Description of the placement and my reflection (unit 1 part A/B/C)

Description of the placement and my reflections

Since my training with Karen and Jan I feel a lot more confident in taking a professional photograph than when I started.  I feel like I’ve learnt a lot from the two photographers because in the beginning from my own experiences I just thought I could point and shoot and you had a photograph, Now I feel I can really capture a professional looking image. I have learnt how to use SLR properly and although I have still a lot to learn, both Karen and Jan say practice is the key to this.  

12^th  March = We discussed the photographs I have done in the past to see where I am at because Karen had never seen any of my work, We discussed my interests and the styles of my art work she was interested in. I brought along some of my photographs I had taken to see how she would suggest they could be improved. I then got to look at her work discussed where she began and where she was at now. She showed me the work she had done for Culture Shop last year which was very interesting as we were going to do this for our unit two.  I found this Information very useful for both my units in the gold arts award. We spent 2 to 3 hours going through this to see where we wanted to take the project. Karen was very interested in working with another photographer, Janet Walter to give me a wider range of skills.

22^nd March = We worked on the photographs I had already taken to improve them by working in Photoshop. Karen showed me a wide range of skills including Raw which I didn't know about. After this session she e-mailed me back the work we had done and I was amazed at the improvement it made with a few small changes. I was very pleased with the progress we had made in just a few sessions. I feel I have the confidence now to begin to take professional photographs because I could always improve them in Photoshop (images can be seen on blog 28^th March).

26^th March = This was when Karen e-mailed over images which we worked on and other information and she would set me a task to do to find out about, for example how the aperture of a camera worked. Communication was usually done via e-mail phone or text messages. The project was put on hold till May due to Jan being away on holiday and Karen wanted me to work with her together. Meanwhile this gave me time to research and carry on getting to grips with learning the theory of photography.  I struggled getting the idea of the main concept of photography.   I felt I was getting very confused at the different aspects including Aperture, depth of field, Shutter Speed, and ISO.  At this point in time I felt I was never going get the hang of it.

17^th  May Jan was due come back off holiday soon and after discussing my degree project with Karen she was very interested in seeing it for herself, Karen and I set up growing salt crystals at her house ready for when Jan came back.

21^st May after phone calls and text messages we agreed a date to meet up to get the project started.  I went round to set up the experiments ready for the photo session with Jan the following week.

2^nd June Meeting up with Karen and Jan was interesting to see how different photographers would work. We had a training session first because I was still struggling to get my head around Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO. I felt way out my depth when Jan explained this to me.  She helped me by drawing diagrams and picture to explain how they worked. I felt really worried that I had chosen something I wasn’t going to achieve. The challenge of creating a professional photograph at this point seems too difficult to do.  After a few hours of training and explaining how a camera worked Karen and Jan thought it best to show me so I could practice this in my own time. Karen explained to me that the best way to learn was by doing it and seeing the result.

After this session I felt completely overwhelmed and very confused with a lot information to process. After a while I worked on taking photographs of different things to see if I could recreate photographs like Karen and Jan had explained to me.  This process took a while and because I was starting unit two at this point my project got put to one side until I could find the time. Throughout my blog you can see some of the practice shots I took. There were many so I have only put a key selection of these images in the blog to show my development.

I also had online help form both Karen and Jan to help me on my final piece to try to improve it before I got it printed.  I also had suggestions off my father who mostly learnt from self-reading a lot books and practice over the years.