Artist Statment

This is my portfolio for the first semester of my Digital Photo class, we have learned many different things during the this course, most of which are included in this portfolio some of those things are, learning different methods of taking pictures, being able to Photoshop pictures, some of the first things we did were take regular pictures and make them look like artistic photographs, and basic things like turning pictures black and white.
I feel very proud of my portfolio because I have learned a lot of different things, at the beginning of the year I didn’t know anything about Photoshop besides that you can do things different to the picture, and know seeing how far I have come I am very happy.
Things that I have learned over the course of this semester include, how to take better pictures, learning to ways to capture something like the rule of thirds by simply moving the main object to one of the corners it makes the picture more dynamic, I have also learned a lot of skills for Photoshop we first started by making different layers and now we have moved on and I now know how to change the colors of selected things I can make it go grow light to dark, and the biggest thing was probably learning how to use the camera and all of the different things that it can do.
The thing I was most successful was creating the ideas in my head and putting them into photographs, when Ms. Cook gave us the project to do I start to get an idea of what I want to do with it and I go over it with Ms. Cook and from there it comes into photographs.
The thing I struggled with the most was the social issue project because this one I had to put a lot of idea into because it wasn’t like the other projects where you had to have a strong picture and the image of the picture had to be good like the Photoshop skills of it, and with this I had a tough time thinking of a idea for it, and I might have been able to think of a better idea but with the time I had I had to use this one but I was proud of the work and I like the way it came out.
Something that I would like to improve on is my Photoshop skills I know how to do the things, but I want to be able to do them better, like when I have to cut out something with the lasso tool, I want to be able to make the lines and edges look cleaner.
Places that I have seen improvement is just in my ability to take pictures when we first started I took pictures of things that weren’t really artistic, and now I have a new vision so I take more then one picture at a time and I experiment with different angles different positions.
The last thing I have to say is that on every project that is shown here and I tried my best on every picture and I hope you can see the improvements I have made from my first picture all the way up until now.

Lyrics

The lyrics I chose for this project are Street lights by Kanye West. “Seems like street lights glowing, Happen to be just like moments passing in front of me, So I hopped in the cab and, I paid my fares, See I know my destination, But I'm just not there”
I chose there lyrics because right now where I am at in my life, I feel that I know where I want to go with my life and I know what I want to do with it, but there is something always holding me back, so as hard as I try to get where I want to go I just never get there.
These lyrics make me feel, that I shouldn’t give up on my dreams because as low as I might feel sometimes and thinking that it will never happen, this song reminds me that a lot of people go through similar things, and that im not the only one who has problems.

Social Issue

The title of my Social Issue was, “These Shoes, Tell A Story”, the ways that this issue effects me is, that everyone has a story to tell, everyone is different and some people may think they have a harder life then the next person but the reality is that each of us as individuals suffer through many different things in our lives, and by expressing myself through this picture I was saying that we all go through things and we all experience different things whether it be good or bad.
I chose to take a picture of old shoes that I don’t wear anymore because that symbolizes, experience and struggles that I’ve personally have been through in my life, and it seemed like a easy way to get my point across without making it obvious, and by having that picture is how I thought of the statement because, by saying “these shoes, tell a story” its saying that I’ve seen a lot and I have been through a lot and I believe that a lot of people can connect to the photograph.

Haunted Chavez

In this project we have to portray a "Haunted Chavez" by taking a setting from our school and making it into a haunted setting.
My idea was to have kids hanging out enjoying lunch and to have a ghost standing behind the pole looking back at the kids without them realizing it, I also wanted the ghost to come out in the picture to make the audience wonder whether she was dead or not or make them think something else.
Some difficult decisions that I had to make was how I wanted the ghost to look I wasn't sure if I wanted to make her transparent, or to make her look more like Casper, another thing was I wasn't sure how I could have the affect of having dark because being a ghost I wanted it to be dark but seeing on how the picture was took in outside I had to find away in making it darker.
Well once again one of the problems was how was I going to make the setting look darker, and a way I fixed that was by adding black around the edges of the picture and that helped a lot with the emphasis of the picture because since the ghost was white it made the ghost pop out more. Another problem I had was how I set up the characters I had problems because a lot of them were different sizes and the area I had put them in they almost had to be the same size, and also the shadows that the characters were missing.
One thing that I did well on was being able to get the idea that I had first envisioned since the beginning I had a idea of how I wanted the picture to come out, another thing I enjoyed the picture was how well the ghost came out, because I had made four different ghost and at the end I put three of the ghost together and that's how I got the final one.
Overall I thought that I did a good job on the project i feel like I did everything that I was suppose to do and i followed the directions as they were given, I feel like I could have done better with the shadows, and I would have liked it better if the two guys weren't looking at the camera when I took it, but other then that I was very happy on how it came out and all the different things that I had done to the picture.

Critique: Parkeharrison's "Guardian"

In a lonely, cut down forest, stands a man, crouched over as if he is trying to find his balance, standing high on two wooden beams, he has attached many branches as if to make wings for himself, as he try’s to escape the darkness that is closing in on him.
The whites and grays from the middle of the picture move you to the emphasis of the picture of the man who is wearing a dark suit.
This photograph portrays how lonely we become and how darkness is something you don’t want in your world and how sometimes we feel like we just want to fly away into a different world, and we wouldn’t stop short of trying everything.

Scary Expressions

When I look at this picture it makes me think of how artistic you can make your picture become, it also makes me think of how scared I would be if I were to see myself looking like that.

When I look at this picture it makes me think of how well I made the ghost, and how the setting works out with what I was trying to accomplish in this picture, one thing I thought of is how I should have made the ghost coming at the other direction by having the one that looks like casper coming at me instead of away.

When I look at this picture it makes me think of how scary I look by the design that was coming out of my face and the color of my eyes, it looks like a monster that would come after you, it also reminds me as if it could be a alter ego, that, thats the other side of something just a creepy, scary monster.

The Scream: My Interpretation

My interpretation of the picture is the guy is screaming because of what he sees around him, since the sky is red and the water warps between the red and the blue and it is divided by the black line, the bridge that he is walking in gets narrow and narrower and at the end of the bridge it looks like there is a monster type of thing waiting for him, another reason why he might be scared of the monster at the back is because it looks like a secluded area where if something did happen no one would be there to help him.

Creative Me

This project was an opportunity for us to put the tools we have learned to use. We were to take one of our portraits, and change it creatively using the following: selection tools, layers, adjustment layers, layer styles, blending options, paint brushes and opacity.
The thing I like most about the image is the colors that i used are not normal colors that you would see for instance the rim is yellow instead of orange or red, and the sky being green, I also liked that I could make the jersey purple.
The tool I like the most is the magnetic laso tool because it allows me to get exactly what I want and it gives me a clean line everytime.
I feel confident on my photoshop skills I have learned alot of different techniques and I feel like I am capable of making a image to however somebody wants it.

Adjustment Layers

In this exercise we learned about Adjustment layers. Adjustment layers allow you to add adjustments to your image on separate layers instead of directly to the image itself. This comes in handy during long complicated projects. In Photoshop every tool is specifically designed to help improve your photo. However, here we took some artistic liberties and explored adjustments creatively.

Self Portraits

For our Self-Portrait project we were to take three self-portraits. They were all to be in black and white, and they were all to capture a mood of some sort. We were also challenged to be as artistic as possible, and stay as far away from normal, cliche portraits that we see on personal pages etc. as possible.One had to use the rule of thirds as the base for the composition; One had to incorporate leading lines, and one had to be taken from a more extreme angle.
For the ideas behind my picture was to get things other then the campus to set out and explore places where we might be able to find a good back drop to set off with the mood that I was trying to portray.
Some of the difficulties that I faced was trying to figure out how take the picture so it would set a mood and also where I could take the picture so I would be able to nail each type of compositional trick.
Some of the more successful things I did was getting back rounds that people haven't seen or they haven't seen it in that way that I potray it.

Contact Sheet

Overall I was happy the way my contact sheet came out I think I used my space pretty well and the pictures that I chose came out really good and they kept a good compostion with the rest of the images.
Some things that I did well was was I made sure the compostional tricks didn't cover up any of the emphasis's in the pictures it was seperated well with the other photos.
One thing I could have done better is making the pictures a big bigger so it would would cover some of the white spots that are shown on the picture.
Of all the picture of the compositional tricks my favorite was the Macro: Depth of Field picture because it shows only the emphasis of the picture which was the flower and it blurs out the rest of the back round like the leaves and other flowers there were on that branch.
The one i liked the most was doing was the leading lines because when we were given that, the amount of pictures and where we could take them was endless because there is lines everywhere we look and it was a hard choice to choose because you can take a picture of virtually everything.

Cropping

Cropping is a trick that photographers do all the time, even if they don't realize it. Every time a photographer chooses to cut something out of his/her frame, before they snap the photo, that is in essence cropping. We also have learned tools on Photoshop that allow us to crop an image after we have taken it. When cropping in Photoshop it is possible to improve our composition or change it completely.Cropping is a trick that photographers do all the time, even if they don't realize it. Every time a photographer chooses to cut something out of his/her frame, before they snap the photo, that is in essence cropping. We also have learned tools on Photoshop that allow us to crop an image after we have taken it. When cropping in Photoshop it is possible to improve our composition or change it completely.
In order to change the compostion of my picture I had to make the picture smaller, once I did that I took somethings that took away from my picture once I did that I had to pull out the picture in order to make my borders.
I liked the original better because it showed more depth in the picture it got to show you more and it was more focusing on the on the picture and not what was writtin next to the picture and the lighting looked better without the white border it showed more contrast.
Two ways I used the crop tool was to make the original image smaller by takin out of things that made the compostion look bad, I also used crop to make the image smaller in order to pull out the white so I could put my name in the empty space.

Extreme Angles

In order to get my extreme angle I had to get on one knee and I had to point the camera at a upward position.
Some things that I liked in my picture was how it looked in black and white and also how Melissa was looking downward to the ground with a serious face as if she was going to jump off the top of it, it shows emotion in the way that she is only holding on by finger tips on the pole.
Some things that I could have done to make it better is if i was closer to her and i took it at more of a angle and also if I could have eliminated the bottom where she was standing if I did that it would have showed or given off the impression that she was going to jump off from a higher point, something else that could have made it better is if her body was at more of a angle and if the sun was pointing or shining on her face.
The different effects the extreme angles gives off is simply in its name it gives it a extreme way of looking at something, it can put more emotion into the picture, where a picture that is took in looking at somebody straight away. A reason I would choose to do a extreme angle is because it shows different emotions it makes us think about the picture and the feeling that someone has and it shows a differnt compostion as to where someone might jus take a regular picture.

Macro

The macro function is used to show us images in a way that we wouldn't be able to see unless we were right up next to the object. Some things that the macro function does is blurs out the back round of the picture in order to get the emphasis of something that is close up that is called Depth of Field. Another function that it has is showing the texture of a given surface in my picture i took pictures of rocks and gravel that were embedded in the concrete it shows a very rough service.
Depth of field is one of the functions that macro does on a picture, when u have a shallow depth of field is when you only have the main focus of the picture and the rest of the picture is blurred out, the deep deph of field is when you can still see the backround of the picture.
I think that macro is best used when you capture or want to capture something small or take a picture of something in a way that no one else would be able to see it if they were simple holding it.
Macro helped the picture of my flower because it shows much more focus on the flower and it blurrs everything in the backround and only leaves my emphasis in my picture

Leading Lines

Leading lines are used to take you to the main focus of the picture, they are also used to make a depth into a picture by showing you more it makes the picture be able to expand. They also used to show the distance in the picture.
In my picture I used the stair rail to take you to the architecture of the building I also used it to keep the audience guessing as to where the other rail lead too. Another leading line that I had in this photo was the shadow of the rail that is on the stairway and it shows a good contrast between the light colored stairs and the dark shadow.

Rule of Thirds

Rule of Thirds is technique that is used to catch the emphasis of the picture in one of the corners in the picture, it is used so the main focus on the picture isn't always in the dead center of the picture. For this picture i decided to make the head the main focus in the picture so i dropped it into the bottom corner of the picture, something that made this picture stand out was the contrast between the light and the dark the head is a bright color and the back drop is the darkness of the shadow in the architecture. The way you find the rules of thirds is by pressing the "display" button on the camera and a tic tac toe grid comes up and you simply put the emphasis of the picture on one of the intersecting lines.