Another Turning Point

Hello my field daisies!

For my Internet Culture class, we are required to scour and explore different realms of the Internet. I was tasked with joining a specialized information discussion group in hopes of self improvement. A specialized information discussion group is basically a community where “a group of people who converse about some shared task in order to get better at it” (Shirky 100). These communities typically manifest as forums where people can post a a questions or topics and get responses from other people on the forum.Two years ago I decided there should be a turning point on my blog where I would actually try to learn how to edit my photos. Since then my photo editing skills have improved, but they still aren’t where I want them to be. So I decided to join the Photo Forum, a place where people go to discuss everything related to photography: what equipment to buy, how to edit photos, critique on the composition of the photo, etc.

The forum is divided into different categories where people can post threads relating to that category. People then comment of the threads with their advice and opinions. People can also rate the post and other people’s comment by clicking like, agree, disagree, funny, winner, informative or useful. These are then tallied as post ratings (see left hand side of picture below). I really enjoy this feature because it offers a range of choices, which is unlike most social media sites that just have like or favorite buttons. During lecture we learned how interface limitations can lead to misrepresentations of self (Identity Jackson). I wish Facebook had the same rating system that Photo Forum does!

 

Click here to view my full profile on Photo Forum.

For my first post in the Photo Forum, I decided to post in the People Photography section, posting a before and after of a picture that I had edited.

Before:

After: 

I got a variety of helpful responses, including suggestions to lift the tonality, increasing the vibrance and setting a custom white balance. There were also many comments about the green blob on my neck, which many found distracting. I agree. I tried to remove it with Photoshop, but it just looked messy. My favorite response was from user Granddad , who suggested I have to know when to walk away from a shot:

For the complete thread click here.

For my second post, I decided to post in the Cityscape/Landscape forum, posting a picture from my trip to Vegas.

I didn’t get as many responses to this post, but someone said they really liked color palette, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside 🙂

For the complete thread, click here.

For my third post, I decided to edit photos using a program I’ve never used before, Lightroom. Typically I edit my photos one by one in Photoshop, but I learned that with Lightroom you can copy and paste settings of one photo onto another photo. You can also upload numerous photos at once and choose which ones you want to keep, something Photoshop neglects to do. Both these techniques save time and energy. I ended up narrowing down a set of 40 photos to 7 photos. I edited one of the photos by hand and then copy and pasted for the rest. I won’t post all the photos here because I want to save them for a fashion post, but you can view them in the thread here.

The collective mind on the Photo Forum gave me great feedback on these photos. I learned that Photoshop used to have the same software as Lightroom and that in addition to copying and pasting settings, there is also a sync features. Will definitely have to try that out!

That’s it for today!

Love ya’ll and thanks for reading!

Hope you have a daisyish day!