Photography II

Overall I really do think that my experience in photography two was hugely successful. I learned how to do a lot of things independently that I didn't know how to do during photography one. In terms of the difference between Photography Two and Photography One when it came to the teacher's expectations, I think that Photography Two was a lot more fun than Photography One because the teacher allowed us more freedom but also had the Trust In us to know that we knew what we were doing in the darkroom and that we could have a little bit of Freedom with assignments because we had a photographic eye now that we could see the compositional factors within a photo. During photo one, I felt that it was very structured and I would look at the rubric and just try to follow it exactly to get a good grade but in photography Two althoughI did look at the rubric to make sure that I was doing the assignment correctly I definitely took my own type of freedom and liberty in doing the assignment in the way that I would do it to make my photos unique and special and more connected to me. I think that I also had a lot more confidence in photography Two than I did in photo one. In photo one, I didn't really know how to set up a film camera like (load it) and I didn't really know how to use Photoshop as well as I do now so knowing how to do these things allowed me to have more fun with projects and have multiple attempts to get the outcome that I thought was the best. Again, overall I would definitely say that my entire experience and the products and compositions I made during the entire second semester in photography Two were hugely successful for me personally growing as a photographer and growing my talents but also hugely successful in the quality of the pictures I produced during this class versus photography One.

I would say that there were two most difficult things for me during the span of this course, one being learning how to operate Photoshop well, and the other being just having the confidence to feel secure in myself and my capability that I knew what I was doing ( in any aspect whether in the darkroom or digital photography) and didn’t feel like I needed to check that I was doing everything correctly. Firstly, I think that I understand how to use Photoshop a lot better than I did during Photography One and during the beginning of Photography Two. I know that I could definitely use even more practice with this platform but I would say that my growth was substantial and overall I overcame this difficulty during this class. Secondly, I definitely overcame the difficulty of feeling the need to check with the teacher to make sure that I was doing everything right. I think I can definitely say that now having finished Photography Two I could say load a film camera take pictures roll the film develop the film make a contact sheet and make prints without any help, and I think that that's a huge accomplishment, especially for me. Overcoming both these challenges throughout the course definitely makes me feel like I've grown as a photographer and that my talents are so much higher than they were at the beginning of either of these classes and makes me excited for doing my independent study and photography next year because I'm confident in my photographic abilities.

I personally loved almost all of the projects we covered during photography too but I think that my favorite three because it's so hard to choose,  would have to be the ‘photo challenge,’ ‘Painting with developer,’ and ‘abstract photos.’ In the ‘Photo Challenge’ project was where there were 21 prompts and we had to take a photo for each prompt. I really like this assignment because it just gave a lot of freedom on what you could actually go out and photograph and I had a lot of fun photographing a lot of different things. The ‘Painting with developer’  project was also one of my favorites because it was something that we had never done anything like before in photo one or in photography two. ‘Painting with developer’  was exactly what it sounds like instead of developing full prints we painted highly concentrated developer on certain areas of the image that we wanted to appear. I like this project because it had a lot of freedom to it you could spray the developer on you could paint it on you could throw it on you could watch it on it really didn't matter you could do whatever you wanted. I also like this project because I had a sense of mystery to it because you couldn't see the print when you were putting the developer on so you kind of had to guess where the subjects or whatever you wanted to be shown on your composition to be shown. Finally, ‘ abstract photos’  was my final favorite because I think that I just truly excelled in this assignment. I feel like I did this project very independently and when I first heard the assignment it didn't seem like it was going to be very interesting to me because I thought it would just be close-up photos that you couldn't tell what they were. Essentially abstract photos are photos that you can't initially tell what they are but they aren't just plain and I realized that through this project. I like this project a lot because the prints that I made were truly really good and truly abstract and I feel like I hit the requirements on the rubric and the prompt for the entire project very well and had a lot of fun with it.

I honestly don't think that any project that we did during the duration of this class really stands out to me as one that I didn't really like, but I can definitely say that I enjoyed the film projects a lot more than the digital projects that we did in this class. If I had word to have to pick one assignment that I didn't really like all that much it would have to be Photoshop portrait. This assignment required us to do a self-portrait of ourselves mixed with other photos in a creative way. I just remember that my Photoshop was having some issues and my not being hugely comfortable with Photoshop at that point caused me to get very irritated so overall the project just wasn't that enjoyable. Additionally, though I'm proud of the composition I made for that assignment it's definitely not one of my best works and I definitely struggled during the process. Also, I didn't love this assignment because I don't like working with photos of myself that don't also have other people in them, I'm not a huge fan of self-portraits that I have to spend hours working on it in Photoshop. I overall just didn't think that the assignment was very engaging and I just didn't love it like I loved the other projects we did during this class.

I feel as though through taking photography one and photography two and truly loving both classes my understanding of photography (compositional and Technical aspects)  has substantially grown. I feel as though now I have an eye for things that would make a good composition in a photo. I think that because I've learned all the things that go into making a good photo like Shadows lines contrast, etc…  when I take photos now in the back of my brain there's like a voice that tells me that oh this would be a good photo because XYZ having to do with compositional aspects of the photography I'm shooting. Taking these classes has also impacted my appreciation for other photographers. I follow a lot of professional or influencer photographers on the internet and they inspire me a lot and give me some ideas on photography that I have taken during this assignment. Additionally, I spent the whole year participating in the FHS Clarion which is the art and literary magazine where a lot of people submitted photography and I noticed that I personally realized a lot of aspects in their photography that made it a good photo or a not so good photo because I had taken both photography one and photography two and understand the aspects what makes a photo conventionally good and what makes a photo appealing to me personally (this definitely helped me on the Clation). One specific artist that inspired me as a photographer that I found through social media this year is a user named ‘Abby Olson Photography,’ This user lives in Utah but she takes a lot of photos that are kind of in the triptych style and photos that are with the movement (blurry)  and I would just say that I listen to some of her techniques and really like her work and it inspired me.