Photo 1

My overall experience in photography 1 was great! Over the half year call I learned many different techniques and tools that have enhanced my photography skills greatly. During the first half of the class I learned not only what makes a strong photo thats is more than just snapping a picture, I learned how to make a photo more interesting and different. How to use leading lines to help draw the viewers eyes to the parts of the image that I wanted them to be at. I learned more and more about what makes a strong image by exploring the 18 different compositional rules and tecnighnes of photograph. Once I had taken strong images I learned the different ways I could edit them to change how they looked and to get them to be an image that I liked. During this class I learned how to use the photos app to edit different parts of photo, for example changing the brilliance and exposed to create a more rich image. Next, the class moved into photoshop, a place where I was completely unfamiliar with. This part of the class was super cool because I was able to (with some struggle) change an image and either remove, add or overlay things. I really liked this part of the class because although it was somewhat challenging I was able to learn things that I had always wanted to be able to do. Like editing a lead rope out of a picture so it looks like the horse is standing alone. Even though the class is coming to an end I will continue to use the tools and techniques that I learned to make my photos even better.

For the second half of the class we moved into the dark room, this I had no experience with at all, from taking film photos to how to develop photos. This portion of the class started with looking at different black and white photographers and what made there images strong and interesting without the use of color. I found that I really liked the way a black and white photo looked almost more than one with color. As we began to work with our film cameras and developing film/images I realized I liked it even more. Developing an image was a challenge for me, not in the sense that it was hard but in the way that I had an idea of what I wanted to image to look like and couldn't always get it to look that way. I learned how to change different things like the f-stop and using filters to help get the image to look the way I wanted it to. This part of the class was also time consuming, which causes me to spend even more time in the art room! Overall I really enjoyed taking photography 1, it was a different side of art that I hadn't really explored yet.

The most challenging part of this class was the photoshop piece, I found this challenging because it took me a while to really understand how to use each part of photoshop. I found it frustrating because I would do something that worked the last time and try and do it again and it wouldn't work, I think this was just because of my lack of knowledge. One thing that was also challenging was finding things I wanted to take photos of during the time I had to take photos. I do a lot of the same things everyday so it was hard to take interesting photos of things that were different because I didn't do things that I wanted to take photos of. I also had to work a lot with managing my time because throughout the time in the dark room I would have to come back to finish or develop so I had to juggle working on other projects along with completing my photos in the quality that I wanted them in by the dead line.

Along with learning to use many new tools and techniques I also learned the importance of critiquing and analyzing the work that I have done and taking those thoughts and transferring them to the next project. I also learned how to construct evaluations of others work that fit a differing set of criteria. Before this year I would make something and not ever look back on it to see what I could improve or change in the next one. This year that changed, (mostly because I didn't have a choice) with each project and photo I took I had to look back and reflect on what I had created and where I felt it fell on a rubric. I think that this really helped me grow as a photographer because it made me realize what I could change to make it better, the idea that I could also change the way I was developing an image to change different parts of it. For example, if I made and image that was to dark or to light I could change the aperture to attempt to fix that on my next image, or add a filter to make the image even stronger. When learning how to reflect on my own work and others it helped me focus on what I needed to improve to get better. When looking at others work it helped me see what other people interpreted the prompt as and the different ways that they chose to use the materials. The skill of criticizing my photos is something that I will definitely caring on throughout my years of photography to help improve.