Project 4 Reflection
My experience this quarter.
I feel that a lot of the concepts I have learned in this class extend beyond just photography and can be taken to other aspects of design. My knowledge of composition has greatly improved as a result of the things that I learned this quarter. I find myself beginning to think about how I will go about taking a photograph before I even have the opportunity to take it. Photography has pushed me to get out of my apartment to get work done instead of being in front of a computer all day.Thinking back on it, I found that the times that I was out looking for photo opportunities were some of my most therapeutic. As much as I do not enjoy reading I knew knew that understanding the ideas in the textbook would help me create better compositions. After learning about a new technique with a camera, Lightroom or Photoshop I felt like I had learned it all to then discover something else to help me improve. I would be lying if I said I did not fall victim to the idea of “everyone with a camera thinks they are a photographer”. But as the quarter went on I was humbled by seeing my peers’ work and creativity through class critiques and online posts. I know that a lot of my photographs could have been better but I feel comfortable knowing that I actually learned something from this class.
Color, tone and light.
Composition is everything in photography, anyone can point a camera and take a picture but not everyone understands things like the rule of thirds, visual balance, depth of field, etc. Understanding this is key to getting the photos in your head out into the real world. One of the first things I noticed with color is that the camera doesn’t always tell the truth, or maybe it tells to much of the truth. I struggles to understand why a white wall continued to show up slightly orange in the camera. I later found out that this was not solely a color problem but mostly something to do with light. White balance isn’t something you normally have to worry about when creating, I have never painted on a canvas that changed the colors I was using while under a Tungsten light so it took me a while to wrap my head around what color casts were and how to deal with them. I was enthused to find out that the solution was as simple as changing the settings on my camera or pushing a button in Lightroom, at least at the beginning. This situation pretty much sums up my experience I have had learning about color, tone and light. But I enjoy running into roadblocks, because I know that the answer is a Google search away and I will never forget it once I know how important it is in order to prevent similar roadblocks in the future, if that makes any since. Another major discovery was learning how histograms work, I understand what a good histogram looks like and how to push a lack luster one to be better. The histogram doesn’t lie but screens do and once I knew that, my editing began getting better. I was not making blind adjustments anymore, I could look at the histogram and gauge what parts of the picture needed help. I know there are a lot more things for me to learn but I already know much more than I ever anticipated.
Light
I think that I have made it clear that a lot of what I learned had to do with light by mentioning white balance and histograms. Light is the only reason that photography exists as a medium, so technically everything that I have learned so far has something to do with light or how it affects light. Aperture and shutter speed deal with how much light you allow into the camera, ISO pertains to how sensitive the camera is to light and color involves how light bounces off of objects to make them appear that color. Hard light, soft light and low light all give your subject and composition a specific look. Everything can be related to light in some way and it is interesting for me to think about how other aspects of photography relate to light.
