Photo II
Reflection;
This year I took both classes, Photography 1 and Photography 2. In photo 2, I learned very much although photo 2 was very similar to photo 1 in the layout of the class, digital photography in the beginning of the class, film in the end. I learned many new techniques, different ways to make art, and new ways to enhance and improve my art. I would have to say, that even when I thought that I couldn't possibly learn anything more about photography, my knowledge about photography certainly doubled throughout this semester. We started off the course with digital photography where I was asked to think of a concentration to base my photos off of. Originally, I thought it was a silly idea and that it was pointless because there were so many different things that I wanted to focus on throughout the course. I went through many different options before finally deciding that I love to take photos that involved people, whether it was portraits or just images with part of a person in it. With that in mind, I didn't really start to focus solidly on my concentration until film photography. Throughout the first quarter of digital photography, I took many images, some stronger than others but I would like to say that in the end, my images were much stronger than my ones in the beginning. I went through several different ideas and layouts of what I wanted my website to look like for digital before deciding on a black and white theme. I worked with black and white photos for a while until I decided that many of my images were just as strong, if not stronger with color. I used this to rearrange my website so that all the landing pages for photo 2 kept with the black and white theme but them once you went into the individual pages, I would also post the colored images. During our digital photography, I tried to mess around with the photoshop knowledge that I had learned previously in photo 1 but in the end, I tried to steer away from that because it always just felt like a waste of time and that I couldn't get the outputs I was shooting for. Instead, I started working on just enhancing the images themselves when I was taking them and I was much happier with my work that way. I had several challenges throughout digital photography that I worked around and honestly, I think my images turned out very well. I didn't have a good digital camera at the time, I only had my old camera that was broken at the time and my phone. For almost every image I just used my phone and I also just edited on my phone as well. Another struggle I had for a while was trying to determine what my concentration would be, for this took me almost the entire course to determine. Overall, I know that my knowledge of digital photography improved greatly and from where I was in the beginning of the year to where I am now, is a very significant change all thanks to Mrs. Medsker. Next up was film. I absolutely love film. I find the click and advancing of film cameras so exciting, I find the dark room so peaceful and calm, and I feel so relaxed when taking, making, and creating film photos. In photo 1, I couldn't even stay out of the dark room, every study hall, every advisory, every free chance I got, I was in the dark room. Now, in photo 2? The exact same. I spent countless hours in the dark room this semester, developing film, creating photos, and not to mention, I learned to alter my images. Film in photo 2 taught me endless amounts of knowledge. In photo 1, I simply learned how to take the photos, develop them, and print them. In photo 2, I had so many new and exciting resources added to my toolbox. From learning how to mess around with the way I developed the image, to trying out different sizes of images, to even painting on and coloring my own images. I honestly don't even know where to start with this last quarter. The first altered technique we learned was to either paint, spray, or squirt the developer onto the images to only develop certain parts of the paper. By far, my favorite of these three techniques was to use the spray bottle to emphasize the part of the image that I was trying to show. The next things we learned were how to make cyanotypes by places objects or transparencies on light sensitive paper and placing it in uv light (either the sunlight or the lightbox). Lasty, we were exposed to photo paints and markers to hand tint our images. I really liked this process and I found it very fun to mess around with different colors and try to make the image look a bit more realistic and less film like but in the end, I found myself only adding little touches of color to certain parts of the image to make things stand out. Throughout film photography, like digital, I had some struggles here as well. Several times my film would come out blank and I would have to retake all my images, several times I didn't know what or where to take my images for a certain project, and sometimes, I just wouldn't like any of the images I got. I worked around all these problems and kept working and revising until I had work that I was proud of. Throughout this entire year of being in Mrs. Medsker's photography classes, I have learned more than I can imagine. I started off from little to no knowledge of how to create strong images and with her help, I began to create images I was truly proud to call my own. I had two of my images entered in a photo contest, I had a total of eight images hung up on the walls outside the art room, and most important, I got a much better sense of who I am artistically.