Reflections on a Semester

     Over the semester, I learned a ton about photography! Thank You Mr. Hohman!! Even on the first day, I learned you don't even need a camera to take a picture, you could use a can. You could use your room, and control the light to capture an image. Later, I learned how to use a film camera. This was interesting personally because in my generation we saw the transition from film to digital, and it's hard to just imagine getting good images on that roll without being able to delete them immediately or take hundreds at a time. I learned how the shutter speed and aperture could change your image, focus in on things closer or take quick action shots. I was shown a whole new world that you can communicate through, words without letters, and feelings with just one image. You can see ordinary things in such a different way than you normally would have.
     I learned about myself, I am more of a perfectionist, and I had to teach myself not to immediately reach for the delete button because some of the images were exceptional just on their own for different reasons. A blurred picture, or something that maybe didn't seem pretty to the eye, could create a beautiful picture.
     I wish that we could have spent more time with film, and taking/editing self-portraits. I understand that film is getting expensive and we don't have all that much time. But personally I would have liked to have more time in between projects so I could take the time to go out of my life and search the area.
     I struggled with being happy with my original images, I wasn't always happy with the way they turned out on the camera, and spent a lot of time retaking image after image. What I didn't realize is that it was easier to take the image and improve it with photo shop, and that I was learning, they weren't meant to look perfect. I also struggled with some of the later projects that we did in photo shop, it just took me longer amounts of time and my images didn't work out, the stereographic images, and the clones, as well as our levitation images I often had to find a way to work with what I had, and being a perfectionist, that didn't make me happy. I also often felt rushed, missing so much school and class and just time in itself due to swimming and my... (injury?) it made it harder to catch up with everyone.
     Conquering is a thing of life. I am hard on myself, and this is one class that I was never happy with my imperfections, especially when they were blown up and being edited on the computer. I push myself to be the best that I can do, but this is one class that you could plainly see, that I wasn't as good as the professionals. Mainly what I had to conquer was mental, to face the fact that I was learning and not everything was going to turn out perfect like I imagined. Physically, I had to make time to get my images, often they were taken after dark because of my work and swimming schedule. It taught me a great deal of time management because it is hard to procrastinate projects like the ones we did in class.

Levitation

Blur The Focus

Light, Sun, Day in Night

This project was a struggle for me, I wasn't ever satisfied with my images. I ended up taking three rounds of images to get some that I was satisfied with, after tears and frustration I just decided that I would be fine and settled. I selected a few that seemed to turn out okay, once they were edited over to black and white I was a little happier with them and found a few keepers. I learned you can't order or control everything, sometimes you just have to wait watch and try to capture... especially when your brother wont stop moving. This was a very fun project and I'm glad I could salvage a few photos.