Photography I

Photography 1 Semester Reflection

This year my photography skills have improved greatly whether it's composition, editing, or developing. All were things that I previously didn't know how to do well or at all. When it came to compositions, I had some sense of how to properly balance a shot, but was not aware of the multitude of different ways to compose a shot. You can see throughout my quarter one digital photographs that I learned and was able to take photos using all of the different compositions and techniques. For editing, I had very little experience and did not know how to do cloning and overlays. You can see by my work that I was able to edit photos to improve them or to add interest to them. When we started shooting and developing film, I was already used to taking photos with film but had never processed it on my own. My final enlarged prints show that I was able to successfully, spool, develop and enlarge a photograph that was properly exposed.

Some things that were challenging for me this year were being able to get creative with the resources I had and photoshop. In the beginning of the year we went outside a lot to take pictures and I had a hard time trying to come up with interesting compositions. We only had everyday things to photograph and I didn't think that they were very interesting and worth photographing, but then I learned the different compositions and techniques, as well as texture. This gave me more Ideas and ways I could look at everyday objects to take an interesting photograph. We also worked a little bit with photoshop and I found it a little tricky to use at first, but once I got the hang of it, I did alright. I didn't particularly enjoy photoshop that much because I think it takes to long and it wasn't my style. However, I do think it was useful for erasing things you didn't mean to have in your photo.

This semester I am most proud of my enlarged film prints. I think it is super satisfying going through the whole process and having your print turn out really good. I also like the fact that you end up with a physical photograph that you created and isn't just 1 out of a bunch of digital photos that you took at once. With film I really tried and focused more when composing and taking a shot because of the limited amount of frames on a roll. Film made me be more careful when taking pictures and I enjoyed it more than digital.

My work shows that as a learner, I am way more likely to try and do well on something that I enjoy. For example, the pictures that I edited on photoshop aren't my strongest images and I think that has a lot to do with the fact the I didn't really enjoy it. An example of how I did well on things I enjoyed is my compositions, I liked the freedom we had being able to have anything as the subject in the image and not having to incorporate something that you didn't want in the photo. I also really enjoyed film which made it less of a chore to go take pictures and make enlarged prints. Me enjoying film resulted in me trying to get a perfect print that I was happy with and not just turning in anything just to finish.