Being in this class for the remaining time of school has taught me many skills and tricks to photography that I never knew about. I've always had an interest in photography and taking pictures but I always thought of it as having a camera and just taking a picture and after this class I know that there's way more to it in order to get a good picture. The first class we had we were given a paper with definitions on them and had to write the definitions we knew. On that paper there was about 18 definitions and I only knew about 6 of them because I was never introduced to photography the way I should've been. After learning about all the definitions we started taking pictures and that's when it all started getting difficult for me but I caught on pretty fast which was good. After we did digital compositions we started editing the photos we took with a photoshop app and that was another thing I've never been introduced to because whenever I took photos the only thing I would edit was the filter or the way the image was centered but right as we started using photoshop I realized there was many other ways you could edit a photo and I'm very glad we learned that because now I know different ways I can make my photos better and more interesting. Finally, we were introduced to film photography. That's when I really had no clue on what I was walking into. I didn't know anything about film photography and didn't even know how to use the camera properly. Learning how to roll the film correctly and develop the photos without messing up took a lot of time but I'm glad I took the time to learn how to do all of it because it was a great experience and introduced me to something I probably would've never been introduced to if I didn't take this class.
Looking back on all the photos I've taken and all the prints I've made you can see how much I've improved. The way you can see that is because with the first photos I took in class they were basic and boring. They weren't that interesting and probably wouldn't have caught someone's eye but as we kept moving into the quarter and learning more skills I figured out ways to make my photos better and more interesting which is a very important thing when it comes to photography. The same thing goes for film photography. When I first did a print I had to do it at least 3 times because I kept not getting enough light, too much light or forgot to put the shiny side of the photo paper on top and if you don't do that nothing will develop. If I looked back at all my prints I could easily tell I've gotten better. With my first print it wasn't exposed that much and wasn't focused well so it came out blurry but if I look at the last prints I've made they're exposed for a good amount of time and are focused very well and that shows the improvements I've made on understanding how to develop correctly and how to make sure it comes out well.
The most challenging thing in this class for me was film photography. The reason for that was because I had no clue what I was doing and had to put a lot of time and effort into learning. After printing photos a couple times I caught on really quick and got the hang of it but when we had to roll the film it took me at least 5 classes to understand it. I mean considering we had to do it without being able to see what we were doing it made it very more difficult than I thought and I would always mess up and have to do it over again until I did it correctly. Overall, no matter how many times I messed up I eventually got it and my prints came out the way I needed them to. Even though I had a lot of challenges I am always very proud on how much I've learned. I didn't know how to do half the things in this class and now leaving I will know correctly how to print photos, use a darkroom, make your photos interesting..etc and I will continue to have an interest in photography so all the skills I learned will be very helpful.
With all of the photos I have turned in and published they all show my strength and weaknesses as a learner because, you can tell from the first pictures I've took and prints I've made that I wasn't very good and was just introduced to it but as we kept moving into the year I kept getting better and better and you could tell from my photos and prints that I was understanding it more and was getting better and didn't give up on trying to get better.