Final Artist Statment

I feel that for this semester as well as the entire school year the one thing I was best at was being honest. All my pictures to me had a touch of truth and insight into who I am. Although not each picture may be brilliant and unique they are mine and I tried my hardest with each project assigned to me – me admitting to this just shows once more how the best thing I did this semester was be honest.  It is true that digital photography was an extremely fun class, but it was not easy. The hardest thing for me was trying to be creative because I am use to teachers telling me exactly what to do. In this class however, Miss Cook gave a wide range of your own personal touches to anything you did, and for me that was not such a great thing. Nevertheless, I was repeatedly inspired to continuously attempt making breathtaking images, by all the work displayed from my classmates as well as Miss Cook.

Improvement for myself is most needed in the area of realism. When I put more than one image together on Photoshop everything always looks copied and pasted, when it is suppose to look all natural as if everything is flowing together perfectly. There are multiple things that I learned from this class, but the technique I will probably use the most will be shutter speed on my camera. I never knew one could make such special effects by just adjusting things on their camera. I will most definitely use this technique in the future whenever I want my picture to have a little something extra. I could make it look as if ghosts are in the picture or as if light is moving all around my subject and many more things.

Although the quilt squares were suppose to be all about me, I feel that the project which connected most with my life was the surrealism project. It connected to me through small details in which I knew the meaning of them. Such as the scorpion representing the fact that I’m a Scorpio and have battles with other creatures in my life. There is more on that topic, but you can read my reflection on my surrealism piece if you wish to know more. My life – in comparison to many others I know – is charmed and guarded. I do not have to suffer very much and am mostly spoiled – or so people tell me. Therefore when it comes to my life I can only really think of the positive things, although like everyone I too have bad times, but when I look out into the world I only see the pain and hurt all around, which causes me to think differently about the world than people might expect.

Cindy Sherman is an artist I have just recently learned about, however the fact that she takes pictures of herself, creating scenes as if she is in a movie reminds me of myself. I am no where near as amazing as her, but when I take my “snapshots” I try to make them have a special type of look as if I am somewhere and something drastic is occurring. If I had to choose just one I would say I relate to Cindy Sherman the most. I have seen growth and improvement in my opinions. I am more open minded to art and what the meanings behind different pieces mean, where as before if something was insane I just thought the person was crazy. The most meaningful project of this school year to me is the social issue. This is because I incorporated my own mother into my work and based the social issue off of her, it was special to me simply because I included my mother in it. My experience in this class was a unique one, I never had a teacher with a personality like Miss Cook, never had a class where I worked with cameras and Photoshop half the time. Everything was just new and exciting, I’m grateful I had the chance to partake in this experience and although am sad, I know like all good things it must come to an end.