photo challenge update, and Red Dead Redemption

June 23, 2010

As a few of you may have noticed my photo challenge has suddenly stopped, I had been doing really well, up until last Thursday (June 17th). But then it came to the weekend and I decided that I was going to take a break for the weekend and then make a post on Monday with all the different photographs that I had not put up.

Bad idea! It made me slip into a sort of low point in terms of workflow. For over a month there had been regular posts each day on my blog, whether it was a photo post or just a general blog post, there was always something new here on my blog. Taking that short break over the weekend just messed everything up!

So how did it happen? When it came to last weekend I was just completely wrecked. I was in no form to do anything online so I pretty much stayed away from the computer, the only time I really used the internet was on my iPod! The reason I was so tired and still am now is because I have been working a lot lately, getting extra hours since it is the summer and I am off college and I usually end up staying at work late, all that takes its toll after a while. I also now have my house to myself as my parents have left for their holiday, so I am enjoying the comforts of doing whatever I want! 😀

I have also recently become very addicted to playing the Xbox again! The game this time is called “Red Dead Redemption” and if you haven’t played it I would definitely advice you to get it! Here is a trailer of it below.

This is probably the best game I have played in the last 3 or 4 months, I think it is much better than Grand Theft Auto (GTA), the creators of Red Dead Redemption (RDA) are the same people who made GTA. With RDA there is loads to do, even if you don’t want to do the missions for a while, you can just go out and roam the countryside or go to other towns. You can play games like poker or you can go out hunting!

Hunting is great fun, once you kill your target you can skin it! By doing this you gather some meat and also the hide of the animal which you can sell in the local market to make money. Apart from leading the good life in the game, you can choose to go down the evil route. Becoming an outlaw and wrecking havoc on the place is great fun. It makes the game really interesting, when you commit crimes, most of the time a bounty will be put out on you, the more crimes you commit then the higher the bounty becomes.

Once the bounty gets really high, it becomes difficult to get rid of it! You have to either receive a pardon or pay it off! That is where the hunting comes in, it is quick money, but takes a while before you will get the right amount to pay off the bounty. Bounty hunters also come after you if you do not pay for the crimes you have committed.

All in all it is a incredible game, I have only been playing it 5 or 6 days now and I still can’t get enough of it! So if you have an Xbox or ps3, you can get it, as it is available on both platforms! 😀

And just as a little side note, if you have an Xbox and you use Xbox live, then add me on it if you want!  My gamertag is CopperNob , don’t ask about the name, I just found it hilarious!

Anyway back to the photo challenge, will I continue with it? Probably not, I just simply do not have the time, I will admit failure on this challenge 🙁 although I did not succeed fully with the challenge I did give it a good go. Not bad for my first attempt at setting myself a challenge, I have learnt a lot from this challenge though. The original reason for this challenge was for me to get off my ass and start using my camera that I had recently bought, and by doing this I started to go to different places such as Dublin Zoo, hiking up Sliabh Gullion (blog posts which I still need to get done!) and I also learnt a lot about Photoshop and how it works, which was the second part of the challenge, so I am happy with what I have managed to learn and I will take this onboard for the next time I set myself a challenge!

Photo Challenge – Day 8

June 08, 2010

Today’s photograph is of a daisy. I took it a while ago when I was out in my garden during our kind of freak heat-wave! I then brought the daisy into Photoshop and greyscaled the background and also enhanced the colour of the centre of the daisy.

I also slightly blurred the white part of the daisy too, which I think has a good impact.

Click the photographs to see a larger version!

daisy-original

daisy-altered

Photo Challenge – Day 2

June 02, 2010

Yesterday (Tuesday) I went hiking up the Mountain Sliabh Gullion with a few of my friends, I intend on making a bigger blog post on this tomorrow so I will not go into too much detail about it now ;).

Anyway I thought that going on this hike would be a great advantage for my photo challenge, I knew that I could get some great pictures up there! So most likely the next two or three pictures in this challenge will be from this hike, I just took so many pictures, it would be a shame not to use them!

Today’s picture is of a compass, at the Summit of Sliabh Gullion, there was a flat area where you place a compass, then leading from the centre of the compass it showed different areas that you can go to, so basically a map!

I was going to add a photoshopped version of this picture to this blog post, but after trying different edits and filters, I found that the best was the original picture! So for that reason, today’s Photo Challenge will just contain the original photo :).

You can click on the image to see a larger version of the picture!

Sliabh Gullion - Compass

Challenge begins tomorrow

May 31, 2010

I spent some time today looking at various fonts and brushes for Photoshop and now I have a small collection of new tools that I can try out in Photoshop.

As my title suggests, my photo challenge begins tomorrow, I am not sure how it is going to work out. I have no idea what I will be taking pictures of, except for tomorrows one, I already have that one done ;).

I have been thinking of what else I could get out of this challenge, simply pointing the camera at a random image will not suffice I don’t think, it’s a challenge, it should have a more bigger element of challenge!

photo-challenge

I have decided to incorporate the Photoshop element into my challenge, I am going to take my photos, then I am going to open up Photoshop and try some new techniques out, bear in mind now, I am no photographer and I am certainly no expert in Photoshop in any way!

Next month has thirty days, that means every day I must have a new picture! That is going to be a lot of pictures. I hope that by the end of next month (June) I will have improved my skills in the areas of photography and image design.

So why did I want to make a challenge for myself? There are a number of reasons for it, the first is now that I am blogging regularly I want to ensure I keep at it, and by creating this challenge it will keep me motivated, hopefully ;)!

The next reason is, shortly after my birthday this year, I invested in a reasonably good camera, and as of yet I have not really used it. So again this challenge will make me use it more!

And the final reason is because I think it is about time I learned more about Photoshop, I am off college for the summer, so I might as well make the most of it!

Now I hope to continue with my regular blog posts each day also, this might be too much work, but I will see how it goes :). I think that the daily photos will have their own separate blog post, meaning I will show the original photo that I took, maybe say what it is and where I took it and then I will show the altered image which is my Photoshop version and what I done to it and how I did it.

Anyway, it all kicks off tomorrow and it is looking like it will be an interesting challenge!