Thursday, June 12, 2014

Assignment I Am Most Proud Of

Who Am I Video

I am most proud of the "Who Am I?" assignment. This assignment gave me the chance to show everyone who I really was and what I loved to do. Again, I cannot emphasize enough that I love how this assignment came along with a lot of freedom. Having room to do what you want instead of what is assigned by a teacher, is a great feeling. The "Who Am I?" project was my way of showing to people how much I love softball. I described myself with something that I do everyday. I described myself without writing a biography. I made it interesting. Which brings me to how it impacted my learning: talking about yourself is hard without being boring. This assignment gave me the freedom to make a movie describing myself. If we had had to write a one page summary of who we were, it would have been a totally boring project. With the video component and the fact that there weren't really any guidelines, it was easy to make, and it certainly wasn't boring. Overall, having freedom with this assignment gave me room to do what I wanted with it, which is why it's the assignment I am most proud of.

Most Memorable Experience

From this semester, my most memorable experience was the free-choice assignment. I loved this assignment because there were no guidelines. We could photograph whatever we wanted to. There were so many things I wanted to photograph when I was doing other assignments. This assignment allowed me to photograph what was interesting to me. It also allowed me to photograph anything I wanted. This assignment gave me a better perspective on the compositional strategies because I knew that I couldn't just photograph a book and say that it was free-choice because I like reading. I had to make the photograph interesting. This assignment also allowed me to use perspectives I hadn't tried, like background included. I used this compositional strategy because I had never used it before. We had had assignments that were focused on one compositional strategy like point of view. I knew all about point of view so that one was easy, but with the freedom of the free-choice project, I could try new things that I had never used before. Overall, I loved this assignment because of the freedom that came along with it.

Monday, June 2, 2014

Who Am I?

I am a girl with a passion for many things. Those things include family, friends, softball, volleyball, and just living. I play softball year-round, and I love the sport. It gives me so much joy, but there is always room for failure, which makes it 10 times more intense. My goal in life is to have a happy, healthy family with lots of friends playing the sports I love. I have this already. As a teenager, I have everything I could ever want. That's hard to get. I have thought about playing volleyball or softball in college, but I realized that that's not what I want to do. Even though my parents spend a lot of money on softball and volleyball for me, I just don't have the desire to play at that high of a level. I'm sure I would enjoy it, but for me, it's just too high stakes. I want people to know that I am a hardworking, dedicated person who spends lots of time trying to make things perfect. I'm what you would call a perfectionist, so if I make a mistake it turns my world on it's side. That is one of the reasons I don't want to play sports in college. I am currently working on trying not to overreact to small things like an error on the softball diamond, but it's hard to do. I have been taught since birth to go all out, use everything you've got. I've been expected to give the best result possible, if not the perfect result. Being a teenager is hard. Parents pressuring you to do well, balancing multiple sports with your homework and class schedule. Sometimes I think I can't do it. But, at the end of the day, everything turns out alright.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Culture Clash

The purpose of this project was to create a Clash of Cultures by creating your own Photo montage, combining images from Beijing, China and Yarmouth, Maine, USA, to further develop your Photoshop knowledge and skills, to create a "surreal" landscape by montaging a variety of photographs, and to know, use, and understand the Four Collage Techniques to in your Photo Montage: Juxtaposition/fragmentation, Point of View, Scale Change, and Overlapping. I learned lots from this project about photoshop. I learned that there are many different tools that do many different things. It's such a cool application! I also learned what a montage was and how to create one. It was difficult to not just drop things on there. It was difficult to make things look unordinary, but ordinary at the same time. I dealt with it by looking at some examples of previous culture clashes. I changed my background many times so that the other images would make sense. Overall, it was a fun, but challenging project and I'm glad I had the chance to do it.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Free-Choice, Andrea

The sweet aroma of blueberries,
I take it out of the oven.
It takes all my self-control to not eat it right then and there.
Blueberry pie.
The most delicious sweet out there.
BLUEBERRIES!

Monday, May 19, 2014

Culture Clash Montage

Juxtaposition-the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect

Point of View-a particular attitude or way of considering a matter

Scale Change-the difference in how much something is moved or changed

Overlapping-the placement of objects over one another in order to create the illusion of depth

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Inspiring Digital Artist, Marcin Jakubowski

The purpose of this project was to become familiar with 5 accomplished digital artists as well as to see what is possible in the world of digital art.


Monday, April 28, 2014

Hobbies, Andrea


This bat, my baby,
at the plate, waiting for that perfect, juicy pitch
to smash to the outfield bringing in two runs.
The best feeling,
hitting it right in the sweet spot.
That game ending catch,
bringing a college scout to watch you play.
Softball is life.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Food, Andrea


I opened the fridge to heat up some leftovers, and I moved this lemon off to the side. I closed the door and prepared my dinner. Then I opened the fridge to get myself a drink and saw this lemon again. Remembering that I had a photo assignment, I took it out of the bag thinking: "This is going to be the best shot I've ever taken." It was perfectly cut and I had always seen lemons together like this on television or in magazines. I snapped the picture and came out with my favorite picture that I've taken all year.

Monday, March 31, 2014

Creative Portraits


The girl with the top hat,
asked me,
"Take a picture of me in front of that!"
I told her to strike a pose,
and that she did.
She couldn't quite hold it together,
but, being the amazing photographer that I am,
I got the shot
and it looks amazing.


Saturday, March 29, 2014

Selfie


The goal of this project was to create the perfect selfie. We had props we could use and different places to go so that we could take the perfect selfie. I think this is an excellent selfie because my partner and I are wearing sunglasses which makes the picture slightly more interesting. I am holding the camera at an interesting angle as well. I tilted it ever so slightly so that it would look more like a casual photo instead of one for an art project.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Portrait Techniques


Introduce a Prop: adding a prop can enhance the photo by creating another point of interest. It allows you to photograph an extra layer of depth.


Obscure Part of Your Subject: by not showing all there is to show about your subject, the viewer can use some imagination, but can also help the viewer focus on the part that isn't obscured.


Take Unfocused Shots: lack of focus can create photographs with emotion, mood, and interest.


Frame Your Subject: by framing, you can draw attention to one element of an image, and it gives an image depth as well as draws the eye to the subject and not what's around it.


Famous Portraits


Richard Avedon photographed portraits. He took pictures that brought us closer to the great and famous. He normally has them in front of a white backdrop with no props or anything. I chose this photograph because this man's gaze is so piercing and attention-getting. His head is also at an angle that makes you think about what he is looking at and his emotions.


Arnold Newman developed an approach of portrait photography that is widely influential today. I chose this photograph because I liked how the man was off-center and his face has an interesting expression on it. It made me think about who he is/was and where he is/was. It was just a really interesting photograph that caught my attention.


Annie Leibovitz worked for several different magazines. She photographed many things including portraits. I chose this photograph because it was extremely eye-catching. Her facial features are so sharp and defined that it makes it look like she's posing when she's in a casual position. I just really loved this photograph because she looks so perfect.


History of Photography


I learned many things from doing this project. One thing I learned was that photography goes all the way back to the 5th century when the idea of camera obscura was first developed. It amazes me that people were thinking of that kind of thing so early in time. Another thing I learned about was the Lumiere Brothers. They were very interesting in that they developed the first color film with their invention called the Cinematographe. I also learned about Eadweard Muybridge. He was the first person to capture movement in a photograph. He proved that all four of a horse’s legs are off the ground at the same time. He was a really interesting person to research. All in all, I learned lots from these presentations and I hope to learn even more about the history of photography.



Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Shadow


I was having some trouble finding shadows in my house when I found this. I have walked past this sign at least 500 times and never really noticed it. I saw the shape of the sign which made me think the shadow would be a good one if I got it just right. I turned off one of the lights, and I got the shadow I had been thinking about, the perfect heart. It made me appreciate this sign instead of regarding it as "just another thing my mom hung on the wall." The sign is a decoration, a comfort for the people that walk in my home, and now a sign that has helped me on a school assignment.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Stay Stong

The purpose of this project was to strengthen your creative problem-solving skills so that you are looking at things in a different way, to find letters of the alphabet in everyday objects to create a word, and to become familiar with basic photoshop tools.

One of the things I learned as a result of doing this project was if you look at things in a certain way you will find interesting subjects to photograph. Some of those interesting things could include letters so that you can spell words. Another thing I learned as a result of doing this project was that literally anything can be interesting to photograph, it's the angle that matters. For example, some of my letters were ladders or door frames. That proves my point that everything anything can be interesting to photograph no matter what it is. The final thing I learned as a result of doing this project was that photoshop can either really enhance your image or really destroy your image. We learned about different tools that make our photographs better, but if we went too overboard, then the photographs would look bad. Photoshop is a great tool, but you have to know how to use it for it to be effective. Overall, I really liked this project, and as you can see, I learned a lot.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Unusual Perspectives


For this assignment, we had to take pictures at unusual perspectives, hence the title, but I really wanted to make a very, very unusual perspective photo. To make this photo, I parted the bananas so that you could see the apple. I did this because I thought it would be that very interesting and unusual perspective photo I wanted to make. It's unusual because you wouldn't normally look at an apple like this. It turned out exactly the way I wanted it to, very unusual.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Composition:Unusual Perspective


This photo is unusual perspective because I am zooming in close on the starfish and I'm getting the sand dollar and shell in there too. Also, I chose to get at an angle so that you wouldn't see just the top of the starfish and then the shells. That would make it boring, so I got at an angle that made it interesting.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Shapes, Organic and Geometric

In this photograph, I used the rule of thirds. You can see this because the objects are off-center. I took this photograph because it reminded me of my summer trips to the beach with friends.


Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Motivation

I enjoy photographing many things. The thing I most enjoy photographing is nature, especially when it’s around sunrise or sunset. I like the way it looks because it’s calm and peaceful, especially if it’s only nature and there isn’t a person in the picture. I also enjoy photographing animals. I love to photograph my dog. She’s always moving, so the pictures I take have action which make them more interesting.

My parents motivate me to do well in whatever I do, and I don’t want to disappoint them, so my parents motivate me to be successful. Another thing that motivates me to be successful is the satisfaction I get after taking a good photograph. The fact that I love photography motivates me to be successful as well. The teacher can help me learn to take better photos. By learning to take well-rounded photos will help me be successful.