Photo Editing Exercise - People assume that photgraphy is a strict progression of inspiration to portfolio

...But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective point of view, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly photo-y, whoto-y...stuff

Before we leave the relative security of our offices in the States (where we know where the local tech gurus are) we have to make sure we can use a photo editing software to enhance and edit our images. I downloaded and have been experimenting with Gimp. The assignment in question is very simple, take a picture, upload it to the computer, and edit it with the chosen software application. I thought the assignment would be a snap, but once I started editing, I found I wanted to do something far more complicated than what I could accomplish with just a little bit of fiddling.

And that is why we had to have these assignments done before our trip to London - so we wouldn't waste time trying to figure things out when we arrived.

I had grand designs of spending an afternoon at a cemetery to take pictures for this Foundation Exercise, but when my in-laws announced they were going to the grocery store, I remembered all of the colors and lines and textures and thought about how much fun it would be to experiment with the different camera settings.

Throughout the shopping trip, I would take multiple shots of the same subject, experimenting to see what settings I liked the best. I found that I often liked the image without the flash because the light was so intense that it screwed up the image.

However, my favorite photo of the day was actually one in which the flash did go off. Here is my original chosen image (1). This flash was NOT on for this image.

Here is the same photo taken with the flash (2). The image is less balanced, but I REALLY liked the contrast of the shadow that was created when the flash was on. 

Here is the cropped version of the image (1-cropped). I cropped the image with the chilies right-aligned rather than center-aligned because I liked the image composition more with the subject off center.

 

The final part of the assignment called for us to use a couple of photo editing effects. For the first effect, I adjusted the threshold (1-threshold). I liked the way this composition leaves a little to the imagination and washes out the parts of the image I didn't like (the people in the background, for example).

For the second editing effect, I adjusted the hues the emphasize the reds in the image and cropped the image in really close to the peppers to show off the reds in the chilies (1-hues&cropped).