week four: critique!

I have to start with this: IT IS REALLY HARD TO KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT DURING A CRITIQUE OF YOUR WORK!

We critiqued our shutter speed (stop or show motion) photographs in class this week.

I chose one of my photos with a slower shutter speed:



During critique we talk about each photograph in front of the photographer, but the photographer isn't allowed to answer questions or defend their work as everyone talks about it. We answer these questions about each photograph:

*what do you notice first?
*what do you like about the photograph?
*what don't you like about the photograph?
*what would you do differently to improve the photograph?

I didn't agree with _everything_ that was said about my photo, but people did suggest a few ways that the photograph could've been better.

This week we also started talking about composition and the relationship between the photographer and the subject. We'll be photographing each other and being photographed ourselves in order to explore both sides of the portrait experience.

filmies: it's dark in here

Everyone talks about how great the darkroom is, so I asked a friend about what goes on down in CPC's basement.

90% of the film students, like my friend, are women. Cara said that something happens when you turn out the lights. That at first everyone's worried about getting things wrong—opening the cannister incorrectly and exposing the film, or putting too much or to little of the right chemicals in at the right time. But she said the lab instructor was funny and helpful and (after he freaked everyone out by saying that he'd put the wrong chemical in the developing cannisters) put everyone at ease.

She tried to describe being in the dark like that, with other people she hardly knew. She said and id that because you can't see, you become really attuned to other sensory input. In the darkroom they navigate around by sight and feel.

And unlike my experience with digital, where I can see what I've just shot so that I kind of know what I got in given shoot, with film, there's this hold-your-breath moment right before you look at your developed negatives where you don't know if you have anything. And there's something magical about that moment. She said there's nothing like being able to see the images you worked so hard for, there in a slender strip, ready to be enlarged.