Final Artist Statement

During this year I have learned many helpful tips about cameras, photoshop, and camera tips that I know will be helpful in my future. At first when I sign up for digital photography, I though I wasn't creative enough to be in this class. When we started to make or create photograph into something different I started to realize all I needed to have is good ideas and willingness to learn and pay attention to direction so that I wouldn't be all lost.

In my portfolio I am most successful with my surreal project. I really think I am creative, is just that I wasn't capable of seeing that in me. In this project I combined all my dreams into only one. I included only the special symbols from the dreams I have had. One of the symbols from my dream is water. I have been dreaming too much about water and babies. I created a small river coming from the mountains and the babies I created a sky with a moon and some white and grey clouds, and I put the baby faces in the clouds and moon.If I could do the assignment again I would of done some things differently. For example, I would of made shadows on me, the flowers, and probably the little house on the right side. Overall I did a really good job of creating a surrealism project of my own.

One of the useful tools I really enjoyed and help me throughout my project was photoshop tutorials on creating a river and shadows. The one project that really connected with me and my life was the personal quilt about my past. Although my quincenera passed, I will always remember that special day. It was a special day for me because its been a mexican tradition. Also all the people that I used to make this project are my family members. They are always going to be there when I need them and I can always count on them when I need any advice or help with my problems.

My life experiences have a great impact on my artwork because when I don't know what to create or make I always think of what has happened in my life and that helps me think of ideas to do my projects on. They also help me create feelings on the projects I do. What would artwork be without any emotional feeling when you see it? I enjoy having my own experiences reflected on my artwork because that shows who I really am and also the artwork would be most creative and fantastic.

Overall I enjoy doing projects involving and creating photographs about my life and learning new things. All the artist I have learned about in this class, I really relate most to Dali because in his artwork you can see and feel emotion as you see his artwork. I think I also create feelings in my artwork. I love how you feel there is or that you feel you are in the piece of art. The most meaningful project that I have created was the surrealism project. This is so important to me because I showed how all me dreams can be one and how only it takes little steps to do a big job.

Blow Out and Panning

I created the blow out effect by changing the ISO many times and I also put a shutter speed on my camera. I think it was a good way of taking a picture because I am using simplicity and leaving the background brighter and it came out really good I mean I was focusing on my subject. Panning is when you freeze time and your object is still while the rest of the picture is sort of blurry. My panning picture looked sort of blurry but I think I could of did a better job by following my partner at her speed. Panning was difficult in a way because it was hard getting my partner to stay a little clear than the rest of the picture. Every single picture I would take would come out all blurry. At the end I made it seem a little more panning like.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is how fast the light gets to come in. in the room there wasn’t enough light and with the shutter speed you could take pictures in the dark and still come out really good. I had to set up the camera by changing the ISO and I had to put a timer. I would choose shutter speed over ISO or aperture because even though it’s dark your pictures would come out good and not too blurry or dark. Also you could create many creative pictures with the shutter speed setting.

Aperature

Aperture is the opening of the camera is and how much light would come in. in the first picture the opening of the camera is big because you can only see the ladybug on the branch very clearly and the rest of the background is blurry. On the second picture the opening is smaller hole creating the depth of the background.

ISO

ISO Flash

ISO 50

ISO 400

ISO 5000

Iso is the film speed. Iso is how fast the light gets in your pictures. The difference between these couple of pictures is the lighting in them. With an ISO low it is dark and sort of blurry but then when I put the iso higher the picture kept getting more light in them. I would chose ISO over flash because with a flash your subject can be disturb with the flash and with ISO your subject can stand and not blink because of the flash. You would have to be careful with ISO because the picture may come out too blurry if you put it too high or too low.

Flash

The cons of not having flash when its dark is that it comes out blurry and it creates very ugly lighting situation. The pros of having flash are that it adds light and it freezes time and it eliminates the blurriness of the pictures. A good situation of using flash would be when you already have light in the background and you are in a dark place. This picture I chose is better without the flash because you could see the lights really good and the colors are very clear and if the flash would have been on then the lights were look like if they were off and the colors were going to look so different and unclear.

Metering

Light meters help you with the lighting of the picture. It also measures the amount of light so your picture wont come out too bright but not too dark either. In the bottom picture, it comes out too dark and that is because I didn’t activate the light meter by pressing the shutter half way but in the second picture I activated the light meter and it came a little better than the first one. Light meter is a good technique if you want good pictures.

Surrealism

In these artwork there is sadness in the flowers that don't have color. They are black and white, they don't look that happy. The flowers mean that you are growing but at the same time you don't want to keep on growing. You are happy in this moment and you want to stay at this age. The change of colors in the pants mean you are changing your mind many times. You make errors that you want and keep on changing. Water in your dreams mean that you are fluid. You want to be everywhere. When you are in a place, you feel like water and want to go to another place right away. Mountains, this mean that there is a barrier between you and someone close to you. You cannot be with that person, even if you try and try and try harder. This person does not know you want to be with him or her. Soon or later she/ he will find out and that barrier is going to move slowly.

Surreal Practice Tutorials

In the desert tutorial we used many of the tools in Photoshop. One of the tools or techniques we did was making the cracked dirt ground. We duplicated the image to make the desert ground bigger instead of just a square of that. We also distorted the image to make it seem like a real desert not an image of a ground. To make it a little bit surreal we used a gradient and we changed it from normal to either overlay or screen, I changed mine to screen because overlay made it look to not real. We also did a gradient on the sky so it won’t look like just a blue sky. The clouds were paintbrushes we uploaded into Photoshop. We didn’t cover the whole sky with them but we made it seem like a real sky with clouds. For the light pole to look realistic we made it a shadow. With these two tutorials I have more of an idea of how to do my surreal artwork. It will help me make it seem realistic but at the same time it won’t be realistic. It will also help me think of what pictures I can combine with each other and how or where to place items or the pictures.

Art Show" My Past"

My past quilt describes how I see all that has happened to me in the past, especially in my quincenera. This artwork describes how I also see life. Life for me has been so different in these past years. In this quilt there is sadness happiness and joy reflected. For this project I made it all about when I turned 15 years old. This was an important time for me because it was the first time my whole family got together. I decided to put a collage of pictures of all my peers and family members that I know are always going to be by my side no matter what the situation or when I need them.
I really liked how my quilt came out. It truly represents who I am and whom I care about. I also liked the fact that I included a poem I made and that I read to all my family thanking them for being there for me.

Graduation Program

After all the examples of the graduation programs I think one of my strengths in this work was the idea of graduation and a litle bit of elegancy. This work was one of my favorites because graduation is a big topic to senior now adays. I think I could of made it more elegant or maybe less purple. Graphic design was difficult at first but once you start trowing your ideas into photoshop you make them just how you want but thinking about the people who you are making this for. I think one of the important parts of graphic design is know ing your customer and for who you are making it for because if you are making it lets say for a teacher conference or something then you are most likely not to include pictures of students or just pictures of school or something like that.

Student Handbook

With this program I think I didnt had a strengh but the pictures showing students from chavez was really a good idea because after all it is the student handbook. With this program I could of put more pictures of students and not leaving too much space.

Personal Quilt

In this project about quilts was a really good idea of letting out all my feelings and creative ideas. I am really happy with what I did for my quilts, although I know I could of done better on these. I think I could of done better with first quilt because I think its a little too simple than the other one. My favorite quilt is the first one and that one is about my past. I liked this one because it shows that even though thing are in the past i will always remember those memories or people close to me. Some of the symbols i used in these quilts was my family. In the two squares I included my family members just like I always carry them with me. I also used me as the main focus because everything I do is because I am making those decisions.

Some of the tools I used for making these quilts are: dodge and burn, filters, mask layers, adjustments, and many other little helpers. The most successful tool U used was the adjustments to make a pictures different color or blend in with the other colors.