Period 6 -- Critical Analysis #10

1/27/2020

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.

For your final paragraph, take some time to write about your Dream project. Explain how your final images pertain to the theme word of DREAM. Explain how your images are cohesive.

Your analyses must be a minimum of 5 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 on Wednesday, 1/29/2020.

Chloe Clark

1/29/2020 10:57:25 am

Personally, I enjoyed the relational portrait project the most. Taking the family portraits gave me a chance to spend more time with my family and have a fun time taking pictures of them. Taking portraits of strangers, despite not being easy, was definitely a good thing for me to do. It forced me to branch outside of my comfort zone and do something that I normally wouldn’t. This project as a whole made me think more about the backgrounds and setting of portraits. I realized that although portraits are mainly focused on the person or subject, the background is just as important for completing the look that you might be trying to achieve.

The composition project was probably the one that I responded to the least. For this project, I chose to photograph a little toy block that I was given as a child. It means a lot to me because not only does it have my name and initials on it, but it also has my birthdate and weight as a baby. It was a struggle for me to find different ways to photograph the block that emphasized frame and rule of thirds. I found it challenging to take pictures of my object and not have them look basically the same.

My favorite image that I have created this year is one of my self-portraits. It is an image of me wearing sunglasses on a bright, happy day. This image was meant to represent me on the days where I am very happy and in a good mood. I enjoy this picture because it embodies exactly the kind of image that I was trying to produce for this project. It helps me with this project in saying that although it seems like I am very happy and excited, the alter ego side of this project contradicts that.

My least favorite image is from the first project that we started the year off with, the name game. The image is of a green water hose that is laying on the rocks. It is supposed to look like a C, and it represents the first C in my last name. Although it does indeed look like a C, I think that I could have been much more creative in finding an object that resembled closely to a letter C. Concerning the rest of the project, I felt that most of my other images were more creative than this C. For example, I arranged a blanket to look like the letter K and I felt like that idea was more creative than the water hose. Maybe if I had thought about it more and not used the first thing that came to mind, I would’ve had a much more creative idea.

My dream project was also a challenge. I ended up using photographs that I took of my little brother. We went up our street to a small property where a house had burned down and took pictures around there. I used a mirror to take pictures through and I had that idea from a dream that I had one time where I was trapped in a mirror. That is one of the dreams that I still remember quite vividly to this day, so I thought I would want to recreate that in the form of images.

Isabella Grossman

1/29/2020 11:18:23 am

Since beginning Digital art I have completed various projects that have challenged me artistically and forced me to make compositional choices as well as manage time and effort efficiently. I was most stimulated by project 3a: Self Portraiture. With this project I had a clear image of what I wanted to create, more specifically with my alternate ego portrait. This image was consuming in the sense that I had to put in a lot of thought into how I wanted to present myself as well as the factors that I needed to consider to make this possible. The images were taken in colored lighting and I had to set up my camera with a timer and a tripod in front of me and I struggled with finding a position in which I could be comfortable and natural in and still take a quality image. I also had to consider my clothing, makeup and hair for the images I took that would reflect a side of myself I don’t present daily. This image taught me new skills such as organizing a shoot and composing an image in a specific way and what methods I can use to go about it as efficiently as possible.

Throughout the school year the image I believe I least responded to was the Name Game project with which I struggled with desperately. My first issue was that my name was extremely large and trying to find different shots for the same letters was something difficult especially since I was only shooting images inside and around my home. Looking back and reflecting on this project there are things I could have done differently in order to have completed the project more to my standards however I challenged myself mentally trying to find these letters in random spaces and shapes.

My favorite image that I have taken so far this year has been one of the two of my alternate ego self portraits. I spent a good amount of time photoshopping and editing the photo to reach the desired effects I originally wanted in my image. I editing all of the highlights in the image to have little sparkles which contrasted nicely against my background color which was pink. I enjoyed playing with saturation and colors in this image to make it brighter and manipulate the tones to reach my desired effect. The image is a close up of my face which captures the makeup and sequins I wore on my face as well as the details of my entire head. I liked playing with the depth of field to really focus on my face and highlight my personality or “alter ego”.

My least favorite image I have edited and submitted this year was an image shot for my Familiar Portrait project which was taken of my smaller cousins at a family event during thanksgiving. This image was poorly thought through and was taken more “in the moment” so as to capture the climate of my holidays. The image was shot from the inside of a house while 5 boys stood outside playing and making funny faces. The image was taken in low light which makes for something that seems like an “unclean image” to me. The quality overall of the photo is quite poor. While I was editing the image I struggled with fixing the color and light sliders and finding balance that made the image look as I wanted it to.

My most recent project, the Dream project, has been very fun to work with. On two separate occasions I baked two seperate cakes and placed them in ways I thought reflected a dream or a scene from a movie like Alice in Wonderland or stories and films like it. I placed pieces of cake in my bed and compositied them into one image as well as repeated the same process in a kitchen with a piece of cake on the stove. In hindsight I very much would have wanted to explore more ideas with the cake however I did end up putting a piece of cake in the pool to make it more surreal which was my desired effect. The images all come together into one as they all are centered around the idea of cake which, for me, is associated with childhood and fun and innocence. The images I though make a viewer question what my intentions were by putting a cake in a “weird and awkward place”.

In conclusion, I have enjoyed this course and I have enjoyed exploring a different art form, getting out of my comfort zone to create something other than an oil painting. This course has also taught me the importance of patience and determination as well as creativity. I can't wait to apply these techniques to my paintings in the upcoming weeks.

Ben Barlow

1/29/2020 11:58:43 am

The project I most enjoyed thus far in the year was the composition project because I was able to photograph what I enjoy, cars. Since we had to pick one object in particular to focus on, I enjoyed finding all the best angle of the sports car I chose. I take pictures of plenty of cars, but this project really helped me analyze how I am taking the shots and how I could make them better. I think through this project, what I learned about cars is applicable to whatever I am taking pictures of, and overall made me a better artist. I think where I learned the most however, was observing my focal length and how shallow I discovered my depth of field was. Upon processing all my images for this project, I learned that many were not usable because I had not taken the time to see if my focus had been setup correctly.

For me, the project I found the hardest was the dream project. Personally, I find it hard to complete assignments when the task is very open ended. Although I spent a large amount of time contemplating where I might take my pictures, it proved to be rather futile in the end. Taking 200 images was a lot for a project such as this and since I came up with many ideas, I had to scrape many of them that I didn’t like. Even though the final result turned out fine, I didn’t like going through that painstaking process of judging my many ideas, looking to see which fits best to the subject at hand.

My favorite image I created last semester was in the self portrait project. Unfortunately, when I was assigned with the second part of the self portrait project I was heading to a friend’s ranch a couple hours away from San Antonio. Out at the ranch there was little to do other than hunt game, and I was under the impression that I would’ve never gotten the chance to take any pictures. However, after hiking for several miles with a camera and tripod through the Texas hill country, I found some rather beautiful spots to take pictures. Out of all of the ones I shot, my favorite was when I was trying to run through a creek with scenic autumn trees filling up the background. I thought it was shallow enough for me to run through, but after about fifteen feet my shoes were soaked and I had to walk all the way back to the ranch house.

My least favorite image I took was recently, in my dreams project. The one I am talking about takes place right by the side of an active interstate. The lighting in the frame is fair, although you are unable to see what is happening underneath in the tunnel. Most of the image is obscured by foliage which I originally thought was interesting, but looking back on it, I regret that I didn’t find a better spot in that area. The image is perfectly in focus, although the audience is unable to see anything that is occurring on the highway. There is graffiti covering the wall and trash littered all over the ground. This image isn’t particularly bad, all art is subjective in the eye of the beholder, but I feel that I could’ve gotten a much better shot pertaining to the theme if I would’ve kept on looking in that sketchy area.

For my dream project, all of my images were cohesive because of many shared factors among them. For example, in many of them a wide angle lense was used to give the illusion that it was taken from a person’s perspective, as if they were in a dream. In others, I used composites to illustrate funny observations I had made when contemplating the nature of dreams. Multiple composites of myself are seen to illustrate the fact that everything we see in our dreams are versions of ourself, each character encountered is just a facet of our personality. Many of the images seen are actually just reinterpretations of dreams I have experienced. One example of this is the image in the backseat of a car with two of myself looking behind, as I often used to have a dream where I was helpless in a moving vehicle with no one to save me. Another example would be the empty interstate, as many times I have dreams where I am lost in an uninhabited world with no one to help me. The dream project was by far my most technical project, as I tried my hardest to create the most meaningful pictures which symbolizes many meaningful stories.

Ben

1/29/2020 12:02:55 pm

symbolize*

Flint Rose

1/29/2020 12:05:05 pm

For me the project that resonated most with me was project 4, dreams. My favorite part of photography is photo editing, this project was the first one for me that really embraced photo editing and gave me creative freedom. I made some of my best photos in this project, and I think this is because I had total freedom to make whatever crazy surreal photos I want. I did not like project 3b, portraits, for the exact reason. I feel like 3a had more creative freedom then 3b. In 3b it was very strict on what you would capture and how, Shallow depth, strangers/family, etc. That made me feel like it was a lot more of a chore to take my photos then with 4.
My favorite photo I took was project 4 number 8. The photo shows three versions of me, one laying down on an old couch dead, one on the bottom of the dumpster dead, and a final me standing over the bodies staring at the camera. The lighting is dark, and the dumpster frames the shot. Because there are three different subjects the amount of negative space is less in any other self portrait. There is a dutch angle which gives an uneasiness to the photo.
The shot came from a nightmare I had where every time I died I came back to life only to be killed again, the nightmare hurt. This inspired the idea to make a shot of me killing me over and over again.The surface story is pretty simple, this man killed two people and is hiding them in a dumpster. You can also see it as a metaphor for killing yourself. The photo is unsettling to look at, it makes you uncomfortable and a little sad, and I love it for that reason.
My least favorite photo is project 1 number 4. The photo shows a chair, on the ground, unfocused, which no other details, and it kinda looks like an N. The photo has enough negative space to fill a pool, and the subject is hard to tell, I intentionally took a photo of it. I hate this photo, a lot. To me it is important to tell a story in anything you make, and pictured here is an unfocused chair. There is zero story being told here, zero feeling from it, and zero effort put into it. With my other words I atleast made them a little interesting to look at. This is the worst thing I have ever recorded into an SD card, and I took 25 minutes taking photos of a grape.
I had many different ideas for dreams, one of which was going with self portraits. I decided that would be a common element that would restrict me the least, and I was right. I was able to take photos of some of the absurdist ideas I had going around my brain, all with the common element of me. I think that dreams can be absurd and crazy, really not pertaining to one theme, your never gonna have a dream about going to work and everything is normal. That's what inspired my choices in this project, the strange and absurd.

Nathan Harrison

1/30/2020 07:02:16 pm

The project that I liked the most so far was the relational part of the portraiture project. It was fun to take pictures of my family and even though it was weird and strange at first, strangers. I’m not really an easy person to approach and start a conversation instantly, so going out and asking strangers if they could be photographed was a new experience for me.

The project that I dislike the most so far was the self-portraits part of the portraiture project. From past experiences and previous photos, I am not photogenic. I can never really put up the best face for a camera, so I try my best to avoid photos, but if I have to I will join in photos. The only pictures I’ll get into are group photos because the chances of someone in the picture also not being photogenic are probably high in my opinion.

My favorite image so far this year has to be the photo of my tennis racquet and tennis ball in front of Ewing Dorm. The focus on the center where the ball lies and the middle of the racquet is really amplified by the perfect shining of the sun light. The background in my opinion is just the way it needs to be. It’s well balanced with the building, sky, hill, and school bus as they provide the adequate colors for the photo.

My least favorite image so far is the tape measure “a” from the letter name project. I just don’t know what I was thinking at the time I was shooting the photo. What gave me the idea that the tape measure resembled an “a”. Plus the angle of the photo in my opinion is just very poor. The negative space in the photo was alright, but is just drowned out by the non photogenic item in the middle.

Because of movies and TV shows, when the word “dream” came into my mind when discussing the project, I instantly thought about something like a nightmare when you’re half conscious. Especially nightmares where you saw a scary figure or multiple figures that haunted you before and will come back to retain its/their revenge. Faint Flashbacks were also something that I thought of when brainstorming for the project. It was those flashbacks shown on TV where the memories were faint and mostly non understandable with most of what you could see was shined out by a blinding light.

Abby Muir

2/9/2020 05:51:48 pm

One project that I really enjoyed doing was the strangers project. It took me such a long time to get comfortable asking people for a photograph, but once I did it was a lot of fun.It really brought me out of my shell and allowed me to meet some interesting people.
My least favorite project was probably the letter project. I didn’t have much photography skill, and I wasn’t taking my time with it. The end result was something I’m not super happy with, but it was a learning experience.
My favorite photograph was probably one from my strangers shoot. In particular, the lady with the glasses and red lipstick. It’s very vibrant, and the background was great. I also like that the smile is genuine, since I got it when she was laughing about something. Overall, I just think it’s a really happy and positive photograph.
My least favorite photograph was the ‘M’ one from the letter shoot. It’s not creative and I definitely could have done a better job finding a good background and better subject instead of just wood logs in an m shape. It doesn’t have much color at all and is probably what I would describe as the vanilla of photos. Pretty simple and honestly boring.
For me, the dream project was difficult. I had a hard time finding photos that made sense and that fit together when it was done. I turned it in late for that reason. I wanted it to be really good, but instead got “photographers block” you could say. I was stuck for awhile, but I just started to look at the simple things. No need to spend all day setting up props and a background, but something you would find every day. I wanted to make it look normal at first, but then have something be off, just like normal dreams.

Kellen Dukatnik

2/24/2020 09:53:24 pm

The project I responded to the most was the self portrait project. This project made me want to go all out because of the availability of the resources I had to create the photos. I was also able to incorporate my pet into the shot which made creating the image a little more enjoyable. The second part of this project allowed me to incorporate one of my hobbies into my photos which was hunting.

The project I enjoyed the least had to be the relational portrait project. This project had a great objective, but the amount of people I asked to take a picture of, vs the amount of people that actually agreed to take pictures were far from close. Majority of the people I asked could not let me take their photo, especially employees at stores.

My favorite image I created this year has to have been the one where I made my alter ego. The image depicted me reading a book with a cat on my lap. In the image I essentially tried to make myself look like a stereotypical bookworm. Overall the image came out great, I used lighting that made it seem cozy inside of my house as well as a reading lamp to add to the bookworm effect.

The least favorite photo I have created this year was my composition photo. In this photo I used my bat and my mom’s car in order to create a photo that had a frame. The photo itself was edited nicely. The whole idea to make that photo was rather boring and lackluster. The image consisted of my baseball bat laying on my baseball bag, while inside the trunk of my moms suv. The setup for this was executed poorly, and looked completely artificial, causing it to be my least favorite.

For my dream project I incorporated things I’ve experienced in my dreams. In my dreams I constantly experience falling off or crashing a car or a four wheeler. To recreate these images I used compositing to recreate the falling effect left on me by the four wheelers. I showed myself on a hill falling off my four wheeler while in actuality I was sitting on a target I used for my bow. For my second photo I set up two cars facing each other either their high beams on in order to make it look like a car crash was going to happen.

Isaiah Rettig link

2/26/2020 12:08:32 pm

The project I enjoyed the most was the portrait project. Though I didn’t like the idea of asking strangers, it allowed me to take some unique photos filled with color. Some of my favorite photos were from the candy and plush stores. I may be more open to asking strangers for photos. I think this helped me become a better artist as it has some of my best photos yet. A skill I learned was learning how to ask people to position themselves for a photo.
The project I didn’t respond to was composition. Even though I did procrastinate on this one, I doubt reshooting would make the photos that much more interesting. While most projects introduced a new challenge or gimmick I felt this one was pretty tame. At the beginning of projects I brainstorm creative ways I want to do the shots and with the broad prompt I didn’t have any idea where to go. The most challenging part was thinking of what to take photos of.
My favorite photo is one I took with no preparation and was completely spontaneous. While my family was hanging out at my grandpa's house I had my camera out to take some photos of my grandpa. After I had finished that I was holding the camera and just playing around with it. My brother kept joking around at me being a photographer and would pretend to pose. He would of course shy away everytime I actually pointed the camera at him. One of the times I did try I managed to get his photo before he turned away. I decided to keep the photo because I didn’t come out bad despite how quickly it was taken. On the day we were touching up our images I noticed that this was one of the most focused and clean photos I took. The contents are very simple: it’s my brother Aaron pretending to pose for a camera and being himself.
Even though I said I like the name game the least I can’t bring myself to dislike the photos. The behind the scenes was fun as I learned how to cram for photography. I would say that my least favorite pictures I took were during the Name Game. Though I enjoyed the project looking back now, the photos have neither the creativity or history as my more recent ones. With the composition I got to make my own makeshift setup, during portraits I got to talk to strangers and direct and during dreams I got to have fun in photoshop. The Name Game was just going around and looking for letters which was a good beginner project but doesn’t hold up to what we are doing now.
For the dream project some of the main themes I have are indecisiveness and worry. In one of my favorites pictures I am surrounded by a pile of hoodies I have all of them being the same one. No matter what I choose it will all end up being the same. Another photo has me looking in distress as my bed is filled with folded clothes yet to be put away. I went into the project with the theme of ‘too much to do’ in my head. The other ones are mainly just supposed to be weird. The family eating an invisible meal is odd and the only reason I am photoshopped multiple times into it is because I couldn’t get more subjects.

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Period 6 -- Critical Analysis #10

Semester 1 Personal Reflection

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