Printed Fine Art Photography

This semester I have grown so much. At the beginning of this course, I didn’t even know what aperture or ISO was. After studying how a camera works and personally testing it out for myself, I have become really proud of my work.


For my 16×24 Fine Art print,
I chose two photos.

The first photo I chose was of a beautiful mustang named Maserati. He was part of the Bannack, Montana photo excursion I was able to go on. When editing this, I really wanted to accentuate the texture of his hair and his aging spots. Sister Esplin gave a personalized workshop for the Digital Imaging students and she helped me understand how to do this in Photoshop. After she helped me, I made some adjustments myself. I used a lot of masks and used adjustments such as sharpening, Camera Raw filters, gaussian blur, and levels.

Below is the original image.


The next photo I chose to print was of my macro leaf shots. This was actually an in-class activity where props were brought into class for us to take photos of. The leaves outside were beautiful and I wasn’t impressed with how these macro shots were turning out. I decided to go outside ad try things from a new perspective. After Sister Esplin showed me some tips in Photoshop, I wanted to apply this for myself. So, for this photo, I used a Camera Raw filter, a sharpen mask, a gaussian blur mask, level adjustments, and the healing tool to cover up distracting holes in the leaf.

Below is the original image.

My Top 5 Photographs

As the semester tips over its halfway point and our in-class photography is complete, we were assigned to compile our top 5 photographs.

Looking over my work, I am pleasantly surprised by my improvement. I can also see how much my taste in photography has changed! Photographs that I thought were my best work at the beginning of the semester has changed. It was really nice to look back and physically see my progress.

Fall 2022 Elevate Competition

Elevate is a campus-wide competition at BYU-Idaho. Students from different majors get together and present a project to a set of judges. The purpose of the project is to create something that will improve the campus experience. Each semester, Elevate has a different theme. This semester’s question was: How can we achieve unified discipleship amidst, diversity, distance and difference?


As we competed in the Elevate competition, our group discussed the concept of unity and connection. Why are students at BYU-Idaho so disconnected? What makes this university so different than others? My group studied the difference between BYU- Idaho and Ricks College and noticed the biggest difference – the lack of a mascot. We proposed that BYU- Idaho should reintroduce the Viking Mascot digitally. This will increase school spirit and unity among students, all while spending little to no money and providing networking and internship opportunities for students.

Reintroducing the Viking Mascot, known as Thor, can bring new opportunities to students in the form of design practice, internships, and overall student connection. The Viking Mascot can be implemented in BYU-I social media and merchandise, including but not limited to, the University Store. Hashtags can also be used online to increase school spirit.

The skills that I used for this Elevate project were my graphic design and writing skills. I wrote the abstract our group submitted as well as formatting the Google Slideshow. I also made the mockup Viking logo, which took a sufficient amount of time. I spent about 12 hours on this project, according to my tracking journal. I felt that my team was really connected and worked hard. Even though we all had busy schedules, we made our Elevate project great!

During the performance, I presented the slides that went over the logo design process. I talked about how the logo will help the school in three ways: internship opportunities, campus involvement through a student logo competition and new merchandise for the university store, bringing in new income and excitement from students.


The Fallen Rose

I am extremely proud of this image! I found this collapsed rose in the gardens of the Smith Amphitheater on campus. The way it was dramatically placed by nature itself became my perfect shot.

I took some great editing advice from my professor who advised me to crop the image and create my focus on the sharpened part of the rose. I also liked the way I edited this picture and I think the post-production really made this image unique.

The Fallen Rose: 09/28/22, 3:45 pm at the Smith Amphitheater, ISO: 400, Aperture: f/5, Exposure: 1/100 seconds, Focal Length: 85 mm, Camera: Canon EOS R – Handheld, Aperture Priority