Artist Statement

In my photography 1-2 portfolio you will find many artworks that I have completed over the date of August 28, 2008 to May 7, 2009. These are the names of the artwork that you will find in my digital photography portfolio; Compositional trick #1: Rule of Thirds, Compositional trick #2: Leading Lines, Compositional trick #3: Macro, Compositional trick #4 Extreme Angles, Compositional trick #5: Cropping, Contact Sheet, Self Portrait, Adjustment Layer, Creative Me, The Scream: My Interpretation, Scary Expressions, Critique: Parke Harrison’s “Guardian”, Haunted Chavez, Social Issue, Lyrics, Artist statement from last semester, Group collaboration, Balance: Asymmetrical vs. symmetrical, Color, Frames, Effects, Alternate Program: Academic Excellence Letter, Graduation program, Surreal Practice Tutorials, Surrealism: “Lost”, Metering, Fill in flash experiment, ISO: Film speed, Shutter speed, and finally Personal Metaphor "Like a bird, wishing I could fly away".
I feel very satisfied of how my portfolio looks because I am behind on nothing, everything is up to date from the first post to the last and my portfolio is very easy to be read and it also looks nice. The assignment that I liked the best was the ISO because it showed me a technique that is a really good tool for making a face stand out more and not having any shiny faces like as if I were using regular flash. Overall I have learned many techniques in this class like how to use the macro, what a fill in flash was, and I also learned what Photoshop even is.
What I fell very successful with knowing that I can take an even better picture with a camera than before I walked into this class. I struggled more with the fact of not knowing what to write in my posts because I am not a really good thinker, but I have improved very much since the first day of school.
What I believe on how to improve in the future is making my hand more steady when taking any kind of pictures because if you take a picture with a shaky hand the picture comes out a little blurry and that is what messes the picture up. My influence is the instructions given by Ms. Cook because the way she taught the instructions or even anything, she made it really easy to understand the instructions then to find some kind of tutorial on the internet.
I’ve noticed a lot of growth in the techniques that I learned and how to use them. Like for example: when I did my first assignment I thought every picture I took was the best but I was wrong and now I learned how to take really good pictures thanks to this class. I would like to say that I believe I have done a good job for the year my portfolio is done and I am not behind on anything.

Personal Metaphor "Like a bird, wishing I could fly away"

"Like a bird, wishing I could fly away"
The reason why I chose this metaphor is because of all of the problems that I have to go trough every day. A bird can go anywhere it chooses to, it decides for itself on what decisions to make and the limit on the things it can do. For most teens we have a lot of problems that we have to deal with and sometimes we all wish we can get up and just get out of any situation. Another reason why i chose this metaphor is because mostly everyone is run by a certain “ruler” weather it is your parents or guardians and you are chosen to do what they want you to do and as for birds as soon as they learned to fly they can go or do whatever they want.

What I believe I have done well on this artwork was the composition, the placement of everything it all fit perfectly into the artwork. I really like the way that I put the birds in their even though it was very hard at a slow pace I got it done. What I believe I could have done better on is making me turn into a bird more I kind of had to rush it all and it looks as if I just threw some feathers in. Overall, I feel as if I did a good job but I know that if I devoted all of my time into this assignment I could of done an even better job.

Shutter Speed

The first picture that is on top is a picture perfect and my team andI put the camera ISO on 400 and it gave us a really light picture in a very almost pitch black room. The ISO is probably the best function because it shows that the picture can be as bright as having all of the lights on. The bottom picture is our creative picture and it was set on shutter speed to make the effect as ghosts. We chose a emphasis (Me) and the other people move around slowly to get that low opacity feel going on and i would stand out.

ISO: Film Speed

ISO is a very easy function to use because it enhances the picture with light like the very first picture is a regular picture with flash on. The second one is a little different because the ISO is turned on with an ISO of 50 with no flash on. The second one is a bit brighter with 400 ISO turned on. The last one is the brightest because the ISO is set on 5000. It is better to choose ISO over flash, because the ISO enhances the skin and also the background very well. When flash only makes the closest thing brighter and the background all messed up with shiny spots.

Fill in Flash Experiment

Fill in flash is a really good and unique function on a camera what it does is make a basic picture in the bright sun with a lot of shadows on a face disappear and make the face more easy to look at. The picture that is on the very top is an example of fill in flash and the second one is non fill in flash. As you can notice the fill in meter is a really good tool to use.

Metering

Light meter is a function on a camera that can really enhance a special dark photo. The light meter is for metering the lighting in the room. The picture that is on top is a basic picture with no flash on it notice that the computer is the only thing visible in the picture. The bottom picture is a better looking picture of my partner with flash on. Metering can really help you in the future because it makes the emphasis stand out a lot.

Surrealism: "Lost"

The artwork that I have completed is a story about a long lost boy named Jesus. Jesus was one day floating through the galaxy while one day watching and odd looking giant door as he walked up to it he heard voices coming in saying “please come in.” As Jesus opened the door he found a letter that said “If you wish you shall have” Jesus took that small sentence for granted and he asked for a giant castle with food. Jesus closed his eyes for ten seconds looked back and their, a castle filled with pizza. Jesus spent a month wishing thinking about being the happiest kid ever. Soon he got real lonely he shouted and screamed for someone to rescue him. A letter came from the sky saying “If you shall leave, someone needs to open the door” Jesus ran and looked for the opened door but it was not their, he stayed their waiting everyday in front of his castle for the rest of his life.

Surreal Practice Tutorials

We prepared for our surreal project by practicing different techniques we may want to use in our projects. In this tutorial we learned the value of layering textures using blending options to create an atmosphere with dream like qualities. What I like about doing this assignment is dat it is so simple and really easy to do because all that we did was just cut out alot of pictures and pasted them on the chair and violin picture and we changed their opacity and levels.

We then followed this tutorial found at http://www.voidix.com/eye_manipulation.html to give us ideas and practice combining images, reversing natural laws, transforming objects and using Photoshop to create a realistic surrealistic scene. What i liked and learned about this picture is because how it came out in the end it looks good and nice especially the composition.

Graduation Program

What I believe that I did well was the paint brush of the Cesar Chavez High School gym as my background. I also believe I did well on the font graduation because of the drop shadow and the cursive font that I chose for it. What I could have done better with my Graduation Program was to make the back cover a bit more exiting and with at least more color to it or maybe even add a picture of the school and feather the edges a little. Graphic design was a bit harder than I suspected because you have to start with a white screen and you have to add every little detail that you want added on it. What I believe is an important aspect of graphic design is to emphasize a particular part of the picture so that the eye would not wonder. Some advice that I would give to your next year’s students is probably to make some kind of thumbnails or brainstorm so that you can have your ideas written down.

Alternate Program: Academic Excellence Letter

What I believe I did well on the Academic Excellence Letter Program was the Pegasus that I got on the picture. I like that I have that Pegasus and not the same old regular Pegasus that everyone else is using. What i believe I could have done way better was to make my background a bit grayish and not just plain with a bit purple. What i struggled with the most was probably the fonts, because I couldn’t have the same font on every word and the same size. I had trouble with the font because of the placement because if I put any words on the Pegasus it would be very difficult to read. I feel like as if i did much better on my Graduation cover because I didn’t rush that one as fast as i had to rush this Program cover.

Effects

The picture that I personally liked the best is the cross process because it "Funktafizes" the picture and it brings out a nice color on the picture. The picture that believe that i dont really like is the blur because it looks like it is unreal and it kind of hurts my eyes. I believe it doesnt look that good because of the picture that i have chosen for it.

Frames

On this assignment we were given a frame and we were assigned to take two pictures using both in a photograph. One of the pictures had to be of pure hard sunlight and another one had to be about pure shadows. The picture that I like the most is the shadows (first one) because of all the grays that I caught in the picture. What i believe makes my photograph artistic is the way that I’m posed and the way that I’m not dead on staring directly at the camera and not smiling all that much. What I believe could of made my picture more artistic was having more sunlight and having a little bit of more of an artistic background.

Color!

My colorMy color shots that my partner and I took did not come out as planned because I had no ideas. I also don’t like my picture because we had to rush because time was up to keep on taking pictures. What I believe I could of done better in my pictures if I had another chance was try to plan the pictures a day before because as soon as our teacher gave us the camera and permission my mind went completely lost.

Balance: Asymmetrical vs symmetrical

These two pictures that we took were similar to the group collaboration because one again we were divided into groups we had to take two pictures. One picture was Symmetrical and the other picture was Asymmetrical. What symmetrical means is that you take a photograph and you can cut it in half and the same image would be perfectly balanced. Asymmetrical means having a photograph balanced on both sides. Visual balance is very important in art because if you have a picture and if your emphasis is on the side and on the other side is just a empty field it will look as if the picture is about to fall to the side.

Group Collaboration

Our picture that we took with our group collaboration came out not really all that good. The difficulty that we had taking this picture was trying to get everybody in order because all of us were so used to having one partner to work with and now this time we had about eight people to work with. What I would do different if we had the chance to do the group collaboration again I would talk the idea over with my group and I would of also threw in some of my ideas into the photograph. Overall the group collaboration came out a little out of place because of our poses and where most of us were placed in the shot.