Last Day Reflection

Coming into photography class I was immediately intrigued by the countless ways that you can find a photo artistic. Something about capturing a scene on a roll of film or on a digital memory device can show many different components of beauty no matter what it is that was captured. What some may consider a bad photo, someone else could view as a masterpiece and that was what really got me interested in capturing my own little pieces of beauty. And I would try to match the criteria of the project while still keeping true to what I thought was a "good" picture. The first few days of class is when I learned the most. Before this class, my comprehension of all the weird buttons and abbreviations on a camera were at about a 20%. After the first couple days of class that percentage jumped up to a good 70% with the teachings of f-stop, ISO, shutter speed, exposure, etc. I think it was called the rule of thirds, that improved my pictures a lot, then later really thinking about the lighting and how I could capture things from different angles changed how I took pictures. And then I also learned about the history of cameras with the pinhole and looking at the camera obscura pictures (which I still need to try). That was actually really surprising to me how the outside world can be projected on the wall from a tiny hole, still blows my mind. I found out that I am more interested in abstract, older looking photos than digitally enhanced, crazy photos on steroids. Sometimes the most simple pictures are the best. I learned that I am not good at being a typical photographer that strives to find the perfect lighting and conditions to make a clear and crisp photo. No. I like trying different settings that one wouldn't expect to try to give the photo an abstract effect that can come naturally from the way the picture is captured. So I guess I could say that I learned that I like to try all kinds of things even if they look bad, they can still look good in a way. When we had to find a film camera I was excited to use film because it was something I had never done before. I bought a lens for the camera that I borrowed from my uncle and when we got our first roll of film I was determined to get some pictures to turn out good. I liked the mystery of not being able to see your photos right after you take them. Also, the whole process of going into the dark room and then developing was nice because it was like you were doing the whole process by yourself, they were your very own photos for sure! So I really wish that we could have had the option to do some of the projects in film, but I still learned a ton from taking digital photos and editing them. My struggle was being able to take photos that I really truly liked. I feel like my knowledge of capturing photos isn't really that good. Even though I can see what I want in my head, I'm not able to go out and capture that with a camera. So I make up for that with trying to be unique. I'm going to try to take photos in the future that can set me apart from anyone else using a camera. Maybe after taking a lot of photos I'll finally find that way of capturing scenes the way I want, maybe I won't, who knows. Even though I wasn't able to get the great pictures that I wanted, I did conquer one thing and that is being able to use the very basics of that complex, crazy amazing photo editing software that is photoshop. A few years ago I saw it open on one of my friends computer and it just looked way too hard to even try. Well, now I can edit photos in ways that I didn't know you could and I will continue to use photoshop, so thanks to this class, I can carve pumpkins digitally or switch peoples faces...lol. I really learned a lot from this class and it was fun too.