The Last Project - Collage ;(

Artist Reflection for Project 8

     My strongest technical aspect of this project would be would be the diversity in the values in the final product. There is both black and white as well as at least 8 different shades of gray. I had used a 2 1/2 contrast filter on it to give it the variety in values. The original photo also was composed of several different objects with varying amount of shade made it a perfect choice for this assignment. Something I could have improved on was to increase the darkness overall on the negative. I could achieve this by changing the filter to a 3 or 3 1/2 or higher, but i believe past that it could make things too dark. Another way to darken the results would be to expose it to light more by a second or 2 more or increase the F-11 to F-8.
     The easiest part would be agitating the chemicals over the paper like all darkroom projects. It was also easy to cut out what film I would use for this image, then choose the winning frame. The more difficult things were to find what light level and duration I would use, as this was my first dark room assignment. Those who were already in the dark room gave me numbers to work with and I worked from there, but since each enlarger is different and each picture needs different amounts of light to meet the same result as others, I had to experiment some and the large test strip had helped plenty to choose the result for the finished product. I admit I was not sure why some of the small strips were so dark, but later came to realize I did nothing wrong, but the papers must have been previously exposed to light when they were being pulled from the drawers.
     I demonstrated the objective by accurately making an enlarged version of the film on the light-sensitive paper using the enlarger. The objective was to go through the process from taking pictures to using the enlarger to make the contact sheet in the from of a test strip, then choose the best value and make another test strip to replicate that, and choose that best result and make a finished product with that chosen value. If I were to repeat this project, I would take a snapshot of something that isn't school related (because I do not need a reminder that I am in school). Overall this activity is easy now that I understand it, but since it was my first experience in the dark room, it was actually relatively disorienting.

    

Artist Reflection for Project 7

     I believe the strongest technical aspect would be my ability in this series to keep the focus center on the subject (Marie). Lining it up is highly important because it defines the balance of the photo. The stools that were used had legs that matched up on the same axis having two points to reference. The weakest aspect would be my inability to permenantly fix the blur effect on most of the image. the small strips had a nice focus, but when it came to that large positive sheet only the leftmost area had any clarity. Specifically the wheel which would almost rival a company manufactured camera that a customer would buy. What had worked on the small sheets to provide a precise image was using a mild light setting (F-11) and increasing the time compared to the first couple positive strips. This experience is similar to cooking, and the blur is tantamount where the food is burned in some areas and uncooked in others. 

     The easiest part was keeping the photo paper in the chemicals and agitating them to catalyze the reaction. Shifting the tub requires no critical thinking and adapting to improve. Albeit sometimes one can forget exactly when the paper is deposited in the liquids, but the matter of a few seconds do not make a difference. The hardest part of this activity was figuring out the issues that troubled the perfection of this project. When I thought of this as similar to cooking (as stated earlier), I remedied the solution, despite being confused as to what caused the blur. 

     The objective was to learn about how lighting affects light sensitive paper, and to create an image with it. I had first learned about how to block light as not to disturb contents inside.  As Marie had used this coffee camera several times it was proven to be light proof besides the shutter, as it should be, so I did not add more time to test to see if there is a light leak. When I had put in my first test strip for the coffee camera in it was exposed to too much light and off center, which I had learned from and adjusted the stools and the time the shutter was open. Then it was time to make the positive from the negative from the coffee camera. The new objective was simply to create a positive of the results from the coffee camera. After a few successes with the small strips I made a large sheet version which mysteriously wasn't able to capture any definition from the smaller samples (besides on the wheel of the car on the bottom left), and had to call that a wrap before using too many resources. If I were to reenact this activity, I would want to build a scene, like borrow some artwork and line it up outside, or take a picture of the cars parked outside.