I made a story about the steps involved in making a latte. The first photo is of the whole beans, then the ground beans in a portafilter, which is a device you insert into an espresso machine after you tamp the grounds. Then there’s a picture of a shot of espresso I pulled. It has a light crema, meaning that the pressure wasn’t very strong in the pull, but as you can tell from the roast of the beans (they’re really dark), the espresso will still be strong. The next picture is of the steamed milk. The large bubbles on top mean that the foam is dry and stiff, which generally means it’s over-steamed slightly, but you just have to swirl the milk some in order to get a more creamy consistency, if that’s what you desire. Many people actually prefer a stiffer foam. The last picture is the finished latte. There is a good balance between milk, foam, and espresso. This set of photos might seem rather useless, but it gives a good visual of the knowledge for espresso and how each component effects the others. There are a lot of factors to making a latte, and while it generally seems like a commodity, it’s actually rather amazing to see all the individual pieces separately and how much work goes into making one.

I took photos of things in nature generally associated with symmetry: faces, flowers, butterflies, and leaves. Then I made them truly symmetrical and placed them side by side to show how sometimes making images symmetrical can make them look better, and sometimes it makes them look worse. I think I did a pretty good job of editing the photos, but now that I’m critiquing them, I notice some are in the wrong order (this is killing me now, actually, but I don’t have time to fix it) and the lighting discrepancies/ backgrounds change the way the images could be viewed. Other than that, I think the photos of the butterfly and the flower are really pretty, because of the contrast and the clarity of the images. I would definitely allow myself more time to edit the photos if I were to do this again in the future, because I took too much time adjusting the colors and being a perfectionist.