Photography 1

— Reflection —

In regard to almost everything we have learned in Photo 1, from composing and editing a photo to loading and developing film, my projects show that I have greatly improved in the field of photography. Due partly to the fact that most of the projects were completely new to me, there was plenty of room for this improvement. On the topic of my digital portfolio, I learned many of the techniques I needed to create stronger photographs with the "Compositions & Techniques" project and continued with a lot of them throughout the rest of my portfolio. Looking through my phone camera roll alone, one could see how I took these techniques I learned in the classroom and applied them to my own photos. Little things were learned along the way as well: such as incorporating perspective and composition thoughtfully into the image. However, one thing that I had notable improvement on was my editing skills; I had always been comfortable with editing photos, but I had never had the opportunity to use PhotoShop. So when it was introduced to us, I took the time to learn how to use it and was able to produce some pretty interesting photos. As for film photography, I had always had an interest in it, but learning how to properly create an image seemed daunting. Yet as shown through my projects, I was able to create many intriguing photos, even after all the mishaps.

The most challenging task most certainly came with Quarter 2 and film photography. Off to a shaky start with developing a roll of no use to me, the film unit seemed to come with one problem after another. There are so many variables to worry about when shooting in film, and one simple mistake could leave a project in ruins, as well as very far behind in progress. This, unfortunately, happened to me far more times than I wanted. Whether it was incorrectly rolling the film on the spool and getting white splotches on the film or incorrectly exposing an enlarged print, I seemingly found every way to mess up a project. Now, that was only with the developing process as well. When it came to actually shooting, I had to refrain from taking photos of everything I saw because of the limited amount of exposures on the film. Sometimes I would take a roll I was really proud of, but have a few spaces left or get a roll messed up and have to retake the entire thing, which often left me in the FPAC lobby. However, I dealt with what I had there, and remembering everything from Quarter 1, gave my best attempt at creating interesting compositions.

From my entire experience in Photo 1, the work I'm most proud of comes from the many enlarged prints I created. The task of going through the processes to take and develop film is much more challenging, leading to a more satisfying end result than if I were to take the photo digitally. Even if my other photos may have had more intriguing compositions, it doesn't compare to watching a photo you took develop before your eyes, giving an actual physical copy of the image. Out of all of these, however, I'm torn between Johngram and History Of Me, as to which one is my favorite; being the reasoning for selecting the entire category of enlarged prints.

My work shows strengths and weaknesses as a learner through my capability to get involved and interested in the project at hand; now, this would rely highly on the project given. For example, if I were not entirely interested in the goal of the assignment, it would visibly show in the end result. More specifically, on a project like Capturing Compositions, this weakness is very apparent: tasked to take over ten photos that included a toy immediately lost my interest, showing in my lack of strong compositions. However, on the other hand, given a project like Independent Film, one that I actually was interested in due to the freedom (and use of film) offered, one could see that effort was put into each individual photo; showcasing my ideas and interests as a photographer.