Project Orange: Check

My homework got done. It was even done by Wednesday afternoon. And I was able to see Water for Elephants that evening. So glad too because the movie was gooooodddd. It was two hours long. And I never once looked at my watch. That is how I rate a movie. The imagery and costuming alone kept me enthralled.

On Wednesday afternoon, the teacher emailed saying "extra credit" if you turn your photos into a collage. Since we're not taking the class for any kind of grade, we all kind of scratched our heads on that one. One of the women even asked, "What do we get? Money?" My kind of gal! The teacher promised cupcakes. I heard that one and I was in. Will work for cake.

We're also supposed to keep a journal. Write about what works. What doesn't. What we've learned. Here's my journal entry for this assignment...

Limited Color Palette Notes: 

• I chose orange because the ballerinas have been really into oranges lately. I've been buying the big eight pound bags so I had plenty of them to photograph. Plus, BB has that sweeettt orange beach cruiser. Easy choice.

• very hard to shoot two kids together. One is always looking off, striking a cheesy pose, or not cooperating.

• I need to learn to give directions better.

• Make sure your kids poop before you drive them to a field where there are no bathrooms. Because even though there's no one around for miles. And you have wipes. She'll refuse to go. And all your pictures will look like this. Or you'll have to cut your shoot short.

• It's hard to take good pictures of things you're not that excited about.

• It's hard to find things that are orange that excite me.

• I don't like super saturated pictures.

• Don't plan to take pictures with balloons on a windy day. (Kim recently blogged about the same thing. I should have paid attention.)

• Discovered the "scale" slider in Lightroom. LOVE!

• Need to figure out how to crop proportionally in Lightroom. It never looks right to me.

• Need to learn how to selectively add brightness in photos (to faces, etc.).

• Bring along a stepstool to make it easier to take pictures from above. Climbing on your car hood is not a good idea. And your DH will kill you if he finds out you did that.

• Even though artistically you're supposed to group things in odd #'s, make sure you bring along EVEN numbers of props when you're shooting your kids. Or they'll fight. And you'll yell. And your pictures will suck.

Here are the photos I turned in...

And the cupcake collage...