Digital Photography and Advanced Computer Art was my first choice for an elective when we were picking them last year. Now, after completing half of the course, I can easily say that I'm happy that I chose it. I've learned how to do many new things in photoshop and I've got to take many photos. I would say that my favorite assignment that we have had so far would be the shadow photography. This project was rather open-ended and you really had to be creative when doing it. I enjoyed looking for shadows in my everyday life that I could take pictures of and tried to use the element of mystery in my photos. I made it difficult to tell what the shadow was cast from and it was fun figuring out how to do that.
As for the most valuable thing that I have learned so far, I would have to say that it is elements and principles of art. In this assignment we have to take one element like space, color, or texture and combine it with a principle like pattern, variety, or symmetry. I thought this project was really helpful because these are things that you should keep in mind every time you take a picture and I had never really understood what they meant until I did this assignment. Also, I used these skills often in following assignments when I want my photo to look less boring. I will think about the symmetry of the picture or if I want to have one object in emphasis. Learning about these elements and principles has helped me a lot so and and will continue to help me for as long as I'm taking pictures.
If there was any project that I could revisit and improve upon, I think I would choose the twelve days of photoshop. We only had two days to do each of these assignments and I feel like if I had more time to work on them, the quality could have improved greatly. Also, there is so many things that you can do in photoshop and I wish that I learned some more of them so my projects looked a little better. For example, in one assignment we were told to slice an object in half and put a different object in the middle. I chose to do many different kinds of apples and the end result looked okay but I could've made in look more realistic with more time.
As we begin the second half of this course, there are a couple things that I would like to explore in the future. Since there is so much of photoshop that I don't understand, I would like to spend more time learning about it. In time, I think I could create some really cool projects on the application and I hope to do that in the second semester. Another thing that I look forward to learning about is the settings on my camera. I want to know how to control aperture settings and change the focus but right now that doesn't really make sense to me. Once I learn those kinds of things, I believe I will start using the camera to take photos for my assignments instead of my iPhone. I will be taking many new photos and designing many new kinds of art in the second half of the school year and I am looking forward to see what I will come up with.
As for the most valuable thing that I have learned so far, I would have to say that it is elements and principles of art. In this assignment we have to take one element like space, color, or texture and combine it with a principle like pattern, variety, or symmetry. I thought this project was really helpful because these are things that you should keep in mind every time you take a picture and I had never really understood what they meant until I did this assignment. Also, I used these skills often in following assignments when I want my photo to look less boring. I will think about the symmetry of the picture or if I want to have one object in emphasis. Learning about these elements and principles has helped me a lot so and and will continue to help me for as long as I'm taking pictures.
If there was any project that I could revisit and improve upon, I think I would choose the twelve days of photoshop. We only had two days to do each of these assignments and I feel like if I had more time to work on them, the quality could have improved greatly. Also, there is so many things that you can do in photoshop and I wish that I learned some more of them so my projects looked a little better. For example, in one assignment we were told to slice an object in half and put a different object in the middle. I chose to do many different kinds of apples and the end result looked okay but I could've made in look more realistic with more time.
As we begin the second half of this course, there are a couple things that I would like to explore in the future. Since there is so much of photoshop that I don't understand, I would like to spend more time learning about it. In time, I think I could create some really cool projects on the application and I hope to do that in the second semester. Another thing that I look forward to learning about is the settings on my camera. I want to know how to control aperture settings and change the focus but right now that doesn't really make sense to me. Once I learn those kinds of things, I believe I will start using the camera to take photos for my assignments instead of my iPhone. I will be taking many new photos and designing many new kinds of art in the second half of the school year and I am looking forward to see what I will come up with.