Amanda Salvucci, Photo 1, Farm

The farm on the UMD campus. May 29, 2013.

The reason that I chose the long shot of the farm was because it helps establish the setting of the piece. I took several different overall shots of the location, from different areas around the farm and from different perspectives. I liked this one the best because the foreground of the field goes along with the setting of the farm. I also played around with having the fence in focus in some of the shots, while the background was blurred, and having the fence out of focus and the barn in focus, like in this shot. In Photoshop, I sharpened the image, increased the brightness, and decreased the saturation just a little bit.

 A cow at the UMD farm peeks out from its corral. May 29, 2013. 

This medium close up was my favorite shot out the the batch. The cow was lying down, staring at me as I was taking photographs. I got down to the cow's level and moved in as close as I could to the shot. I like the peek-a-boo factor of the photo, as well as the fact that the fence serves as a frame for the subject. For post-processing, I sharpened the image and increased the brightness.

A horse on the UMD campus farm. May 29, 2013.

My final shot is a close up of one of the horses. The horse fills most of the frame, and I got as close as I could to take this photo. I also used a wide aperture so that the subject, the horse, would be in focus while the background would be blurred. I think that the focal point of this photo is the horse's eyes, because that is where the viewer ultimately gets drown to. In Photoshop, I increased the brightness and sharpness as well as played around with some of the shadows and highlights of the photo. 

Overall, I thought that it was a good assignment. It forced me to go out of my comfort zone a little bit to get permission to walk around there and take photographs. It was also a great introduction for me to get to learn how to use a Nikon as well as Photoshop. I've always wanted to learn how to use Photoshop, but I usually end up using simpler software the I'm more comfortable with. This gave me the opportunity to play around a little bit in Photoshop and learn how to use the software better.