Reflection on class;

I'm not going to lie, this class had its hard moments and times when I just wanted to leave. It was a pretty stressful time of my life, and I must say it has made me a much stronger person in the long run. The hardest part I'd have to say was dealing with the theme of 'Struggle' because every time I thought about it, it just made me go crazy because I knew I had a lot of things to do already and putting that word in my head over and over just makes me feel like im not doing it right, like I'm struggling with it...

But I loved the close itself, all the other students in my class were amazing photographers and It was fun getting to know them personally. And my mentor Anne, she is the sweetest person ever, she cares so much. And same as Khoi, I've never seen a teacher spend so much time with each student individually to get exactly what they want done correctly. Hes amazing. I'm going to miss this class a lot, and it makes me really sad to know that might have been the last class I'll be taking at YIF, because I've taken them all of course but still it's just a sad feeling to have. Hopefully I'll be teaching a Visual Communications class there this summer, if everything works out the way I'd like it to. So they are defiantly not going to be losing me  :)   

11/16/11

YAY!! I finally got someone over to help me out with my "feel" picture of my tattoo in progress.
At home, I set up a black background, cleaned off my black couch so it would look legit, found some stage lights and put them up on each side of the couch and then I got one of my friends came over with a needle and put on some gloves then pretended to be working on my tattoo. And yes, when I say needle I mean needle. We actually had to do it the ghetto way, ha ha.

But anyways, I was really excited about the photo shoot and the pictures came out great. And the lighting was really good with the stage lights so it already had pretty good contrest and whatnot. So with that being said, I got the picture devolpled really fast and got right to framing it. After it dried of course.
Now all I need to do now is edit my artist statement real quick and I'm done!!

11/14/11

Woo, now not only am I done with four out of five, I got all those four all framed and ready to be hung at the show, even though it's still not for a couple weeks. But anyways I have full confidence in this show and can't wait for the day of. Well actually I can't wait till I'm done with this last photo then I'll be my happiest :)

After I got done with all of the framing and tagging all of my finals, I just kind of walked around the place and helped other people get their stuff done, too. And I'm getting my tattoo finished tomorrow! So I'll be able to start working on my last print by Wednesday, yay! I'm excited, wish me luck.  

11/09/11

Today was another one of those super productive days, where I just got a lot of things done. For example I now have printed four out of five of my final prints on fiber paper and they are almost ready to go. Jordan is at about the same speed as me, we've kind of been doing that all quarter, but we both now only need to go out and shoot one last photo to complete the collection. The photo I need to take is of the "feeling" part of my collection. I am going to have Jordan come with me and take the shot I set up. It's going to be a photo taken in the process of me getting my tattoo finished. And this process is going to have to happen sometime this weekend, for sure.

And as for the rest of the class, their kind of behind, compared to us, but I believe in them to the fullest. So I know they'll be good. :) 

11/07/11

Homework assignment due today: to have at least two final class theme prints on fiber paper for another mini class critique today. HA. Like that was going to happen. We all agreed that printing was more important.

I actually have two final prints all done and ready to be framed at the moment. One is of the glasses that portrays "seeing" and another is of a friend of minds tattoo on her lip that reads the word 'metal' and this one is the one portraying "tasting" in my five senses.

11/02/11

Bleh, we have to do a stupid joint critique today, which means every one in every class that is present today has to choose a photo that they have taken so far this quarter and every one who is there has to speak about it (critique it) for about 4 minutes per photo. I hate this because it always takes the whole class day and just drags on forever, and I'm just sitting there thinking that while were doing this we could be in the darkroom working on our finals that coming coming up right around the corner...

10/31/11

Yay, we get to come to school on Halloween, how fun. Not. Ha ha. I actually had to work on Halloween too and it sucked but anyways, that's besides the point. Today was actually a pretty productive day, we got a lot of work done in the darkroom and it was just one of those kind of days.

The homework that was due was just the postcards, in which I already got that finished awhile ago :)

10/ 26/11

Today we sat and talked for a good portion of the class time. Doing our achieves and whatnot. We also had a little self portrait class critique since they were all due today. But everyone in the class talked to Khoi at separate times about not wanting to talk so much today and just working in the darkroom.

During the critique, I was inspired and impressed by a lot of my classmates self portraits, and when I say "a lot" I mean by most of them because like three of the students didn't even get there's done yet, so thank god less time talking more time working, ha-ha. But nonetheless I still liked mine a lot and was pretty proud of it as well.

So anyways, since we did spent a good portion of the time talking and critiquing, and we have to finish up in the darkroom by 6'o'clock, we did not get a whole lot of time either today, which means Keva is still not done with her first final picture :( 

10/24/11

Today went by much better and way more productive I'd have to say. Instead of spending the whole period talking, we got to have a free work day, which is what we should get to have like every class, I think so at least. And on top of that, I got there an hour early so with that being said, I got way ahead in all of work, yet again. Which made me really happy. :)

I also got to start working with fiber paper (the paper we use for our finals) later in the day. So I am now about half way done with one of my finals. Which is a photo of a random pair of glasses in the rain on this sidewalk where I always go to catch my bus. I thought it portrayed the "seeing" part of my project. Which I don't know if I already talked about, but it's going to be a set of 5 photos with each one of the photos portraying one of each of the 5 senses. I'm super excited for it :)

10/19/11

Archive Items! I unfortunately forgot my to pictures I was going to bring in but I remembered to bring my item, which was this cute little toy gun that shoots rubber bands. It was an item of importance to me because ever sense last weekend on Saturday, when this little girl was keeping me company on a slow day at work, she happened to give me this little toy gun right before she left, and I just still can't believe how many laughs and smiles I've gotten wit the thing :)

And as gose for the rest of our class period; between Khoi and one of our classmates, Helen, we spent a whole 3 hours talking about the same stuff be been talking about for the past couple of classes. Except with a different student this time. By time 6:00 came around me and Jordan were the first ones up and got right to processing film. And that's all we had time for, was to process three rolls of film. This class I feel was a waste of my time. 

10/17/11

Today reminded me a lot of last Wednesday, we sat in class for about an hour and a half and talked about our class theme, and ways to wrap our individual projects around the theme "struggle." I don't understand or agree with him when he made us sit there and listen to talk about stuff that I and about half the class already knew, when we could have been already working on finals and whatnot. But whatever, stuff happens, when life gives you lemons are you going to use them or just dispose of them? Most of you would probably use em'.

After this discussion was over he left us off to print and process. Luckily, I had already had processed negatives to work with so I just spent the rest of the class period trying to get some of the fundamentals done, like the postcards (inventions), self portraits, artist statement, etc.. By the end of the day, including open darkroom which goes until 8:30, I finally got finished with all 15 of my postcards. So that's a good feeling to get out of the way :)

10/12/11

Another day of sharing archives. I actually really like this whole archive thing, I feel like it's made our class a lot closer by getting to know one other. We also got to sit and talk with Khoi, one by one about what our ideas were, if we had any, for this quarters project. My project still hasn't changed. I want to portray the 5 senses in "see no evil, hear no evil, etc.." form, and I've been thinking about this project sense before the class even started and so my teacher seemed pretty happy with that. So other then class meeting and sharing archives our homework for next week is eh, self portraits. Wish me luck. 

10/10/11

Well our teacher, Khoi told us we were ahead of the game today, meaning we already have all of our stuff and more including the class theme done. Which I guess is something that usually never gets done early. So that's cool. But anyways, sense where all caught up for the most part, it was a free printing day. Which was awesome because that's I always look forward to and it almost never happens. After class time was over I had to switch over to open light room (which is like open darkroom, but with the digital class) to work on my post production for this Freelance project I did over the weekend. I stayed there and edited those photos for the next couple hours that flew by because I was working in Photoshop and light room, which I love and miss very much. But film is still cool too, it's starting to grow on me.

10/05/11

The propose of today was mostly a printing day to get three pictures printed that coherently tell a story from beginning middle to end.  Everyone else, except for Mark (the only guy in our class), was having the same problem has me and came out with no good negatives to work with as well... Somehow in the end I managed to get all three of my photos printed and dried out for the critique, just in time as a matter of fact - I was the last one and they were actually all waiting for me, ha-ha. And everybody told me that without a doubt my story made the most sense as a whole and that they really liked it. So that was good to hear. My three picture story started with a photo I took of a couple of my classmates working in the pantry area, cutting up onions and carrots and stuff. The second photo was one which I took of one of the table set ups in the dinning room of my culinary school, it's always set up all fancy so it looked all elegant and pretty. The third was a photo taken at my work, when a bunch of high line prom kids ditched their prom to come bowling, hahaha. But anyways, it was a photo of this girl all dressed up, passed out on my front desk with sunglasses on. I thought it was just great - gotta love those in-the-moment shots. :)

10/03/11

Today, first day of processing film! Woo! Processing film is one of my...least favorite things to do in these classes. But that's okay, because I think it's everyone's. I especially think it's the advance's class that hates it the most because we have to process not only ours but also the intermediate and beginning classes film more then half the time time. But of course, like it always did to me in all my other film classes, my negatives did not show up. This was very upsetting, again, just like it always is. So I pretty much just sat there and made a spider-gram of what I'm going to shoot for our assignment. Which was to shoot about either our community or our environment. Both seem kind of the same, I know. But I went on with writing about my community.  

9/28/11

We got our cameras today! Yay!! And we talked about our archives. I brought in a couple pictures from an art article I actually found on my way to class in downtown. One was of this old fashioned people, standing and talking in a fancy old fashioned way, and I thought it was great so that was my thing 1 for this archive. Thing 2 was a picture of a book hanging from tree branch, it was random, didn't really make any sense, but it was one of those pictures that made you look twice, and for some reason I've always really liked those photos... After sharing our archives we went on to the camera instructions, in which everyone pretty much knew the camera functions already so we pretty much just sat around and got to know each other for the rest of the class time. It was also pretty awesome. Because my class this quarter is just awesome. 

9/26/11

Today was the first day of photography class. Everyone showed up and I'd have to say the first day was a success. I love having class with my best friend Jordan, she keeps me sane most of the time. Everyone else in our class seemed pretty cool, and that's always a good thing. And I love my new teacher, Khoi, hes just awesome. But anyways, lets get back to that point I was suppose to be making. Today, our teacher, Khoi, talked us through the whole class intro and expectations. Which took probably about two hours. We talked about Archives and how we need to bring them every week, - two pictures we think are interesting and one item that means something to us-  and came up with about 100 ideas on what our class theme this quarter should be, and it ended up being "struggle," unfortunately (well at least I think so). And last but not least we talked about homework! Which was to bring our archives and our signed paperwork for the camera in on Wednesday.

Reflection on B&W Film Photography:

So overall I think I really learned a lot throughout this quarter. Things such as how to work with only two colors (black and white), how to roll up (in the dark) and prepare your film strip to be developed, how to change the settings for each and every thing you do in a photo with an enlarger, how to burn and dodge your photos (a.k.a make them lighter/darker) and what chemicals not to pour down the drain, hahaha.
But trust me, there's so much more to this whole film B&W photography thing that I have yet to learn, but I plan on taking the next two classes anyways.

Sam, our teacher, was an awesome teacher to have, one of the best. And  not to mention an awesome person just to be around in general. He will never make things really complicated, he'll will always try to work something out with you on anything, even if It means to change up an assignment to your persona preference.  He makes all the difficult stuff seem not so difficult by making a funny comment on it and/or just making It sound more exciting. And he always gave me extra time on my rolls of film because he understands how used to digital photography I am, and how little patience I have. He Is definitely a little kid at heart with a very funny-unique personality.He's just plain out and simple, awesome, haha. :)

I really enjoyed spending time with my mentors when it would be just us working in the darkroom, that happened a lot cause I'd always stay way later then everyone else during "open darkroom." There were a total of four mentors we had in our class alone, which is a lot compared to usually only having one-two mentors per class. There names were Rosko, Danika, Joy and Walter. I thought Walter was by far the most helpful mentor out of the pack, although I had some pretty interesting conversations with Rosko when he actually was there. And then one of the other mentors I absolutely just loved, Joy, I swear that lady was never in a bad mood, she always made everyone laugh, all the time. She was always just so...joyful!!! :D

But in the end,  I think the most valuable thing I learned in these past few months was something that I have very little of, something called patience. Just standing there, waiting, waiting and more waiting. Changing, fixing, throwing out, waiting, waiting.... It literally drove me insane for awhile. Seeing the pictures show up in the developer was the only thing that kept me encouraged enough to wait wait and wait. Everything else sucked without the simple click of a button, hahaha. Although I'd have to say the next thing I liked most about this quarter Is the amazing photos I got out of it. I mean, even though It's not that many photos I got to develop, probably only less then ten, for some reason It made them all that much specialer to me.  I just really love the quality of these photos, how the blacks are the blackest blacks you can ever see. It amazes me and now I think I know why people still spend so much time developing photos In the darkroom. :)

Thursday, March 10th: Opening Show Day.

This is a pretty self explanatory post, the show was awesome!!! And the food was yummy :) 

Tuesday, March 8th: Show Curation & Rehearsal.

Yay!!! We are all finally done with our final photos and now are thinking about where to place them on the wall and in what order. I love the order we put them in, it all made perfect since, and we all thought the same thing.

We were having a hard time figuring out where to put each of our self portraits, and keeping them in coherence with the final frames. So we somehow came up with the idea of making it a random thing and putting all of our self portraits together in the middle. We sat on the ground and switched them around until they ended up in this pyramid shape. Our teacher laughed at us when he came back and asked how we had come up with this and we told him we'd decided that it just felt right to have them like that.

After everyone hung up their self portrait the way we wanted it to look like, we all talked about how great it looked and how happy we were that everything is finally finished. And than Sam made us all give a pretend speech on a microphone about the show and what we were gonna say for it. We went over all the show details and than Kat, one of the main people at youth in focus, had us all do a quick little survey on how the quarter went and what we would/wouldn't change about youth in focus to make it better. At the end she asked who wanted to hand out the cards to our mentors and teacher at the show. Since no one else would go, I volunteered myself. Which I thought was pretty cool :)

At the begining of class Sam told everyone that if you stayed till the end of class, 6:30pm, he would sing us the song parody he had been working on for the song Tick Tock. It was amazing and made everyone laugh.  He really spent a lot of time on it, hahaha. Again, I love Sam :D

Thursday, March 3rd: Finalize Artist Statements & Show Prep.

Today was literally the last day for me to work on photos, which was very terrifying to think if I didn't get this photo done by today. So I even left my math class early so I could have more time to work on it.
I got to youth in focus at about 1:00pm and amazed my teacher with my dedication to getting this photo done and on in the frame with the other one :)  

It took me forever to get it the way I wanted it to look, I had to do a lot of burning, and I mean a lot a lot of burning like everywhere on the picture. And a little bit of dodging on the face of my doggy. But when I did get it all finished it was about 4:00pm and I still needed to pick out a frame and matte for my final photos. I could not find a matte that would fit the two photos of mine and so that meant I had to make my own, which is a kind of difficult process, I know this because I have had to do it before. There is a lot of math and whatnot involved but one of my mentors was helping me with that part. So thank you, Bob, your awesome for that one.

After I was done with creating and making my own matte, I had to write labels for all of my photos and put a sticker saying what each piece is called and my name and all that good stuff. We also had to turn in our negatives today, since we can't keep them, even though I don't know why we can't keep them,wish we could.

Tuesday, March 1st: Final Printing.

So at the beginning of class our teacher straight up told us that our final prints are due today, today!?
I knew there was no way that was going to happen, but I tried anyways. Since I had already started working with fiber paper I continued today. It took me about a total of 2 hours to print out a fiber copy of my final photo that I liked and could actually work with. It was the same photo of my cat that I was working on last week and when I was finally finished with that, I felt so great, hahaha. I showed it to my teacher and he told me to make two more copy's of it and so I did, of course. One for the final show, one for the youth in focus records, and one for myself.

After that we still had another hour left of class time. I started printing for fun since I thought I was done with my finals and everything. I printed this one picture I took of my dog, Rexi. And I ended up really liking it, I liked it so much that I decided I wanted to put it the frame with my final print on the wall. I figured the two would go very good together, a picture of my favorite cat in the world, and a picture of my favorite dog in the world. Both to animals that love and adore each other to, side by side. I told my Sam about my idea and he thought it was a great idea, too.

After deciding to use that photo for another one of my finals I had to drop the RC fun printing and start working with fiber paper again. I ended up staying there until 8:00pm that night just working on this same photo and still never got it to look the way I wanted it to. Looks like I'm gonna have to work extra hard when I come in on Thursday. 

Thursday, Feb 24th: Critique #2.

Today was the real critique we were suppose to have last week as to the one we had last week was just a practice one between our class. But this is another one like the one we had awhile ago, with all the other classes, which again is intermediate b&w, advanced b&w and beginning digital.

It was funny because my teacher had one of his photos put up to be critiqued, that one was my favorite. It was a photo of these three guys blowing up big inflatable cellphone balloons. And the three guys all looked like they were older guys which made it that much better, hahahaha.

After the critique we all stood around and talked for a minute about what our teacher, Sam's photo was actually shot for and no one could figure it out. So I guess the photo was for a song parody he was doing for the song Tick Tock by Kesha, and the photo was suppose to go with the part that says "Boy's blowing up my phones"
Haha, I love my teacher :) 

Tuesday Feb 21st: Writing Artist Statements.

For the most part of today we spent brainstorming ideas about what to say with each of our artist statements, with our classmates and mentors. I knew what I wanted to say as an artist but it was hard to put it all into words when I'm right in front of the computer screen trying to think of what to type. Everyone else already seemed to know what to say when they were typing theirs up. Which frustrated me a little. Although it was nice when we got to take our break to get my eyes away from that computer screen. By 6:00pm I had about half a page written up, which means I'm almost done with the thing, which made me very happy :)

Thursday Feb 17th: Printing Preview.

Today was a mini End of Quarter exhibit critique, and we all had to choose and print out a potential image for the final show. Since I was already working on a potential final image on Tuesday, I just chose that one and worked on another photo while waiting for everyone else to finish. I got a lot of test strips done today while I was waiting, and found to like a few of my photos I thought I wouldn't. After everyone was finished we went into the class room, with just our class and began to critique each others chosen images. There is nothing else we really did after the critique because class was almost over by the time we were done. And I would describe the other classmates images but I honestly can't remember what they had chosen to put up since it was a long time ago.

Tuesday Feb 15th: Intro To Fiber Paper.

Today we were introduced to fiber paper, the paper we will be using for our final prints. It is much flimsier than RC paper and is harder to work with, but in the end it makes for a way better quality photo. I also learned how to use the dodge tool in which I needed  to use to lighten up a picture of my cat, Nomi. After I made multiple test strep's and prints I was ready to start working with the fiber paper. When you switch to a bigger paper size you kind of have to change all your settings for that photo and restart everything, which is exactly what I had to do with the picture of my cat. Which sucked, a lot. Another thing that sucks with using fiber paper is the fact that it takes much longer in the developing process than regular RC paper. For example: fiber paper in the developer takes about 2 minutes compared to RC only taking about 1 minute. In the stop bath it takes 1 minute when with RC it only takes 30 seconds. And the worst part is when you put fiber paper in the fixer you have to wait for 3 minutes as to RC paper it would only take about 2 minutes.

Our homework assignment is to do a writing exercise called: "What do you want your art to say?"

Thursday, Feb. 10th: Work Day/Mini-Critique.

Today for me was mostly a work day to catch up with everyone else. I feel like I been missing all the most important classes, so I talked to my teacher Sam and we worked It out so that while everyone else was having a mini class critique I could stay In the darkroom and get some printing done. It was kind of relaxing being in the darkroom with the radio on by myself, and one of the mentors would come in every so often to check up on me. I know the whole process of developing photos in the darkroom now and I'm happy to say I pretty much got the hang of the whole thing(:

I find myself getting impatient sometimes waiting for the photo to go through the fixer, which only takes about 3-4 minutes but seems like forever in the darkroom, especially If your by yourself, like I was today. After class was over a stayed a little longer to help clean up since I was, after all, the last and only one that used that side of the darkroom. The way we clean up Is we dump out all the already used chemicals (developer, stop bath, etc..) except for with the fixer we take this little dropper thing and pour a couple drops of this stuff into the fixer to see If It Is still good to pour back in the bottle and use again. The fixer will turn into a very dark purple the instant the first or second drop touch's the fixer, and that's how to tell If It's bad or not. And still working on my "Identity & Community" assignment as well as my "self-portrait" assignment, which was due awhile ago but I had forgotten that I already had film In my camera and so I was going to put a new roll In there and accidentally exposed all five of my self-portraits along with the rest of the film. But shh, It's really okay because I needed the extra time to work on my self-portrait anyways, hahaha.

Tuesday, Feb 8th: Photo Postcards.

Got here a little bit early today because my bus was on time for once. That gave me and my friend San (who was also early) about an extra half hour to work in the darkroom. Since I turned in a couple rolls of film last Thursday I was able to work with a lot more then before. My assignment was to pick an object and observe It for 24 hours. The object I chose was an empty pack of cigarettes. I took it around town with me and shot photos of It everywhere that I usually see them. I'm still getting used to using a film camera so some of my pictures were either to bright, because of the flash, or to blurry.

In class I was working on this one photo of my two twin kitty's staring each other down and getting ready to fight. The funny thing about this photo was it was an accident. I had the roll of film I was suppose to use for my object assignment in my camera, I was originally going to take a photo of the pack of cigarettes beside an ashtray on the table, when all the sudden my cats come running out and pause right in front of my photo. So of course my first instinct was to snap that photo right there. And the cats ended up being more in focus then the pack of cigarettes, haha. I probably made close to around 20 copies of that photo, trying to get It right each time, before I finally gave up and  decided to start working on a photo to use for my postcards. The photo I might potentially be using for the postcard images is a photo I took in this pet store located in Burien. It Is a photo of a cute little bird, hanging upside-down in a small box like glass cage. The bird in my photo looks a lot like a silhouette which I think makes It a whole lot more interesting :)

Well anyways, enough talk for today, our assignment for the next week is called "Identity and Community."  

Thursday, Feb. 3rd: Class Critique #1.

Today we all had to choose one individual photo of our own, out of all the ones we developed so far, and hang it on the board in front of everyone to (critique) It. My photo was, of course, the only photo I have developed, which Is a picture of a computer on top on a microwave sitting kind of but not right beside three large dumpsters. It was a little fuzzy to see because I am not used to film photography just yet but It was enough in focus to be able to know what it was, and it was a little over exposed which really bothers me but everyone else seemed to like it. Haha. There was a lot of students at the critique, a lot more then I'm used to at least. It was because the whole class from beginning digital was there, and they have a pretty big class. The wole class from intermediate B&W was there, and they have an even bigger class, haha. And then everyone from my class was there. So We only talked about each image for about two minutes and then they give the artist a chance to come up for 30 seconds and talk about It or answer any questions people asked.

I thought a lot of the photo up on the board were really nice, especially this one photo of a girls hands lightly touching a piano's keys with the sun coming in from the background. I thought It was really cute :')
I also noticed that a few of the girls in the digital class liked anime a lot because I also be seeing their pictures of people In the little costumes and whatnot. I love that, It's so posed but then again It's so real to, haha.
We did the critique for the pretty much the whole class time except for about 20 minutes in the beginning of getting everything situated and in place. I actually stayed a little bit after to help clean up.

Tuesday, Feb. 1st: Devolping/Photoshoot.

I finally developed my first photo today!! It was cool to see my photo just show up on a piece of paper out of no where...well okay It was caused my chemicals but still you get the point. Haha. The first photo I ever devopled by myself was one I took on the scavenger hunt a couple of weeks ago. I was suppose to take a picture of "something old" and so I was walking by these big dumpsters thinking 'well a lot of old things have been dumped in these things' so I went ahead of everyone else to go take the shot. When I got there I realized there was a old computer sitting on top of an old microwave. How perfect right? Hahaha well I guess for it being my first photo ever developed, not so perfect, but at least it worked really good for the assignment :)

Later on in the class we had a discussion on lighting with samples. Our teacher, Sam, talked about all the different light settings that can be used in a photo for example: light bulb light vs. sun light, moon light vs. street light. It's actually really interesting learning about the way lighting on such a huge impact on the way a photo can turn out, but,  unfortunately I already knew and learned about lighting awhile ago so I was somewhat leading the discussion at first then I stopped because I could tell Sam was getting mad at me. After we had that incredibly   looong discussion on lighting, one of our mentors partnered us up into groups of two to three and then they had us take five pictures each of each other anywhere around the building. I suggested we go outside on the deck and they agreed and so we went out, spent quite a bit of time taking turns with the camera, and then before we knew it the camera roll was finished and it was time to go back inside.
Our homework assignment this week Is "Photography someone in your life."

Thursday, Jan. 20th: Field Trip.

Today we went on a field trip down to the Henry art museum, which Is located right outside the University of Washington. I personally don't have much of an interest or a liking in this museum because every time I go there, I see art work that was taken by someone else without their knowing and consent and put into the museum, then they have the nerve to call It their art. But I guess that's just me, most of the other people liked It, maybe It's because I have been there way to many times. I don't know but either way I'm glad that field trip is over with.

We didn't get to do anything in class because we spent the whole day at the museum. After that the tour was over I just hopped on a bus from the school and went back home.

Thursday, Jan. 13th: Film Processing.

Today I learned how to process film. I didn't know there was so much to it. Like the chemicals and the mixing and shaking, it's a lot to do just for some pictures to be developed. And it takes a lot of time, about an hour to be exact, but I guess you could be processing multiple film rolls at once so it's not a complete waste of your time if your doing it that way, haha.


We talked a lot during this class and I also learned how to roll up film on a little roller thing in the dark room.
Which is pitch black by the way.

We got two homework assignments for this weekend, one of them is called "a day in the life" we have to select an object and observe it for 24 hours in different settings, pretty much whatever and wherever we want. Just have to take a total of 25 pictures before class on Tuesday. The second homework assignment is to bring in some small, funny shaped objects so that we can use them to make photogram's next class.

Tuesday, Jan. 11th: Class Intro.

Today was my first class in film photography. Our teacher, Sam, assigned us all a notebook and the first thing we did when we sat down was decorate and put a name on my shiny new notebooks. Apparently we are going to be using these notebooks for the rest of the class and beyond that when I take the next intermediate class.
After we were all pretty much done with those we got introduced to our new cameras, which is a little point and shoot but it's cute. We learned how all the camera functions work and how to load the film in correctly, and then after we got comfortable with the new cameras we went outside with our first roll of film and went on a scavenger hunt.

Later when we got back into the class room we discussed a little about the YIF expectations and agreements.
Then we all picked a book from the YIF library, chose one photo out of it, then individually shared why we chose that photo and what we liked about it. The photo I chose was a really abstract looking photo of this beautiful sunrise in the mountains, it was a horizontal shot of a lake and the sun hitting everything in the foregrounds. The reason I liked this photo was because even though it was part lake, part mountains and part sun, the whole photo was struck with this orange flow to it and the lake had the most vivid reflection of everything around it. It almost didn't look real.  And then by the time we were all done sharing class was over, so that's the end of that story. More to come though.