Chandelier - Kill Your Darlings, Fibonacci
The Color of Sound - House of My Mind
The works stand out to me because I love the way they turned out. As a photographer, many of the things I do seems like they will work perfectly when I picture them in my mind, but they often don't turn out exactly how I expect. Sometimes thats a good thing, but other times it isn't. For these works, they turned out better than I could have expected. When I shot the first image, I was just trying to compose an interesting photograph of a pretty chandelier that I saw. When I printed this photograph in the darkroom, it turned out as an intriguing photograph that plays with light, texture, and depth of field in a way that almost makes it abstract. For me, this photograph also represents how much I have improved my darkroom printing skills since the first film project freshmen year. The second image was one of the few works that turned out exactly how I pictured it before I started working. I really love how this project turned out, I think it looks seamless and is interesting and playful. This image for me also represent attention to detail, such as the shadow of the colors on the black back of the piano, and all the Photoshop skills I have learned and honed this year.
My least successful work this year was definitely the darkroom part of the Transforming Materials project. For this project, I first shot a roll of film over the weekend that I thought might have some usable images on it. However, when I developed the film it was so thin I couldn't print any of the pictures. So, I took another roll of film, but I had to shoot at school and was uninspired, so I didn't get many good shots. Furthermore, that film didn't turn out well either, and by the time I had processed it our time for the project was almost over, so I ended up with very little time to print only two uninteresting images.
I think I have a good eye for composition. I also really love to play with detail and texture in my photographs, by zooming in on objects, and I think this has been really successful in many of my photographs.
I think I put a lot of effort into this class. I really enjoyed this year, and I worked hard on all of my project, except maybe for the darkroom part of the Transforming Materials project. I definitely spent a lot of time in Photoshop this year, asked a lot of questions and really improved my Photoshop skills. I would have liked to spend a little more time in the darkroom so I could improve my photo developing skills.
I would really like to continue to pursue photography, even if its outside of class. After two years of taking this class, most places I go I will notice something that I think would be an interesting photograph. Hopefully I can get my own DSLR camera and pursue photography outside of school. I would also really like to pursue more projects, like my House of My Mind project, that mix photography and crafts, constructing art objects instead of just photographs.
I think working in Photoshop has definitely taught me patience. I also think knowing how to do basic things in Photoshop is a skill that might come in handy in other classes, or even after school in the working world. I think this class as a whole has also taught me a lot about the process of creating something to present to a group, and about how to critique your own and others' work, which are skills than can be used outside of the art studio.
