In week five and six of Introduction to Digital Imaging I focussed tutorials that covered adding shadows and reflections to compositions.

Week 5: Shadows

I completed three tutorials on creating realistic shadows in compositions. I do not have a lot of experience with doing this, so it was a great opportunity to develop more skills. I found it particularly interesting how the selected layer of an object or model could be duplicated, distorted and filled with a gradient to create a shadow effect. That is just one of the many ways it can be done and I can see that each component is different and requires a unique judgement. The important thing is to consider the light source and how the shadow should naturally occur. If there are other subjects in the frame, make sure that there is a consistency between all elements.

Week 6: Reflections

I completed 1 tutorial for week six which focussed on creating a reflection of an image. I had assumed this would be a complicated technique, but it’s great to know that by selecting, copying, flipping, masking and blending it can be achieved rather easily. This would have been a particularly useful bit of knowledge to know when I worked on assignment #1 and could have added a realistic reflection of the girl in the water.