Lauralea Sharra - Recipe Crit 1 B&W | Mystery

I did not choose to use my photo of the week, rather two other photos that got a lot of attention in my critiques. I used a Galaxy S2 Android OS 4.1.2. I have an app that I use called "A Better Camera" which is free in the Play Store. It is a camera replacement app, meaning it replaces the stock camera interface. It allows you to shoot in multiple settings, including HDR, which is what I used for all of my photographs, except two. To process the photos into black and white, adjust brightness and contrast (etc), I used VSCO Cam.

The photograph of this fence is probably on of my favorite from the set. I specifically chose to take it from this angle because I not only wanted to avoid looking straight at the fence (a predictable angle), but I wanted to counter the texture of the fence with the texture of the brick layered ground. I used the HDR setting on my camera, as well at the macro lens, allowing me to achieve a highly dynamic, sharp close-up shot with shallow depth of field. I processed the photo into black and white (filter B5) and upped the contrast, separating the blacks and whites of the fence's texture even more.

This photograph is one of my two self portraits and was significantly one of the hardest photos for me to achieve, but I think it looks awesome, after trying and failing at it about 20 times. In order to achieve this photo, I stood in from of a mirror that I have attached to my bedroom door, that way, when facing the camera at me, I could still see how I was framing myself in the mirror (avoiding the front facing camera at all cost). For this photograph, I did not use the HDR setting. I used single shot, (HDR takes 3 shots for each photo and combines them for one image) because the HDR reduces motion blur and that was the complete opposite of what I was trying to achieve. I stood completely still, started waving the camera left to right, horizontally in front of my face and as I was moving it, I snapped the photo. It blurred the background and my face, but since I was so still, you can see some detail still intact. Then again, once done, I processed it into black and white (filter B5) and upped the contrast and brightness in order to bring those few details of my face out even more.