Hello again blog readers, and welcome back! It hasn’t been that long since I finished my last project (Tectonically Correct), and we are marking the halfway point of another one! This project from Maker, was all over improving skills! One of the groups, the group I was in, was all about photographs, photographing, and photographers. One major photographer, the photographer this part of the project was, was named Fred Herzog. We learned about him through Basecamp, and we learned about him at the start of the project to learn about his style of photography, looking at his photographs, which looked like they weren’t made, but just taken at random parts of the city, while still looking really good and powerful. This taught me that a picture doesn’t have to be in the perfect position to be an amazing shot.

Throughout the project, we had five major targets we wanted to achieve to become better photographers (hint: it worked!).

Skill one: Composing Composition. This first skill helped us with our basic skills and understanding of taking photographs. Us, on our way to becoming photographers, took photos of everyday objects, using unique angles, backgrounds, and foregrounds to really make that object almost come to life! This really helped us get a basic understanding of photography with the iPad. Next, we went on a photo walk to practice these skills around the school. Here are some of mine!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, we made our photos actually come to life with mark up! We took an everyday object, then use the markup tool in Photos to show our creativity. I think mine is really cool!

Skill two: Adjusting Angles. This made us think or extremely odd and cool angles that could show something intresting about a person (in this case). We took portraits of other people with those camera angles, making us look more intresting. Our final photo we took a sillouette of someone, something we just might use in the future!

Skill three: Manufaturing Mood. This one was the biggest skill we had learned so far, even though this one target we had to achieve involved multiple skills. Our first lesson we learned though us how to use landscapes to make different types of photographs, including panoramas. We learned how to make photos look dramatic, bright, etc. so that we could make photographs more interesting, and become better photographers. We learned how to use some insane photographing apps, including Snapseed and Pixelmator Photo. Here’s an example!

Then, as a challenge to practice all of these skills together, we were given an emotion, and had to make a photograph showing that emotion. Mine was surprise, and I thought I did a great job editing it to make the photo look extremely dramatic. Here it is!

Skill four: Creating Collages. This skill was partially like the Memojis we made earlier in the year! We made a name using letters we could find around the school, sometimes in very creative ways! We did this to practice our creativity, and our skills with Keynote (cropping, instant-alpha, etc). Here’s mine!

Next, we made a collage, like the Memoji, that showed ourselves and our interests to refine the skills we learned previously in Keynote. This was really fun, as I got to show what I like to do, and have fun using Keynote with Instant-Alpha, borders and leading lines!

Skill five: Molding Movement. In this last skill, we learned how to make GIFs to show all of the skills we had learned beforehand. We learned how to use bursts and live photographs to make photos seem live and in the moment, to make us better photographers. This really helped us improve our skills because we could hold down the shutter button (a piece of vocabulary we learned) and take some action photos! We also learned how to use Live Photo to make a GIF to show some of the skills we had learned in the past four skills. Then we went with a partner to make a GIF ourselves!

If the end goal was to improve my photography skills, I think that target was a bullseye! From all of the skills we learned, I think I took away tons of skills, including how to make GIFs in Photos, many new camera angles to try to show a part of something/someone, and overall just a better understanding of my skills on the iPad. Thanks again blog readers, and I hope you learned something from this post as well!