Lauralea Sharra - Recipe Crit 3 | Extended Seeing

For this assignment, I spent many hours researching apps that I could use for my outdated phone (Samsung Galaxy S2 running on Android 4.1.2). Many of the "good" applications were simply incompatible with my outdated OS. But, after a stressful amout of time, I was able to find two applications that I used in order to achieve a slow shutter seed effect - Camera FV-5 Lite and Motion Camera. Both apps are free. 

Camera FV-5 Lite almost works as if you were using a DSLR camera, giving you the ability to control shutter speed, ISO, White Balance, Exposure, Focal plane, bracketing, as well as using a timer. 

Motion Camera is the dumber of the two apps, in terms of what it can do. It's a simple app that creates motion blur by slowing down the frames automatically. It does however give you the ability to control how much blur you wan in the frame and whether or not you want to blur everything, just dark objects, or just light objects. 

This is my Photo of The Week. In order to achieve this, I used a tripod first and foremost. I bought one off of Amazon and received it the next day with my Prime account. It's a iStabilizer Flex and I got it for about 20 dollars. I set the tripod up on a table I was sitting at. The application I used was Motion Camera, I set the camera to blur light objects T round 60% blur. I asked the skateboarder if I could photograph him doing some kind of motion in front of where I was sitting. In terms of framing, I wanted to implement as much "natural framing" as I could, with the trees, stone and broke lining the left ans right of the frame. When I gave him the go ahead to start moving towards me I hit the button on my cell hone to take the picture while he was in mid air. My original intention was to capture blurred motion while he was in mid air in the middle of his trick, but with the lag in frames that the app causes the app caught only his landing, but it did make him appear to be transparent, something I was very happy with. For color process, In Vsco Cam, I adjusted the temperature of the colors, creating a cooler effect and then desaturated them a bit.

This photograph is one of my self portraits, one that some were wondering how it was I achieved this and whether or not I used a tripod. Well, the answer is yes. To achieve this, I was sitting at my computer desk, in my room. I turned out all the lights, including my computer monitor. I set my tripod and cellphone up on my desk in front of me. I used Camera FV-5 Lite for this shot because it has a timer capability, so I could go hands free. I also set the shutter speed to be open for 5 seconds. Before taking the photo, I focused it on the general area of where I would be sitting. Then I hit the shutter button, sat down and started turning my head left and right as fast as I could without causing an aneurysm. This took several tries and many retakes resulting in a gigantic head ache before I was able to achieve something I was content with. After I achieved my desired effect, I used Vsco Cam I lowered the temperature of the colors, much like the skateboard photo and then upped the contrast, making the background as blacked out as I could and then heightened the exposure to compensate for darkening myself when I changed the contrast.