Photo I
Written Reflection;
For the first half of the year, I took Photography One. Photography One was a semester long class led by Mrs. Medsker. There were two parts of the year, the first quarter was on digital photography and photoshop, the second quarter was film photography and learning how to use the dark room. Overall, I thought that this was a very fun class to talk and I definitely feel like my knowledge of cameras and photo taking skill has improved. At the start of the semester, I did not know any of the rules of composition and techniques, throughout the semester, I have learned all about those rules and how to use them. I learned so much from the first half of the semester, digital photography. The first quarter was definitely more of a learned experience that I was expecting. Originally walking into this class, I assumed it was basically just a class where you took photos the whole time and learned a few tips and how to edit them well. It did live up to my expectations and beyond. The quarter started off by learned the basic rules and techniques of photography and then taking a photo of each one to show we understood them. As the quarter continued, we had several different themes that we would have to take photos for. In the second half of the quarter, we were introduced to photoshop. We learned the basic of cloning and overlays. From there, we moved onto color selection and multiplicity. I found the multiplicity project one of the most fun of the quarter. I have always loved photo and video editing and to learn new tricks and techniques was so fun. Another thing I learned in quarter one was how to write an artist statement. On our digital portfolios, we were asked to upload all photos and select our favorites from each series and write an artist statement explaining the photo, why I chose it, and what I would have changed or done differently. This first quarter quickly came to an end and we moved onto the second quarter, film photography. We started off by researching two film photographers and creating an artist inspired collage from our two photographers. Once our collage was created, we inverted it and printed it out on transparency paper. Then came the dark room, first we just did a photogram by placing object on top of our light sensitive paper and exposed it for a certain amount of time to create a shadow like image on the paper where the objects were. We learned the process of developing, developer, stop, fix, and rinse. We learned how to use our transparency paper to create a photogram just like the object one, only the transparencies were the object and when developed, it created the collage we made. Then we were handed cameras and taught how to load film and adjust the exposure and aperture on the film cameras. I found that the film cameras took much better quality photos that my digital camera which was part of the reason I like the second quarter so much. After we took our own photos we learned the process for developing film which I found long but not too difficult. My first roll was an old roll of film my mother had taken from years ago on her camera, it had photos of me and my sister when I was a child. I tried using her camera for several projects but the quality of the photos was never very clear so I took the rest of my photos for the quarter on a school camera. I absolutely loved the dark room. I love the concept of film and developing it. Almost every study hall for the second half of the quarter I spent either taking photos, developing the film, or enlarging them. It was so much fun and I already miss it now that the class is over. So overall, this semester was very fun and I learned a lot about photography and photoshop which is something that I enjoy very much. I did not think that this class was overly difficult, you just had to try and get your work turned in. The only parts of this class that I found difficult were the artist statements because when I take photos, I’m not usually thinking a lot about the photos I’m taking or why I’m taking them so artist statements required me to really think about the photos I took.