Urban Landscape VIDEO :)

Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.

This is my Urban Landscape Edited album (from Flickr) set to the track "Midnight City" by M83. I selected only about half of the photographs from my album to feature in the 30 second video. The photographs featured were taken in solely in Toledo, though, the photographs that were absent in the video were actually taken in California and France. I chose to make this video one that exclusively debuted my recent Toledo photography because I wanted the video to depict only my current skills and interests in regards to photography. The track playing was downloaded under the file format "MP3" with the preset of "Higher Quality" (128 kps/5.7 MB].

Urban Landscape Edited Photograph (Take II !)

So the post right before this one was of my favorite photograph from the "Urban Landscape Edited" Set on my Flickr account! The photograph that I selected was taken in Paris, France, years ago, and is therefore being considered 'invalid' for this project. I was asked to choose my favorite of the Toledo photographs that I took, and the one displayed below, is what I selected. This picture was taken in the past week, outside of a parking garage on UT's campus, at night. It was taken by the camera in my phone, which was set to (2592 x 1552) or 5 megapixels. For having a lower number of megapixels (in respect to my 9 megapixel camera), I would say that this image turned out to display a decent resolution, and because it is so clear, I am assuming that my camera did not use interpolation. To enhance the photograph, I increased the contrast, so that the railing, staircase, and ridges in the stone wall were all very defined from one another. I also increased the temperature to make the picture have "warmer" tones in them. Finally I increased the shadows and decreased the highlights in this photograph to emphasize the appearance of urban decay and the presence of broken light in the photograph.

My Favorite Photograph

Below is my favorite edited photograph from my "Urban Landscape" set, on Flickr. I took this photograph in Paris, France, about a few years ago, in the summertime. This is a photograph of the hotel that I stayed with my mom and sister. I took multiple photographs of the building from the crowded streets; it was difficult to capture a good angle but this is the best one! Because the photograph was taken at night, a lot of the details in the building were hidden in the shadows- I was able to correct this using photo-editing software in which I increased the highlights, contrast and exposure of the photograph. This really helped to emphasize the overall light in the photograph. Also, I realized that my camera unfortunately has a lot of interpolation because it is supposed to be a 9 megapixel camera, and even when it is set to photograph at its highest resolution, the picture still appears somewhat 'fuzzy' or undefined. I learned that a 9 megapixel camera should normally cost  ALOT more than what I paid, so I realized that Kodak used interpolation to increase the resolution on my camera, at a low cost. As previously mentioned, I didn't have to do much to this photograph because the overall quality of it was naturally good. My favorite thing about this picture is how little editing was needed for it; the natural lighting in the photograph did all of the work for me!

Introductory Post

This is my first ever, introductory post for my blog! My name is Eman Al-Hassan and I am 20 years old. I am a Chemistry student at the University of Toledo and I'm considering picking up a minor in Political Science. I have two goals that I would like to reach by the conclusion of my undergraduate career: to graduate with a B.S. (not B.A.!!!) of Chemistry, and to be accepted into a prestigious California law school. I have approximately two years to make this all happen, and you can bet that I am doing everything in my power to get there. I am really focused on school this year and am working hard to bring my GPA up to a 3.8 (I am desperate for it to be this high). I didn't care much for school my freshman year and didn't do as well as I should have, so I am now working twice as hard, as a sophomore, to clean up the mess I made last year. Hopefully my perseverance pays off- I guess we'll find out at the end of the semester!
Anyways, I signed up for this digital arts class to keep myself from going completely insane; too many chemistry and math courses can really make you lose it. I think I can learn a lot from it, and hopefully will become more tech-savvy. (:
-Eman Al-Hassan