This final post for my bigstockphoto.com assignment is my evaluation of the whole assignment.

The following post will contain :

The idea process
How i took the pictures
Editing process
Looking into bigstockphoto.com
What formats my files are in
What i could of done diffrently
Final words on the assignment

The idea process :

when i started this assignment i was really looking forward to doing it because i love photography.
I started with ideas that i am really intrested in, for example skateboarding but then i wanted to widen my ideas by wanting to do things with nature and modeling.
With the nature idea you can always get a beutifull shot of something so natural.
With modeling i wanted to just show soneone at peace with nature aswell.

Whenever i went out anywhere i looked for shots i could use and sometimes they ended up being shots i used.
I beleive that some pictures are fake, they arent real.
Pictures involving someone posing for example

How i took the pictures :
I did two shoots during this assignment.

The first one i used my step dads camera which i beleive is a 6 mega pixel camera.
We went around lincoln with my family for the day and i got some really good pictures.
A few have been mentioned in earlier posts.
The thing with lincoln is you can get really beutifull shots of building and nature aswell.
I took two pictures from each shoot.
The pictures from this shoot are:


Catherdiral shot.
My mum really waned to see the cathedrial so i thought it would be a good chance to get some good shots.
I really like this one because of the angle and shadow from another building,
also the clear blue sky aswell really helps.


Beutifull sunset.

This wasnt a planned shot but i really like it.
The sun was setting and i was going to get a quick shot of it but in one shot the little buds were in the way and then i took the picture and this is what i got.
The branches also frame the picture, i tried editing the branches out but it didnt really have the same feel.

My second shoot was with my own 5 Mega pixel camera.
I went out with my friend tom just to take his pictures but i took a really beutifull shot :



This shot is a table out side the main building on campus and i have edited the colour of the leaves.
Its a very beutifull shot and you get a feeling of love from it.

my final picture that i used is a modeling shot:

this is a friend of mine called shiv, we took some shots at the main park in lincoln.
I know the image is a bit blurry but i cleaned it up a bit but kept it like this so i made sure i got feedback from bigstockphoto.com so i could talk about it in my blog.

Editing Process :
I spoke about editing one of the pictures in an earlier post but i didnt really edit the pictures alot.

Beutifull sunset picture i brightened it up and made the sunset look more orange.
the cathedrial picture i didnt edit at all because i felt it didnt need any.

the main picture i edited was the modeling shot:

I must also note i dont use Photoshop on my pc so this is Photoplus11 which is pretty much the same.
this is the image before any editing.
I then went on to sharpen the image:



This made it look a bit more clearer.

I then changed the Hue and Saturation of the image:


I played about with that for a bit and got the following :



Its stilly blurred but thats as much as i could do.


Looking into bigstockphoto.com:

In earlier blogs i have spoken about :

importance of keywords and why they didnt accept some of my pictures but in this little bit i will talk about why it is important to follow there guidelines.

bigstockphoto.com is pretty much the only free photo website where you can submit photos that others can buy so the strict guidelines are needed really.
There is first a test you must take to know what there strong rules but every so often you must also agree again about this :



See certain details such as needing a release form if someone is in your picture makes sure the website isnt open to copyright and the person that uploads the picture isnt too.

Now i know for a fact that they can be very strict about how good they want the pictures to be and the feed back you get looks like this :




I got this response a whole week after uploading my images which also means that it takes 5 working days for them to respond.

When you upload a picture and after agreeing to the terms you will be presented with this :



Now if you look theres details such as :

Image name
Type of camera
Category/Sub-Category
Image description
Keywords
and also the file info at the side.

you need to fill all these out before you can upload the image.


What format my files are in

So for my pictures i went for the normal picture format of JPegs, now i have spoken about some file formats in an earlier blog but i just wanted to confirm why i used this file format :

Jpegs are the easiest to format and are always accepted on websites, they are always high qualty unless you crop them down but all cameras usualy upload pictures to a computer are Jpeg file format but after editing them using photoshop/photoplus11 the picture becomes a format which you can reopen with an editing tool and change the things you have done to the image but after you are fully done with it then you can save it as a jpeg.

for example :

This is saving it to a Photoplus picture so it can be reopend again to edit layers and other details.

There isnt much diffrence between photoplus and photoshop, just made by diffrent companies.
However with photoplus11 you can do little animations aswell that you save as GIF's.


What i could of done diffrentley in this assignment :

looking over at the assignment i think the only thing i would of done diffrent is a diffrent style of pictures.
Instead of picking pictures that are to do with nature and modeling i could of done something to do with buildings or just really go for something diffrent than my ideas.
Diffrent ideas means diffrent outcomes.
I didnt really want to do alot of editing on pictures because the more you edit the more detail you are going to lose in the image and with mine being about nature it is all about what you get there and then.
with the nature shots you only have one shot, unlike pictures of buildings.
To quote an episode of House M.D " You take over a thousand pictures and only one has to be perfect".
this doesnt not apply to my images because some of them were spur of the moment.
for example in my picture of the table, i didnt move any of the leaves at all and they seem well scattered and the single leaf on the table floor.
Lighting was a big issue aswell as i had plenty of images that were not light enough but on some the exposure was way too bright so i changed some of the settings on my camera, i lowered the exposure to about -2.0 and turned the flash off.


Final words on the assignment :


For the first assignment for Creative Tec i found this very fun to do and it helped remember all my old skills using photoshop even though i didnt need to use alot of them on the photos.
I hnk the big thing was acting like you are really a professional photographer so you would think of all the little aspects that Bigstockphoto.com inforce, such as blurryness and keywords.

in one lecture we were asked to be truthfull with ourselfs and admit what grade we deserve and i beleive i deserve atleast a pass, i have shown skill in using a camera, editing images and understanding all the details of file formats, bigstockphoto.com and the proudction process.
Anything higher than a pass is a cherry on top.

The image i like the most out of this project is this :



I am so very proud of it aswell.