1. What is the most significant accomplishment in looking at your Midterm or
Final? You can talk about technique in Photoshop, investigating your Big
Idea, creating a meaningful artwork, etc.
I feel that the most significant accomplishment would be my interpretation of the Big Idea. I didn't want it to be a cliche and I wanted to create something meaningful to myself. I felt with the midterm I doubted myself at first because I couldn't think of a way to express myself the way I thought I would be satisfied with but once the inspiration came to me I started looking at my Big Idea in a different light. Instead of looking at moments as the artwork I looked at the way we recollect these moments and from what perspective are we reflecting on them with. From here I was able to investigate my Big Idea in a way I wasn't before. Before I was looking for an image I wanted to emulate but afterward I looked for perspective and how other artists view the moments.
I was trying to figure out what to do with these images, I couldn't relate these pictures with what I wanted to express but then I realized that I needed to look beyond the images and focus on what they show and that is the tools used to reflect back on these moments.
2. Choose a project in the class and discuss your most challenging learning
experience in Photoshop. Focus on a technique or concept from
Photoshop that was difficult at first, but that you mastered by the end of
the quarter.
All the techniques used in class were difficult at first. One that I feel I have improved on tremendously would have to be the selection tools. I had to practice and figure our different ways of using them. I demonstrated these techniques for my midterm project. At first I wanted to select an image to fit inside the rear view mirror and then just erase the extra off of it. I soon realize that it took a lot of time and didn't look very clean. Then I choose to select the part of the mirror I wanted to replace and erase that part first and just put that on top of the image I wanted in the reflection, once I figured that out I was able to apply it again on the second image of my midterm project.
3. Compare two projects from the quarter to compare and contrast how you
achieved making meaning in the work. Try to showcase in your examples
an improved capacity to making visual images that mean something as
opposed to being a showcase of technique.I feel like the quizzes we did in class didn't really show any meaning, it was there for us to show you that we knew how to use photoshop even though you encouraged us to transform our own images. The quiz where we used the retouching tools is a great example that even thought I was transforming my own picture, I didn't really put any meaning into it. Now the midterm and final project made us dig a little deeper not just because of the research we had to do prior to it but we had to connect it to a Big Idea that we chose, and there was a reason why we chose to that Big Idea even though it took me a little longer to figure out why I chose it and what I wanted to use it for, I connected myself with and in those project. This is definitely demonstrated in my Final Project with the animation of my home and my children. This was my life on display and that is what gave it meaning.
This was my before picture and my after picture but there is no meaning behind this transformation I was just trying to get as much of the tools that we covered in class in to get full credit. If you look at my final project in the previous post you would see that there is meaning behind that project and not so much a display of Photoshop techniques.
I just wanted to finish off by saying that this class has really taught me more then photoshop and that is the ability to trust myself and push pass a wall that I put up when I don't see an end result. I now know that sometimes it take time for an idea/concept to form and not to give up before it happens.
