Final Project Theme!

For my final project and Portfolio, I am concentrating on close ups and details of nature. People interoperate nature an many different ways. I personally enjoy getting a few of close ups of nature, seeing how it works and functions according to the details, rather than observing nature from far away. With this idea in mind, I have noticed that nature has a strong mystery to it and how it works. Some images are obvious on how it works, others are must harder to read and figure out. The images below are the ones I selected to support this idea of nature and how it works. Enjoy!

Trough Creek: Leaves frozen over time.

Presque Isle: how did the stones get there? What are their purpose?

McConnell's Mill: Erosion 

Mineral Springs: dead trees and composition

McConnell's Mill: large amounts of water can do serious damage

McConnell's Mill: How did this get here?

Mineral Springs: what is the purpose of the lines in the rock?

McConnell's Mill

This was by far, my favorite trip of the semester. Minus getting up at 5 am again. The weather was nice, with just a little bit of snow. It was great break from the cold weather that we had in Trough Creek. As our class and I walked down a trail to reach a waterfall, all I kept thinking was “this better be worth it.” I say this because, I feel like the past few trips, I have been taking the same photos over again and again. Once we reached the end of the trail i see this huge, gorgeous waterfall that I literally fell in love with. The only problem was that I had to work through the water to get the photos. Luckily for me, I had water proof boots that allowed me to walk in front of the waterfall. When I reached the center, I was literally starring at this huge, beautiful waterfall in the face. I was there for most of the time of our trip.After having this beautiful high of waterfall photos, I took pictures of every little thing I could think of on the way back to the shuttle. I couldn’t wait to go back and look at the photos later.

Before we went back to Point Park, our teacher took us to another part of McConnell’s Mill where there were more streams and other parts of nature. With this I was determined to get a few long exposure photos. That was my biggest concentration on the second part of the trip. I came to an area where there were little streams that had great potential to become bigger and stronger over time. Luckily for me, I got what I wanted. I have attempted long exposures multiple times on the trips, but was never really happy with my results until today.

I have definitely grown so much as a photographer on this trip and I really pushed myself to try new things. I think that I found a better understanding of what I would like to use as my final portfolio and I am very excited for the future trips!

This tree was right above where I was standing for the waterfall photos. This is going to sound very weird, but since there were no other trees close to where it was located, it looked like it was starring down at me, asking for me to take its photo.

For my portfolio, I am going to try and concentrate on closeups of nature. I think this is a good photo to use for it.

 The famous waterfall!

The closeup of the water shows a sense of danger and how harsh water can be when there is so much at one time.

Here is another possible portfolio photo.

There is one of my favorite long exposure photos. I haven't taken very many long exposures that I feel need to be shown to the world, but I am very happy with this one.

Trough Creek

I was very excited to hear that we are going to Trough Creek because i have never been there before and I heard that there was so much to see there. After our three hour long ride, we arrived at the park and saw that there was so much snow on the ground. I didn’t know how it would effect my photos, but I went with it. I started going down one trail, not knowing a plan on how I wanted to take my photos. After crossing a bridge, I came to the conclusion that I was not wearing the proper shoes and my feet were absolutely freezing and honestly didn’t know if I was going to make it through the day with the shoes that I was wearing. 

After complaining to myself for a while I sucked it up and did what I came here to do. I fell in love with the waterfalls when I was on the bridge. There is something about snow and water that I really enjoy. It’s probably because I associate water and streams with spring, or summer days and don’t normally see these natural beauties with such cold conditions. 

As I travelled farther up the path, I spotted hanging icicles that for some reason, I fell in love with. I got a close up of them and saw that there were leaves frozen with in them, and droplets of water that didn’t fall because they were frozen to the icicle it’s self. I eventually reached the top of the mountain. and saw many rhododendrons with snow piled on top of them. I always thought that rhododendrons died in the winter, but come to realize that they stay alive year round. Apparently it just depends on the type of the flower. 

All in all, it was a successful trip. My feet eventually warmed up and I took a lot of great shots. When going on this trip, i am narrowing down ideas to work with for my portfolio. Further classes will make this idea well known. I guess we will see what happens!

The small waterfalls when exiting off the bridge

Icicles with small droplets that never fell

Rhododendrons that apparently live year round

Associating snow with creeks and rivers is something i have never really considered before

Frankfort Mineral Springs

I really enjoyed our trip to Frankfort Mineral Springs. It wasn’t that far away and it was very relaxing and had a good time. The time of day was really good. It gave off great light and i think it made my pictures come out more. When we first got there, I wasn’t sure what type of angle i was going to take with these photos so I just started taking some random photos to figure out what I wanted to do. I then realized it would be a good idea to concentrate on the water and get cool and creative shots of water flowing. I started out with that, then took many closeups of the fallen down trees and moss that was growing on the trees. I then realized that those trees have probably been there for a while due to all of the moss growing on them. As I continued on down one of the paths, I ran into the waterfall that was one of the main attractions for everyone. I didn’t even know where to begin with it, but I was so excited about it. I started off with getting behind the waterfall and getting close ups of  the drops of water hitting the puddles from the top of the cave. I continued with getting every angel humanly possible with the waterfall, trying to be as creative as possible. After the day was ending, I realized that i had a good collection of close ups and water flowing in the creeks. I was very happy with my results on this trip.

with both the dead and alive trees, they had different funguses growing on them. With this picture, the mushrooms look like they were placed on the tree for photo purposes.

I tried to concentrate on the lines on the rocks, but realized the green moss really adds to the photo.

This was a very small stream in the creek, but with the water flowing in the middle, it makes the stream look much wider.

I had many photos of the creek from the front of the streams, but with this one the concentration is in the back to see what the creek looks like from the other side.

Presque Isle State Park

When I signed up for this class, I thought we would go out and take pictures of places around Pittsburgh. After hearing all of the places we were going to go, I was really excited. Presque Isle State Park was one of the places I was most excited for. It was very cold, rainy and wet, but I tried to make the best of it. In the beginning, I had trouble figuring out the right exposure to work with because I haven’t taken that many photos of snow before. After a few tries I thought I had it fixed, but when I came back and looked at my photos, I realized that a lot of them were over exposed and tough to work with. There were also a few photos that had water drops on the lens. Oh well! It is what it is and you just have to learn work with what you have. The photos shown are the best ones out of the bunch. I really tried to concentrate on the snow mostly. I have never been to a beach with snow on top of the sand so I had a serious field day with it. Another concentration was the rocks. I have been to many beaches and have always wanted to take photos of waves crashing on them. A lot of my rock photos didn’t come out well, but I had a few that were still able to work. If I could go back in time, I would probably get more close up on the pebbles on the beach and maybe concentrate more on the waves.

I tried to represent every aspect of the beach in this photo. Starting with the sky, moving onto the water, the snow and then the dunes.

This is one of the first photos I took. This makes you think about what you could possibly be walking into when entering the beach.

This is one of my favorite rock photos. I like how you get to see the water breaking on all sides.

This represents the line of where the water hits, and where it stops. I feel like the snow and the sand represent two different worlds. The sand shows what you think a beach should look like and the snow  gives an idea what you think shouldn't be on a beach, but yet it still fits perfectly with the placement.

Point State Park

I tried to concentrate on the vanishing point with the benches and the poles.

This is one of my favorite photos, with the use of red with the rose and the brown dead leaves surrounding it makes the rose just pop out.

I tried to concentrate on the role of thirds with this photo. I think it also really captures an essence of Pittsburgh with the city in the back ground and the Pirates statue, which is the main focus.

The leading lines is represented with the bridge leading into the city. 

For our first assignment in our nature photography class, we took a walk through Point State Park to help us understand how to use our new compasses and get a feel of what our adventures would be like through out the semester. Being so busy with school and other activities, I haven’t had a chance in a long time to really walk through the city. Needless to say I was very excited when I heard about this assignment. When our class started, the weather wasn’t the greatest. It was very cold and cloudy, but I feel like that added to the photos shown to give them the best look they could of gotten that day. In the beginning, it was hard to figure out how to get started and how I wanted to go about taking my photos, but I figured I should start with what I know and work my way from there. For this particular assignment, I really tried to concentrate on the basics of photography to get a good start on my assignments. The main elements that I focused on were vanishing points, the rule of thirds and leading lines. Once I realized what my focus was, the photos just came naturally. Over the years, I have taken so many photos of Pittsburgh, but out of all of the photos I have ever taken, I was never really satisfied with any of them. I really tried my best to make these photos the way I viewed Pittsburgh in my mind. I do think that I accomplished it with these photos.