The fortune that I chose to do was “Pick up some litter and help keep our world beautiful.” My idea for this project was to show beautiful landscapes with huge amounts of trash in the foreground. Generally beautiful places do not have large piles of garbage strewn about and that’s where Photoshop magic comes in. Because I had a plethora of nice landscape photos that I have taken I decided to focus all my energy on getting pictures of large piles of trash. I naively thought this would be easy, I tried going to local landfills but apparently these places do not allow you to photograph their trash so I had to look for other means. Unfortunately, the area that I live in is very clean so I couldn’t even find trash lying about in the streets or near the dumpsters. I realized I had to do something I dreaded, I had to use stock photography. I found a website that allowed me to use free images of garbage, I composited those images onto my own landscape shots and Viola! I had the “shots” I wanted. My only regret is that I relied too heavily on Photoshop for this project despite the fact that I am not a Photoshop whiz. One criticism of my final project was that although the landscapes were beautifully lit the stock images lacked the same quality and you can very much tell that my final images were composited.

I would definitely say we learned a lot in this class, not just about Photoshop but about creative thinking. I learned how important looking at a subject from a different perspective is to creating your own style of photographs. Anyone can take good photos, but it’s the way you interpret a subject that can be the difference between a good image and a great image. I personally have been anti-Photoshop for a long time because I see a lot of people over doing it and relying heavily on it which I was guilty of in my own final project. Ironic huh? I learned that a little post processing can go a long way to enhancing a photo and that good Photoshop is all about subtlety. We ended up ordering Photoshop CS5 for ourselves and have since learned all of the interesting and useful tools it had to offer. Photoshop is definitely a powerful tool and Niel reminded us all of the famous saying “With great power comes great responsibility”.

As with previous years our friend Sarah went all out for this event. She and the girls baked dog biscuits which they passed out at Natasha’s birthday booth, she also made cupcakes with little pictures of Natasha and the dogs on them. She also made us name tags out of yellow and red duct tape that looked like rocket ships with a stream of flames, these were to go with the theme of this year’s walk A Pooch Odyssey. Natasha ended up raising over $1400 which not only made her the top fundraising youth but got her some awesome prizes including a hydration backpack and a car sunshade which she carried with her during the entirety of the walk. Naturally we ended up winning top fundraising team with our total donations reaching nearly $3000. After we collected all of our prizes we gathered together and headed out on the walk. This year we actually did the whole 3 mile round trip, the weather was great during the walk and Pearl was a total champ. One of the best parts of the walk is getting to see all the different breeds of dogs that people have. I think Bryan and I agreed after doing the walk that we wanted a St. Bernard and a Great Pyrenees. 

 

We came back from the walk tired out but ready to eat some cupcakes. Even Pearl and the other dogs got to have birthday cupcakes. We all had a great time at the walk and can’t wait to start planning for next year!

Check out our photos from this years walk below:

We stopped at the top of the ranch where the mine was located. Mr. Smith said that when they first bought the property back in the early 90’s the mine was completely closed off and over the years he had managed to open it up again about 30 feet. He showed us an old mine car and explained how it was used to haul heavy loads. He then asked if anybody wanted to ride in the mine car, of course I volunteered but it quickly became clear that he specifically was asking the kids. I still argue that I am only 5 feet tall and could have definitely fit in with the others. He gave us all hard hats and led us into the mine which was very cool to see. After coming out of the mine we met up with Mrs. Smith who showed us what miner’s lettuce looks like and told us to pick some and try it out. It was actually very tasty and it was abundant in the area around the mine. We then went down to pan for gold. Once the kids found their pieces of “gold” Mrs. Smith traded the gold for Red Vines, yes gold for licorice just like they did back in the day. They then showed us a letter that was written by Mrs. Smith’s great uncle back in the late 1800’s and also explained the importance of the pony express back during that time. Mr. Smith also demonstrated why the pony express did not transport gold, one reason of course was the high probability of being robbed and the other reason was that gold is freaking heavy. He had all of us lift a regular brick and then lift a gold bar (lead bar spray painted gold) to see the difference in weight. After this highly scientific experiment we got back on the train and went back down to the entrance of the ranch. Our tour had come to an end and it was time to explore Julian.

We drove back down to the main street that runs through Julian. Despite being a very small town basically out in the middle of nowhere there are a lot of tourists walking around. There is also a lot of bikers that like to pass through, there was almost more motorcycles than there were cars. As you would expect of any town that is a tourist trap most of the shops are filled with useless trinkets and Julian themed sweaters and magnets. We made our way past the crowds and found a cemetery at the end of the road which is always a good place to take photos. After exploring the cemetery for a few minutes we decided to find a pie shop. Julian is not only famous for being a mining town but also for it’s apple orchards. Because of this there are many pie shops in Julian that mostly specialize in apple pie. We stopped at the Julian Pie Company and ordered some dutch apple pie with a scoop of cinnamon ice cream. It was a delicious end to our visit to Julian. 

As we weaved our way through the two buildings we collected numerous samples of dog food and dog treats. Our friends Mark and Sarah were also at the event and we found them at the Rattlesnake Avoidance demo booth. Sarah was holding a dog that could only be described as a Rottweiler with the body of a Corgi. His owner’s called him a Runtweiler, we had to get a photo since I had never seen anything like him. We ended up having to make a trip back to the car because all the “free samples” we were getting was weighing us down. We stopped for a moment to see the Splash Dogs demo in which dogs are judged on their splashes into a large pool. Some of the dogs absolutely loved the water and jumped gleefully in. One dog in particular that we watched hesitated and seemed to be scared of the water, I’m sure he didn’t get high points but watching him proceed with caution before jumping in was pretty hilarious. We then made our way over to the Equine arena where they were having a Friesien demonstration. Friesiens are by far my favorite breed of horse and if you see my photos below you can see why, they are stunningly beautiful. By far the most expensive thing at the Pet Expo was the food, and unfortunately we got hungry while we were there. Our taco salads and drinks cost us nearly $30. Note to self: bring lunch and leave it in the car if we come back next year. To end our day at the Pet Expo we headed over to the Adoption building which was full of numerous rescue and adoption organizations. We found the booth for Coastal German Shepherd Rescue, which is where we got our two dogs from so of course I had to buy something from them. I ended up getting a magnet that says “I love my white German Shepherd” and a mug, cheesy I know but I definitely support their cause.

 

Check out a few photos from the Pet Expo below:

 

The second way to merge photos is to again open all the images you would like to merge but this time open them side by side. Choose the photo that you would like to be your background image and drag the other photos on top of it. Then in the LAYERS tab create layer masks for the two photos that you dragged on top of your background. Use the paint bucket tool to make these layer masks black and then with the paint brush tool paint your subjects back in. This sounds completely complicated but it is actually very simple as long as the photographs you are using are photographed correctly. Below are the images Bryan and I created.