Over the course of this class I have grown a lot as a photographer. I remember coming in on the first day thinking that I knew a lot about photography, but I was definitely wrong. These are some of the photos I took before learning about the elements of photography and the camera settings, and they clearly are very bad.
I was unfamiliar with the settings in the camera and didn't understand why the photos were turning out how they were. But after the first week or so of class, I started to grasp the concepts of shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and compositional elements.
Learning the different elements of composition has definitely improved my photo taking skills. I'm excited to be able to use these skills in places beyond this class, like on the trips and vacations my family and I are going on this year and in the future. I also found this class to be very beneficial because as I was learning the material, I went home and taught some of it to my dad who just recently purchased his own DSLR camera. Doing this really increased my understanding of the material and motivated me to focus more in class.
As the trimester progressed, we moved on to photoshop. My first photoshop experience was definitely frustrating. Photoshop is hard because there are SO many buttons. But, after some practice and learning more about the different tools, my eyes were opened to a whole new world of the many ways you can manipulate a photo. This is one of the pictures I created using photoshop for the school context assignment. I worked very hard on this assignment and was proud of my results.
Learning the different elements of composition has definitely improved my photo taking skills. I'm excited to be able to use these skills in places beyond this class, like on the trips and vacations my family and I are going on this year and in the future. I also found this class to be very beneficial because as I was learning the material, I went home and taught some of it to my dad who just recently purchased his own DSLR camera. Doing this really increased my understanding of the material and motivated me to focus more in class.
As the trimester progressed, we moved on to photoshop. My first photoshop experience was definitely frustrating. Photoshop is hard because there are SO many buttons. But, after some practice and learning more about the different tools, my eyes were opened to a whole new world of the many ways you can manipulate a photo. This is one of the pictures I created using photoshop for the school context assignment. I worked very hard on this assignment and was proud of my results.
This assignment and many more, are the reasons I grew to love photoshop. I also really enjoyed watching the videos in class where you could see how the professionals edited and photoshopped their photos because all of their edits looked impressively real. I truly think that doing these photoshop projects taught us not only about the technological aspect, but also improved our skills in problem solving.
All in all, I am so happy that I took this class. I feel like I am much more appreciative of photos that I see and view things from a new perspective. It's crazy to me how many photographable things there are in my daily life that I don't even realize. There are thousands and thousands of things just on the school's campus that can be composed with a little creativity and a camera. The skills that I learned in this class are ones that will stick with me for the rest of my life, regardless of what I choose as my career path. Here are some of my best/ favorite photos I took during this class:
I am so thankful to Mr. Bush for educating me on all of these topics, helping me throughout the year and making this class lots of fun!