Period 3 -- Critical Analysis #4

1/6/2022

Semester 1 Personal Reflection

Today you will be writing about your own work that you have made in this class.

Take some time to think about the different projects you have completed so far in class. You will pick one project that you responded to, and one project that you did not respond to. Then, you will write about your experience. Be sure to include this information in your writing:

Which project did you respond to most? Explain why. For example, if you enjoyed the self-portrait project most, explain which parts of the project resonated with you. Did this project change your way of thinking? Did it help you become a better artist? Did you learn a new skill completing this project?
Which project did you least enjoy or respond to? Explain why. What did you find challenging about this project?

Next, pick your favorite image that you have created this year, and write at least 1 paragraph analyzing the image. Describe specifics, form, and content. Finally, evaluate the image. Be sure to describe which project you shot the image for.

Next, pick your least favorite image that you have created this year, and write at least 1 paragraph analyzing the image. Describe specifics, form, and content. Finally, evaluate the image. Be sure to describe which project you shot the image for.

Your analyses must be a minimum of 4 paragraphs, with 5 sentences minimum per paragraph. Be sure to post your analysis as a comment to the correct class period blog post. Your analyses are due by MIDNIGHT tonight, 1/7/22.

8 Comments

Trinity Wilkinson

1/7/2022 08:29:41 am

The project I liked most was the self-portrait project. I felt like it allowed for a lot of creativity and was fun shooting the pictures. First, I liked how we could do an authentic self photo. I felt as though it allowed me to think about how to capture myself in a picture, which I enjoyed. Secondly, I liked the alternate ego part of the project. It let me explore pictures with creativity which was fun.

The project I least resonated with was the name game project. I feel this way for multiple reasons. One, for those of us with longer names and repeated letters it was challenging to find creative items for different letters. Two, I didn’t particularly enjoy finding random objects to form into a letter. This being said, I feel like it was a good first project because it helped me use the photography components we had just learned.

My favorite picture I took this year was the snowflake ornament picture I took for the dream project. I like this photo for multiple reasons. First, the photo has a shallow depth of field, highlighting the ornament in the picture. Furthermore, not only was the background blurred it was also darker, making the snowflake have a profound emphasis. Second, the ornaments' reflections made light hit at different angles which I liked how that looked.

My least favorite picture I took was an “i” for the name game project. For this photo I used one of the posts of my neighbor’s fence. One of the reasons I didn’t like this photo was it was very bland color wise. It had mostly white and beige in the photo and didn’t have any other colors, making it slightly unpleasant. Another reason is I don’t think I was creative enough with the photo. I feel as though if I used more creativity I could have had a better outcome.

Myrthea Vigil

1/7/2022 08:34:33 am

My favorite project that we did was the final one with the theme of dreams. I really enjoyed this project because it let my imagination run wild. It also lets me create stories out of the photos that I took. It was really interesting and fun to be able to interpret the word dream through images and figure out what it means to me. As well as figuring out how other people would respond to the images I took and how they would interpret them.

The project that enjoyed the least was the name game project. It was difficult to find things that looked similar to the letters in my name and I felt like everything was very limited. It felt like I didn’t have that much freedom to take photos of what I thought would work best. Also since I have a longer name and repeating letters I didn’t get to take a lot of pictures or find things that looked like the letter. It limited the number of photos we could take and was difficult to keep track of.

My favorite image that I took last semester was one for the dream project. It is an image of a walkway surrounded by a bunch of tall trees and bushes. The sun shining through the leaves illuminating the place up a bit. I liked this image because it felt like I was walking through a fairytale forest. It was really cool to look at because the image sort of drags you in and makes you feel as if you are in a fairytale or a magical forest. This image uses the lighting really well to give it sort of a dreamlike feeling really pulling the viewer in.

My least favorite image is one I did for the dream project. It is just a gingerbread house that looks blurry and it is upside down. I didn’t really like this image because it didn’t give off the intended effect that I wanted. I also feel like it doesn’t really embody what I think “dream” would be. It is also really blurry and looks weird. The lighting is off and just seems very plain with nothing to give it that spark.

Reagan Bishop

1/7/2022 08:45:44 am

My favorite project was the Dream Project because I got to go with what I wanted. I got to interpret what “Dream” meant to me or what I saw when I thought about it. I ended up going with a few different options. One of my favorite photos I took was of my dog, Holly. She was outside with me and I decided to take some photos of her. Some of the ones I got were pretty funny because she had her eyes closed and she looked kind of magical. It was also christmas time so I took some photos of the outdoor lights on my house. I turned the ISO down so you can see the inside of the light which is fascinating.

My least favorite project we did was the Name Game project. For some reason it didn't appeal to me that much. I think it is because we were still learning how to use our camera and I was getting as much freedom as I wanted, but that is normal in the beginning of our class. I also found the project pretty hard, and while I do like a challenge I found it hard to find the letters in my name somewhere in nature. This did teach me though how to look closer into nature and the things around me. I think if I were to retry this project I would find it more fun since I now know how to operate my camera.

One of my photos was me with my back facing the camera. I was looking at a wall that is in my backyard with a bird house in the background. I had my hair done, who doesn’t like that? And I put on one of my favorite dresses. Something about his photo was really cool to me. Nobody really will know what is going on which I think is kind of like a dream. It's also kind of mysterious and the wall in the background has a lot of depth and it's cool to look at.

My least favorite photo I took this year was probably my pointe shoe photos. I was still learning how to operate my camera and I don’t like the way the photos came out. I didn’t care for the lighting, it was too yellow and it clashed with the color of the pointe shoe. I also think that the backdrop had a role in the color of the image because it was also yellow. I think if I were to also retry this project I would change the lighting by maybe going outside and using natural light, and I would use a different backdrop.

lily warr

1/7/2022 08:46:18 am

I think I responded to the composition project the most. Finding different places to take the photos was fun. I also learned about taking pictures from different viewpoints and different ways to use the frame. I enjoyed deciding what to use as my subject and I feel like the colors popped in the final images. Taking those photos gave me a good opportunity to learn more about basic photography.
The project I enjoyed the least was probably the self-portrait one. I don’t really like taking photos of myself and it was difficult figuring out what to do for my “alter-ego” photos. I also wasn’t entirely happy with the results and I felt like I could’ve come up with better ideas for the project. My final images were mediocre and the lighting was kind of poor. I was also especially stressed about this project because I waited until the last minute to finish it.
My favorite photo I’ve taken this year was for the midterm project. It’s a picture of my cat, Walter. He is napping on one of the chairs by the pool. The lighting is natural and he takes up most of the frame. This is probably my favorite photo because of how much detail you can see. The image is sharp and you can see individual pieces of fur.
My least favorite image is the “r” for the name game project. It’s very underexposed and it’s just kind of plain. Nothing stands out very much. The photo is also a bit blurred. Compared to some of the more recent photos I have taken, this one looks awful.

Olivia Talley

1/7/2022 12:54:02 pm

I think I had a really successful first semester in Intro to Photography. I responded best to the “Self-Portrait” project because it allowed me to express the different sides of my personality. I feel like taking photos of something like that is easier than trying to describe it in words. I was able to get really creative with it, and I enjoyed capturing myself at different angles. It took some getting used to setting up the camera for a self-portrait, but I was very pleased with how the photos turned out in the end.
The project I enjoyed the least was probably the “Name Game” because I wasn’t really allowed to describe myself with it. I felt like it was more of a scavenger hunt than an artistic collection. It did, however, teach me to look more closely at my surroundings and treat everything as a possible photography subject. I found letters in nature and around my house, which made the project a sort of adventure. Although the hunt was fun, I don’t really feel like I was able to connect with my images in any way.
I really loved the photo I took of a classic vinyl record, which was for the “Composition” project. I took all of the photos at sunset, and when I placed the record in my pool, the lighting was great for a bird’s-eye-view shot. There was a deep contrast between the black record and the clear water, which really highlighted the record as the clear subject of the photo. Shooting in nature is always really interesting because of the creativity it allows for. Although the project wasn’t self-portrait centered, I think I was still able to accurately represent my personality by capturing images of one of the things I’m passionate about.
Although I enjoyed the project as a whole, some of the photos that I created for the “Dream” project required lots of labor and produced mediocre results. It was extremely difficult to make some of my photos look dreamlike without using photoshop, so I resorted to using Vaseline over the lens of my camera to blur the image. I did end up using one of them for the final project, but it took a long time to get the exposure and lighting just right. The final image was a little overexposed, but I think it added to the dream theme even more. All of these things take practice, and I know that they will help me learn and improve my photography skills in the future.

Christian Lacayo

1/7/2022 07:40:12 pm

The project that I responded to the most was the dream project. I really enjoyed coming up with ideas for what to take pictures of, because I felt like this was a project where I had a lot of creative freedom. When I decided on what to do, I thought, “what kind of theme can I have for only four pictures?” I thought maybe I could take some dreamlike photos while focusing on having a “4 seasons” theme. I was able to walk around my house and find areas that reminded me of each season. Granted that it was already about to be winter, I think my favorite photos ended up being the spring and summer photos.
My least favorite project was definitely the name game project. I think if I had done the project now, I might have liked it a bit better, but I didn’t like it very much at the time. Maybe if I had a little more time, I would have had a better result.I think the reason why was because I felt like I wasn’t able to be very creative. For the most part, I was just taking photos of practically anything that somewhat resembled a letter, which I think made the photos worse in general.
My favorite image that I created was the dream photo that I took that had a summer theme. In the end, the photo may or may not have looked somewhat fake, but I enjoyed it anyway. It wasn’t just because I liked the final result, though, but I thought it was pretty hilarious how I got to that point. I had to wear my hoodie and at first I tried to fit a ball in front of my face, but then I realized it had to go on my head. So I had to walk to the spot with a ball on my head and just a tiny hole so I could see, without glasses; it was kind of a disaster. But I really liked it anyways, even though I couldn’t make the ball look exactly like the sun, and more of just a yellow soccer ball.
My least favorite photo was probably the N photo for my name. I basically just took a photo of my camera bag because I couldn’t find anything else that really looked like a letter N, so I picked the only thing I could find. I was also getting desperate. I was running out of time, and I had to make a quick decision. But it ended up looking like an upside down U, and the frame of the letter, because it was black on black, barely showed up in the final image.

Katie Hendrick

1/7/2022 08:38:25 pm

Out of all the projects I have done in photography, I liked the dream project the most.
liked the dream project because of the amount of freedom we got. We got a lot of creative
freedom in the project and I really enjoyed it. I also think dream-like photos are more fun to
shoot because they don't have to be realistic. I think the creative freedom and the way
dream-like photos look made me enjoy this project. Dream-like projects are extremely fun to
shoot because they can be of almost anything because of how strange dreams are.
I disliked the name game project the most out of all of the projects that I have done in
photography. I disliked the name game the most because there wasn't really any freedom in the
project. I also found it extremely difficult to find all of the letters of my name due to how long my
name is and how few letters show up in nature naturally. I felt like it was a hard project to start
out on due to the little freedom that came with the project. I found it challenging to find the
photos because of how little time I already had when taking the photos on weekends.
The best photo I have taken was during the composition project of a flower. It was one of
the images in the rule-of-thirds category. I really like the way that the sunlight hits the flower and
I feel like I was mindful about where the sun would be positioned when this photo was taken and
used it to my advantage. This image made me think about lighting more because of how well it
turned out. Out of ten possible points, I would give this image a nine just because I feel like I still
have a lot of room to grow and I can most definitely take a better photo than this semester.
think the usage of the rule of thirds makes the image look even better because it isn't centered
and it really catches your eye in the corner.
The worst photo I have taken was during the name game project. I took a picture of the
trees for the letter E. Out of ten possible points I would give this image a three. I dislike this
photo because I feel like it was not good because I think it was too overexposed and the colors
were not very vibrant. I think that there needed to be more contrast in the image because the
colors were really dull. I feel like I also could have found another object to take a photo of
instead of the tree branches. Another thing I dislike about this photo is that the E is kind of hard
to see clearly.

Max Eitter

1/9/2022 06:41:30 pm

The project I responded well to the most was Project 4. Why? Well for me it was the last project before Christmas break, so I tended not to stress as much as the others, but it was also one of the most simple topics to choose: !!!DREAMS!!!. Anything can happen in your dreams whether or not you like it. From good ones to bad and from real ones to unrealistic. Dreams also go from you being one person(or character) to another. The scenes(or scenarios) also always change to being something completely different from what you were recently dreaming of. And even though your character or scene changes it can’t be left out of the story, because you saw everything happening within that dream that somehow intersected with each other. So basically for this project, you could take pictures of anything and it would somehow still be considered as a dream photo and it could still be related to all the different pictures you took. This project eventually helped me not overthink so much because I knew that there would be millions of different possibilities within a single dream. This helped me become more vigilant and to expand my thoughts more as an artist.

The project I probably respond negatively towards was the first one: Project One-Name Game. It was probably because it was my first time but nerve the less I still don’t like it(or at least how I did in it). After this project, I found out that finding letters that aren’t letters is hard. It took all day and most of my images were kinda trash, and now I feel like I could have done better. I didn’t even know how to change add contrast to my photos!!!! I guess in the end I just will always despise those photos because of the amount of time it took to make “THAT”...at least I made one good thing out of it…EXPERIENCE…and a small landscape photo(totally unrelated) but nice.

I don’t have a favorite image, and I’ll never have one. But I do have ones that I like or appreciate. One of them is a recent picture that took of Yeti, our dog, in project 4, and I was taking pictures of everything that I thought might look like an image of one of my dreams. I was walking around for like half of the day taking as many dreamy pictures as I could and Yeti happily accompanied me throughout every single photo I took. And he jumped in a bunch of them too, literally. There was one of them that I used for my final photos where it looked like he was dead and I took kind of a trippy(but dreamy) photo thanks to him. But as I was saying… my favorite photo is one that I took of him speeding down a hill right before he rammed into me and straight into my camera, which caused me to fall over. It is a blurry photo, but it is my favorite since it shows me “a summary” of a daily dose(or life) of Yeti. It

My least favorite image is one that I took during the Name Project, and it was supposed to look like an m. Now that I looked at it looks like three random lines on a fan. I can’t believe I used it for one of my final photos and I regret a lot of the photos I took during that project because I feel like I could have done better. And what I hated most about taking photos during that project was that they took all day to take, and then I had to do some of them again. I overthought that project and I took longer than I should have, but oh well…it was my first time.