water. With the right side of the image being very green and the water being orange, yellow and brown, I felt it added to the effect of the trash.
