Radiate: Week Seven - Adaptations of Me

This week in Radiate class we were given a unique assignment.  We were to take pictures without looking through the viewfinder or at the screen.  I must say that I was very apprehensive about this assignment.  I consider myself a Type A personality and this tested that to the limit.  I like and need to be in control and hate change.  Life has thrown me one to many curve balls which have completely tested me and changed me.

Anyway I trust Beryl and her vision so I approached this assignment with an open mind.  The first set of pictures were absolute disasters...I couldn't find one speck of beauty in them.  Then the light went on literally for me.  Because I was shooting indoors in early morning, so not a lot of natural light, I noticed that when my lens would set its focus, a light would emit on my subject.  So I started to aim that light onto my chosen subject and my picture quality improved.  I chose to shoot in manual and did first select my settings before taking the actual picture.

The editing piece this week was to only take two minutes to edit our pictures.  So I set the timer on my IPhone and went to work.  I only used the editing tools in Pic Monkey for this assignment.

Here are the results.

For this picture I took Beryl's suggestion about editing in black and white when there are distracting colors.  I also found that Dennis distracted from my focus so I cropped him out.

 

Getting ready for my Fondue party.  Again a distracting background so I opted for black and white.  However I loved the colors of the fondue forks and opted to make them the focus.

 

Chloe and Leo at their post.  Again I chose black and white and upped the curve a bit.  If I had had a bit more time I would have cloned out the plant as it s a bit distracting.

 

 

So even though I initially found this assignment challenging and I waas admittedly a bit reluctant to try it, in the end it was a fun assignment.  However I am looking forward to being able to look through my viewfinder next week :).