Black and White

"Victory"

"Honour"

Our next assignment was to create black and white photo compositions that have the topic of "Back To School". My first photo I named "Victory". When I first exited the classroom to find a place to take photographs I immediately thought the trophy case. I saw the angel and thought it would be a unique photo because some people might not figure where it comes from. I named it "Victory" because the angel is on top of a trophy, and winning seems to be an important thing to students. Whether it is having the better grade or coming first in a sport's tournament someone always wants to win. I also threw in the angel because we are in a catholic school. By achieving the effect that I have on this picture I first cropped the picture because there was too much empty space surrounding the focus, then went to "Enhance" then clicked "convert to black and white". After turning the picture to black and white I went to "Filter" and went through the list of different effects. I came upon "cutout" which I love and thought it gave an awesome effect. I dropped the detail to make it look almost like separate shapes stuck onto a background. I then raised both brightness and contrast, which is how I achieved this look.
My next picture is called "Honour". As I walked around the school I kept looking at the walls to see if there was anything that stood out as something that could be associated with back to school. I noticed this plaque with a crusader in it and thought that it was perfect. I called it "Honour" because people are proud to be called a crusader, so what better way to honour this outlook by using this picture. I first converted to black and white by repeating the steps that I used with my first picture. I then noticed that you can alter the effects. I was looking for an effect that looked like the photo had been drawn. I went back to cutout and adjusted the "Number of levels", and "Edge simplicity" after finding that none of the effects sufficed. I found that dropping the "Edge simplicity" made it look like just like I imagined. I am very pleased with these two photographs and discovered that if I keep my photos simple they are more effective.