Experimenting

As the number of upcoming interviews decreases, my drive for creating content grows exponentially. Not only was I actively seeking opportunities to photograph subjects and keep a consistent presence on social media by posting my photography, but this week, I had to create a video for a school assignment as well. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to play around with Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Premiere Rush throughout the week.

I did not delve into Adobe Premiere Pro this week like I had hoped to do. However, I did have some fun experimenting with Adobe Rush. I challenged myself to record and edit the entire video for my school assignment on my phone with Rush, and I was successful, for the most part.

My Samsung Galaxy S9 has its capabilities, but it also has its limitations.

The main roadblock I hit was while editing my footage; the raw footage was about 11 minutes long, and cutting it down to about 7 minutes went incredibly smooth (Yes, I flubbed more than a few times). The issue arose when I began to add overlays and graphics. My phone is incredibly fast, but the processing speeds required for video editing was more than what my phone was capable of. The app crashed several times, and my phone crashed once altogether. Oops.

Luckily, I could still export the video without any major issues. Upon playing back the final render of the video, I realized there were a few glitches with the graphics overlays, so I ended up taking it into DaVinci Resolve on my computer to cut out the glitches. I will still take this as a success for my original goal of shooting and editing on my phone, though. I'm sure if I wasn't producing a 7-minute explanatory video that required so many elements, the process would have been very smooth. Still, with the hiccups, crashes, glitches, and all, I am very impressed with Adobe Rush.

As for my experiments in Adobe Lightroom, my goal was to find something interesting to photograph and experiment with new grades to change the mood of the photo.

How do you find something interesting to photograph? Anything and everything can be interesting; it is just a matter of how you perceive it. However, in my case, “something interesting” usually has something to do with the way light is reflecting off of something. Luckily, the afternoon sun that streams through my windows at 5 pm provides an excellent source of inspiration and light for a mini photoshoot in my dining room.

I was eating a snack with my mother when my dog began to beg for a morsel of food. My dog just so happened to sit in the light of the sun, and I seized the opportunity to take some photos.

My mother directed my dog’s head in various directions with pieces of fruit while I laid down on the tile floor to find interesting angles and adjust the exposure, shutter speed, and focus.

The grades you see above are essentially the steps that I take in Adobe Lightroom. First, I establish a basic grade that I like the look of, then I go through the built-in presets that Lightroom offers and find something that either enhances the appearance the photo has or changes it entirely. Either way, I am looking for what I think looks nice. Editing photos seems to me like an incredibly subjective process; it is all about what you like personally.

Another interesting thing I noticed while editing these photos was that the brighter and less sharpened it is, the younger my dog looks. Conversely, the darker, more green or blue, and dramatic this photo is, the older and more stoic my dog looks. I found this very interesting; the added shadows and color contour my dog's face in such a way that creates an entirely different feeling than a brighter and warmer grade.

Overall, these experiments have allowed me to have fun learning more about the capabilities of these apps as well as explore what works best for different subject matters, whether the subject is myself for an explanatory video or my dog for a mini indoor photoshoot.

Next week, I hope to stay consistent with my photography and possibly film a short video for fun. Photography is a great start to begin seeing the world through a camera lens, but I should start shifting my focus more to the study of moving pictures. I am, after all, an aspiring filmmaker and video editor, and after looking over some job posting requirements on LinkedIn, I have yet to learn much about it. I believe one of the best ways to learn (if not the best) is to practice doing it, so I will continue practicing and discovering as much as possible on my own while I work towards securing the guidance of a mentor.