Masters of Photography Reflection

Hello guys!

      Now since it's January and the school semester is almost over with a new one coming up, it's time for a reflection based on the Gordon Parks inspired pictures I took and my photography over the semester. To be honest, I never imagine my photography class to included worldly knowledge as we daily look at Lens. I find Lens a very diverse, inspiring website full of information around the globe. In addition, I thought we would learn how to use Photoshop more since I wanted learn how to edit my pictures using Camera Raw and the Photoshop program. It seems like I learn how to use Photoshop more from my peers and playing around Photoshop.

    Throughout the semester I improved my photography not only by gaining more outside knowledge, but also applying my gained knowledge onto my photography. I learned the impact photography has and how the framing of the subject along with its background can portray strong feelings towards the audience. For instance, we watched documentaries about famous master photographers including Dorothea Lange and Robert Capa to see how their work influence others. And such photographers show how powerful photography is even when it may show pictures of whom we may never met before.
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      As for the Masters of Photography project, it shows how driven I can be when I wanted to take a certain picture in mind. For example, the first picture of me holding the sign shows how much thought and effort I have put in that one picture. Plus also my pictures shows that I'm not afraid to ask my classmates to help out since each picture shows a different subject and a different place. I guess I wanted to show how I really want to represent similar ideas and feelings as Gordon Parks has expect that I didn't plan the fourth picture as well as I had with the others. I could have frame the picture by using a different background, same for Samuel's picture. Both backgrounds of those pictures weren't frame properly. In addition, I could have work on Stanley's picture a bit longer using Photoshop, but I guess one and half week is a pretty long time. And I like it, including Stanley who later commented me about it. Other than that, I would also planned out my pictures ahead of time because I ran out of time and ideas near the due date. Hahaha!

       As I have mention before, I have a photography group to help me out with my pictures and blog. In my group (which has changed from time to time due to new student arrivals) I have Jessica Kam, Amandi Kwok, Samuel Sze, Anish Bhanot, Michael Shen, Irene Wu, Sharon Hsu, Vina Kong and more people who weren't technically in my group. My current one has Amandi Kwok, Samuel Sze, Irene Wu, and Vina Kong; and I really like my group. They have helped individually with my pictures, commenting on my blogs and helping me whenever I need it. The main benefits of having a group are diverse skills and ideas to learn from, fun people to hang out with, and helpful support to encourage all of us. I want to say thank you to all of them and the "more people" part: Mr. Farley, Aileen Hsu, Allen Hsiao, and more. You guys have helped me improved and I appreciate it.

       However, there's always a downside to having groups and to me there aren't many. One of the downsides I experience is when everyone does not feel like working and that kind of feeling discourages to work on my photography. Another downside is my group sometimes don't always pay attention and work on other classwork, which happens to all of us. I guess the negative effect is when that lack of enthusiasm spreads to all of us and it's natural for that to happen. But I think that's about it because my group is really one of the best.

      In fact from looking at my group's blogs I think most of them used creativity and effort in almost all of them. I like how each picture is unique and has the photographer's own flair and energy. The ones I looked were Aileen Hsu's, Irene Wu's, Amandi Kwok's, Vina Kong's, Michael Shen's, and Samuel Sze's. Since I don't like to play favorite, please check out theirs and be amazed of their work.