Artist Statement (Final)

Photography Final

         Overall, this year in Photography for me was a major success, while also being a major learning experience for me with picture taking and using a camera. By using Blogger to make blog posts over my pictures, I've looked back and remembered my greatest moments while taking these pictures. Blogger has really helped me to see how art really can change your view on things in the world. It also helped me to chose my best picture from each photoshoot, and learn what I did correctly so that I could incorporate it into other photoshoots. Although they may not be the best, I still enjoyed Photography and learned many rules and principles, while also adding some compositional strategies into the mix. One of my most impressive photos on Blogger would be from Semester one, being the Color Composition picture. I focused truly on the main point of the photoshoot, color, and I managed to get a predominantly blue picture. The image uses elements of design such as color through the blue sky and the blue pieces of the monkey bar, line, also through the pipe-frames of the money bars, and finally texture, which was used through the sky and the smoothness of the pipes and the rougher texture of the bolts holding the monkey bars together. In conclusion, the main purpose behind using Blogger was to show our growth, to show us what we have done correctly, and what we could improve to make our images better. Blogger is a very nice way of showing growth and room for improvement, and it gives us a feeling a joy when we look back at all of our progress throughout the year.

          My piece that I chose, the color composition one, is, in my opinion, one of my strongest pictures I took this year. This picture is extremely strong in the point of color, while also having a strong sense of texture in there as well. My second favorite picture, the one I will be analyzing, is from the "foodie" photoshoot. I focused on lighting and appearance for the picture of the donuts. Although the donuts were nasty and old, the picture made them look nice and ready to eat. There was some repetition in this image through the donuts. The space the donuts took up prioritized the donuts, while also avoiding the distractions within the rest of the image. The foreground was mainly dominant in this image, as the donuts were taking up this space. You want to get a nice close-up picture of food, but you also don't want to be too close, so the donuts were mainly in the foreground, but they also began to go into the middle-ground. The background in this image was mainly just blur or a single color because of the fact that the donuts were the main point of the image. By using a little bit of blur, the background was not an issue, focusing mainly on the donuts. I took many shots of the donuts, some turning out decent, others bad, and this one turned out really nicely. Although this image is nicely made, the composition is lacking a little due to the light. However, this negative aspect doesn't take away from the main part of the image, so all in all, it is not the biggest of deals. The emphasis, the donuts, helped create an eye popping donut picture that would make anyone come and try the donuts in a real life scenario. Food photography is a great way to help boost your company's sales and profits, as it makes people interesting in what you are selling and they want to try to see if it is just as good as what it looks like or not. Overall, this photoshoot helped me learned how to use colors, textures, lighting, and even my camera as a whole.

          Voice as a whole is your own thoughts and expressions towards other things within the world. Voice was a major part of our photoshoots, and was often one of the most important parts in making a good photoshoot. You could use voice through far-away pictures by expressing your favorite places in their entirety, or by getting up close to show the detail in something you enjoy such as a painting, or using the shape of something interesting and expressing your thoughts and opinions on it based on what you have seen, and many other ways. My artwork normally focused on using my voice to help express my own opinions. For example, on the close and far photoshoot, I chose to go to my neighborhood park to take my pictures. Since the park has had meaning to me since I was a kid, I felt it would be a nice choice. Another example of a good photoshoot with a lot of voice would be the portrait photoshoot that we just finished. Although it wasn't my strongest photoshoot, it had the voice in it within any photoshoot I had done previously. The picture with the most voice to me in that photoshoot was the one where my brother and I were holding baseball materials. Since I played baseball as I kid and I still enjoy playing (although i'm not very good), it was a picture that had meaningful voice to me. In general, my photoshoots dealt with doing what was asked, but also adding my own voice to the piece. Things that influenced me were things that I enjoy, or things that used to have meaning to me as a kid. I tried to add a touch of more important influences to me in most of the pictures that I took for the photoshoots. Overall, I tried to give people a feeling of remembrance of their past memories through things such as a playground or an open field. Voice played a major role in my photography skills that I picked up this year. 

          Overall, I had many strengths, but I also had a few weaknesses. Overall, my strengths were influenced by my voice and my skills that I had picked up in photography. My mom was actually the one who inspired me to take photography. Since my mom takes pictures anywhere we go, such as the zoo, I wanted to also take "cool" pictures and save memories of me and my family as we went places. My main strengths were in the element section, with color, line, and texture being the main ones. Using the skills that we had learned were normally my strengths with a few subsections being the weakness of the photography. However, with things such as blur motion and night photography, that is where my pictures almost fell to pieces. However, things in the element section saved those images. My main weaknesses ended up being blur motion, night photography, and camera usage (only for the first few months.) The strengths override the weaknesses, and therefore in the end, I would call this year a major success for me and my photography life. Overall, I feel my main theme or voice was focusing on things that have meaning in some way. This helped me to really view photography as an art and not just a hobby. This year in photography helped me really enjoy different types of art, instead of just 2D Drawing. 

Portrait Photoshoot

Portrait Photoshoot

Reflection

          For this photoshoot, I took pictures of the faces of my family members. I went to places that either look nice or are memorable to the people in my family. I mainly focused on my brothers, as they were in the majority of pictures. I set up the scene bringing in objects that meant something to me. This photoshoot was a little more personal one to me, and I took advantage of it. I made this photoshoot a little more meaningful to me, as my brothers are close to me, and the areas that I chose are close to me as well. 

          I used rules such as color and close and far to help my photoshoot to improve. I normally try to use these, and I used them again in this photoshoot. I used color to help add a little more variety to my backgrounds in this photoshoot. I used close and far to help add different pictures, so that every photo wasn't the same, but just with a different background. I used these to help add more variety and difference so that my photos could improve and benefit from using these rules. 

          I chose my subjects by using people that I am close to and places that mean a lot to me. In this photoshoot, I chose my brothers and places such as the playground I used to play on all of the time. I used me voice by adding in elements that I enjoy, such as baseball, the playground, and video games. This assignment helped me to view my world differently by showing me all valuable everything that I took pictures of is. 

          One of my strengths in this photoshoot was getting different objects and keeping the photos new and interesting. Some had sports such as baseball, others had devices, and other were kind of interesting with things such as a banana. However, one of my weaknesses was getting new subjects to use. Mostly all of my images are of my brothers and I. Overall, I feel that this photoshoot was nice and helped me to improve my portrait taking skills. 

Panorama Reflection

Panorama Reflection

           For this assignment, I took pictures of the school building. For this assignment, we went outside the school building to take these pictures. The scene was set up by getting a good angle of the school. I chose a side angle of the building to help show how the school looks and how big it really is. After adding the panorama aspect to it, it looked like this, making the school look cool and weird at the same time.

           I used the close and far method most in this. Some pictures were farther back while others were closer up. This made a picture that ended up looking like this, with the farther pictures still in the back and the closer pictures still up in the front. Also, if you look close enough, there is a little bit of leading lines in the grass for this picture. It adds an interesting "twist" to this picture in my opinion.

           I chose this subject because this is the place that I go most everyday. I also showed my voice by choosing an area outside the school that is cool, because I have been there numerous times. This assignment helped me view the school differently because it showed a cool new angle to the side of the school. This turned out better than what I expected would happen.

          In this assignment, my strengths were the angle and the brightness in this photo. Overall, this gives the photo a nice feel to it. However, my weakness was the slight distraction in the background on the left side of the image. Although it is small, a may lead to people viewing the wrong part of the image. I still feel that the strengths overpower the weaknesses, leading to a nice, clean image.

Art in the Park Reflection

Art in the Park Reflection 

     For this photoshoot, I decided to take pictures of the areas that I live in or used to visit frequently throughout my childhood. I decided to focus mainly on my neighborhood and the park that I visited many times as well. Although some of the images need to be retaken and redone, I have a general feel on what I want to do for this photoshoot. This photoshoot was a way for me to show off the places that I enjoy and care about, while also using techniques to help improve the pictures.

     I used rules such as don't center, leading lines, and close and far to help improve my pictures. On areas where there were many objects that were the same thing, I used leading lines. For don't center, I have an image of a sign that states the rules, with a body of water behind it. Close and far were mainly used on pictures that had objects that were interesting in the background, while also focusing on the main subject. I also tried to incorporate color and shapes to this photoshoot. Finally, I also took some of the pictures in the snow to help create variety.

     I chose my subject matter by determining what I enjoy most and what I used to do, such as going to a playground. I took different angles for my pictures to help get the full feel of each area on what its significance was to me. I added lakes and trails that I go around on walks or bike rides, playgrounds for my younger self, and other things such as a garage for when I would help build and finish the garage and work with wood and other materials. Overall, this photoshoot was really just a way for me to express my feelings on what I used to do in the past and things that I still do today, such as a bike ride or a hill to play on.

     This photoshoot had its upsides and downsides for me. I feel like some of the images had to many distractions and then some of them were copies of other images. I feel like I need to reshoot some of the images and also have more diversity. There are images that I feel like on good, such as the one on this blog post. Although you can see houses and cars, I personally enjoy being able to see the whole area around you and get a feel for what is going on around the image. Some images were good and others weren't as good, but overall I still feel that this photoshoot was a learning experience.

Noun Photoshoot

Noun Photoshoot

          For this photoshoot, we were supposed to pick a noun and take pictures off of it. The noun that I chose was sports. The meaning behind the image I chose was that this young boy was a huge fan of his baseball team, and they lost. I tried to go beyond just the normal things of sports you could take such as a football or a baseball bat. I tried to spark emotion and meaning behind each image. I decided to go with a more night theme throughout the whole photoshoot as well to add extra effects. 

          I used different elements such as depth of field and getting close to help improve my images. I used depth of field to show the foreground alongside the background like in the image above. I chose this area because this is where I play sports at. I normally don't play sports in competitive areas, such as the baseball fields or a basketball court. I also used getting close to help show the details of some of the objects I was taking a picture of. I tried to make images that were interesting while also avoiding any other distractions.

          I chose my subject matter by using objects that were related to sports and reactions towards sports. I tried to add things that I enjoyed or things that I would bring to a game to keep myself involved with the game. For example, bringing sunglasses to a baseball game can be a good idea to keep yourself from having to squint from the sun. Tiny things like that were key for me in this photoshoot. This photoshoot helped me to view things differently because it makes you think of little things that might of slipped your mind had you not thought of it for a picture. I also makes you realize the littlest things that you would want for a sports game.

          One of my strengths in this photoshoot was getting different aspects of sports. I took pictures of players, fan, fields, etc for this photoshoot. However, the one thing that got me was blur motion pictures. There were many failed attempts and it was a mess to be honest. I would of learned how to do blur motion quicker but I thought I was good enough at it. Also, I would of thought of more complex and entertaining ideas in some of the sections as well. Although this was nowhere near one of my best photoshoots, I thought that this was a good learning experience. 

          

Food Photoshoot

Food Photoshoot

               This photoshoot was a cool one to me. I thought that the idea of making food look really good was a cool idea. The main topic of this photoshoot was food, obviously. I went around to each station and took the pictures of the food. The props that my group and I used were lights, backdrop, which was a piece of paper, and a reflector (only on some of the stations.) This photoshoot showed us that you can make even the nastiest of foods look delicious. 

               I used rules of composition such as get close, avoid distractions, and rule of thirds. I used get close on almost all of the pictures I took, as I was trying to get as close to the food as possible. I avoided distractions as well by getting close to the food and keeping any background objects away. Finally, some of my images had rule of thirds in them. I used this by not centering and trying to get the image in a corner. I used a few elements such as shape and color as well. I tried to get as many colors or focus on one single color while also having many shapes that are interesting to look at together. 

                I chose my subject matter by using the materials provided for me. For example, on the donut station, I used the donuts as my main subject. I added my voice in this photoshoot by putting objects in a way that made them appear in the order I would eat them, except for a few stations. I added angles that I like as well in the photoshoot. Overall, the angles and the point of view really made this photoshoot stand up in my opinion. This assignment helped me view food in a different way because it showed me how people make food look really good compared to what they actually give you. 

               Overall, I feel this photoshoot went pretty well, however I feel that my lighting wasn't the best. Some of the images feel like you would be eating in a dark room instead of in a nice place. On the other hand, I feel that the way I arranged the objects was good. I feel that they lined up nicely and with good lighting, it would of looked really nice. This photoshoot was fun and it was something to learn off of. 

Juxtaposition Photoshoot

Juxtaposition Photoshoot

          This photoshoot was really interesting to me. I took pictures outside for the most part. I went to areas such as playgrounds or grassy areas. I got my brother's and sister to help me with this photoshoot as well. My brothers helped create shadows and they helped make the scenes a little more interesting than the average picture of a playground. This photoshoot turned out much better than I thought because of the help I got. 

          I used don't center, a rule of composition, to help improve my images. The best example of this is on the small set of stairs at the playground. Originally, I was going to take a straight on picture, but I realized that you shouldn't center on most or all of your pictures. I used elements such as shape and color to also improve my images, although they aren't as present. These did help my images to turn out a little better than they would of without any of these.

          I chose my subject matter by going to places that I used to go or things I used to do. However, I also got some things that I enjoy doing now in this photoshoot as well. I used my voice through the things that I enjoyed or do to this day. I tried to make it interesting while reminding me of what I used to love to do. This assignment helped me to view my world differently by showing how you can use two opposites to create different scenery. This photoshoot was very helpful to me in general.

          I believe that my strongest points were creating a different feel between two different objects and getting good angles for those objects. I feel that most of my good pictures followed this two things nicely. On the other hand, many of my pictures were confusing and blurry, leading them to have no meaning. I need to work on not having blurry or confusing pictures and making them have a meaning. Overall, even though this wasn't my best photoshoot, I feel that it was something worth learning off of to possibly make the next photoshoot that much better.