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."