Final Artist Statement

An overview of what you will see in my portfolio will be works from Photoshop and just taken creative and artistic photographs. You find that from the beginning we had just begun new ways to take photos and use Photoshop. You can also see that from the beginning of the year when school began I struggled but I picked myself up towards the middle and when it came to the “Personal Metaphor” it became difficult for myself and some other classmates as well. The other projects and photographs you will find on my portfolio are the “Movie Scene”, “Aesthetic experience” (St. Patrick’s Day), “ISO”, and other works I have done.

The feelings I have about my portfolio is that I am happy with it, just I wish I put more effort into the more complicated and frustrating projects. But, I feel I pulled through and I tried my best. For the ones I struggled most with I wasn’t happy with. My overall feelings are good and I know I did a good job.

What I have learned over the course this semester was more Photoshop techniques, used more tools, take better quality photos, and be more creative with ideas. The last photo we took was the “Adjustment Layer” in which we had a black and white photograph and we messed with the adjustments giving the black and white photo color. Another example is when we chose a photo from our frame assignment to make a new project “Aged”. For this we used Photoshop techniques to make a ordinary picture look old and stained. I learned a lot from this semester.

I feel the most successful with the project, “Movie moments”. I thought I was most successful with this project because it gave me the idea to write an actual story of the scene but really a short story. I loved how I was able to create my own photograph and be creative with no restrictions. My movie moment was about a girl and her best friend having revenge on the others ex-boyfriend. Her best friend was killed from anger. Another project I believe I was at was the “Phobia”, this was when we were to have a photograph we taken, a photo of our selves, and the fears we may have. I liked that I put three phobias into one. I believe these projects were the best I have done.

I struggled the most with the “Personal Metaphor”. This project I believe was a struggle for most. I struggled with this project because we were to turn ourselves into a object being our metaphor and have our metaphor placed in the photo as well. I picked a butterfly as my metaphor. I wasn’t sure how to make my skin look like a butterfly or place my head with the butterfly or even blend my skin with the butterfly. I had trouble with finding a color for the words (metaphor) that would go with the photo. I could have improved with choosing an animal or object that didn’t seem to advance for me such as a cactus or rain drops.

Some of my influences are my mother, my friends who sat next to me in class, and other students that I worked with in the past. My mother was an influence to me because she is photographer herself and she knows how to take good, quality, artistic and creative photographs. I would like to give her credit for helping me throughout this year especially towards the end. My friends who sat next to me helped me out and I consider them a influence for the encouragement. I believe that other classmates I helped and worked with I consider them an influence as well. Where I seen the growth and improvement through my work is towards the end of the year when we worked on the “Movie Moment”, “Aesthetic experience”, “Adjustment layer”, “Shutter speed”, and all the other projects we have done in the past. The improvement I saw in taking a photograph became better, such as “Personal Metaphor” the background I took the photograph of the flowers.

In conclusion, if I were grading my online portfolio from a scale of 1-10 I would give myself an eight. I would give myself an eight because on some of the projects you can tell I didn’t try hard enough either with taking the photograph or asking how to do something. This portfolio helped give me more knowledge on Photoshop skills and being creative.