Final Reflection:

1) After gaining the experience of having a gallery show, I realized that it's really cool to see people who you don't know enjoying your art. It's a great feeling to know that other people appreciate what you're doing.

2) The number one piece of advice that I would give next year's AP art classes to ensure that they are successful is to plan ahead and to not underestimate the workload that they're going to receive. This class ruined my 4.0, and other students need to know that AP art is going to be one of their most stressful classes.

3) The biggest positive aspect of this class for me was learning about principals of design. Getting to know about all the ways that I can make my photographs look better was really helpful.

4) I think that the biggest thing to be done differently for next year is that the different projects should be in a different order. For instance, in my opinion, rule of thirds should be taught first. Also, if students were introduced to their concentrations in the first semester, they would have way more time to get it done well. A lot of students do extracurricular activities, and the amount of time that we had to complete our concentrations, coupled with sports,jobs, and other homework wasn't enough.

5) This year, I learned that I'm way too stubborn as an artist. It's hard for me to see the other side, so I'm working on taking input from other people to improve what I do.

6) My favorite assignment from this year was the light project. I think that what we learned by taking that set of pictures is really applicable to everyday photography. Light changes everything about appearance, and so it's important to choose lighting that creates the kind of mood that you want. Ever since we finished that assignment, I've been noticing how light affects your entire picture, and it's really helped me to improve as an artist.

Gallery Show!



Week Seven:

Here is my updated final concentration. I did a little bit of editing to straighten out some of the pictures, and got rid of the yellow tint in my hotel photo story. These pictures are in the order that I will submit them to the college board.

 

Throughout my concentration, I used photos of places deserted by people centuries ago, such as my seventh photo, and I also used places that humans are living in and using today, such as my ninth and tenth photos.  When I first started taking pictures for my series, I wanted to do a concentration on growing up in a rural town like the town where I live. However, as time progressed, I decided to take pictures of places that humans had deserted, and show how they left traces wherever they went. Finally, I decided on my series that I finished: how people connect to their landscapes and what they leave behind. I used minimal editing on all of my photographs, but I had to adjust the exposure and contrast in a lot of them. In my concentration series, I used a lot of natural color schemes to represent life. I also used line and repetition to create movement in my pieces, and to show that life isn’t stagnant, and I filled up my pictures so that most of them don’t have a lot of empty space, to communicate how people don’t have empty lives. Finally, I tried to put as many objects and people on the rule of thirds lines as I could to create emphasis.  I did not use abstraction at all in my series because, besides the fact that I’m an OCD person, people don’t see their lives as abstract. They don’t view ordinary things from abstract angles; rather, they see things the way that they are. I want my concentration to be attainable and realistic for the people viewing it. The places that I photograph are places that I personally connect with, and I want anyone who sees my pictures to be drawn to them.



Week Six (Cont.): Here are my final thirteen images. Since I can only submit twelve to the college board, I'll need to cut one out. I'm trying to decide between getting rid of the Titanic photostory or the hotel room photostory. Anyway, here you go!

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Week Six (cont.):

Today I finished up with pretty much all of my photostories. I have one more left to do, which I'll work on Friday. Here are my finished products:

 

 

 

For these bottom two, I haven't chosen which one I like better, but I'm leaning towards the horizontal one.



Week Six:

I made a few new photostories in photoshop today. They're comprised of pictures that I took over spring break, although I'm not sure that I'll use them in my final series. I have four more days left to perfect it, so I'll get all of them done by wednesday and use Friday to decide on my final twelve.

 



Week Five:

Today I worked in photoshop to make a couple more photostories. I realized that I only have about two weeks left to take pictures for my concentration series before it is due. Although I only have a few final pieces, I plan to take the rest of my photos during my trip to Ireland. I'll be in places that are full of history and culture and centuries of human development. Here are my final products so far:

I'm not sure if I'm happy with this last image. I'll spend more time after spring break perfecting it, maybe by taking out a couple unnecesary pictures. 



Week Four (Cont.):

This week I took a whole bunch of new pictures to make photostories with next week. I'm leaving to Ireland on Thursday, so I'll have some really cool images once spring break is over. Here are the final photostories I created this week.

This pictures I'll definitely include in my final concentration.

 



 

With these two pictures, I need to choose one or the other to put in my final. I'll decide that next week.

 

I'll also be editing this idea and including some new pictures that I took to make this photostory more interesting.