The Alchemist

See page titled "Reflection" for my reflection over my sophomore year and my Genius Hour project.

Last night, I finally started to get a real plan for my TedTalk video. I was really struggling with coming up with an intro. After watching the TedTalk examples, I knew that I wanted my intro to be funny, engaging, and show my personality. This endeavor was suprisingly difficult when trying to tie it with learning about photography. ISO, aperture, and shutter speed... Isn't that funny and doesn't it connect to your life too? I was lost, and didn't know what to do to show my personality with what I had learned. I think my midnight planning last night helped though. I finally got an idea; the light bulb was turned on! I connected baking, and how I went from basics to experimenting with recipes, and how that failed miserably with photography because of how critical the details are. When I read it to my mom, who, side note, was not very happy that this was happening at 12:30 this morning, laughed during my intro and said that it was completely me. It's humorous, sarcastic, ...

My excitement level is about as high as it can be for someone who has stayed up hours longer than they meant to to finish this project. Because I am not entirely sure how long it will take for my photo book to be created and shipped, I finished it up tonight to (hopefully!!) allow enough time for it to get here. I also needed to make sure I had enough time to make the TedTalk video I sadly have to make once I got it, because I want to not only discuss what I have learned in the video, but also show how I have implemented it. Back to my book... I chose to have an all black background because I thought that it made the colors pop, and there are no embellishments to take away from the details in the photo.There is a total of 36 photos, but 37 if you count my surprise photo at the end that I did not take, it was not part of my project. I even have a nice, little disclaimer to make sure that readers are not confused about that. Compared to last week, this week I got so much accomplished. I...

I planned to get a lot done with my project this week, but sadly I have not done much. Most of my research is done, so all I really need to do now is look up some things I was confused about, change my URLs to MLA citation on my notes document, and practice what I learned. I also have not taken any pictures this week, which is making me very sad. I had planned to go to the park this weekend because we have not had any heavy rain recently, but my aunt came to visit us on Saturday, and my weekend overall was busy, so I did not have time to go somewhere and take photos. Although, to make up for this, I did make my mother promise to take me to the park sometime this week. I need to have more photos to choose from for my book, but, as I said earlier, I also need to practice what I have learned about how to manipulate a camera to get the best photo. I want to try to implement some of the design techniques I wrote about last week, as well. Another thing I have not been able to get done this ...

Help me, I have fallen through the rabbit hole. This week I buckled down on research and digital editing. While I was researching, I would be looking at how to do something, and it would discuss other processes or talk about features that I did not know, so I had to look those up, and I just fell further, and further into the rabbit hole. It was a good fall though, and I learned a lot. One thing I looked into this week was the rule of thirds, which separates a photo into a 3x3 grid. It is said to be beneficial to put the subject(s) of the photo on either one of the lines or points of intersection because the eyes are naturally drawn there and it makes the photo balanced. One of the links I saw was about how controlling this rule was, and how a lot of times the photos using it were boring or had a lot of bad negative space. Instead, it showed paintings and photographs using other “rules” or techniques, like arabesque lines, dynamic symmetry, and coincidences that were not real coincide...

This Saturday I went to the park, which was pretty fun. The only bad thing was that it had rained multiple times during the week, so the trail I went on was very muddy. It was so muddy that I could only go 20 or 30 feet, then had to turn around. I got some good pictures, but I am going to have to go back to get the photos I was planning on taking. There is a creek that runs alongside part of the trail, but, again, it was just too muddy to get to that part of the trail and photograph it. Over this week, I also have created a short list of things to start looking into, and how they affect a photo. This list includes the rule of thirds, lines in the photo, different patterns or types of symmetry, viewpoint, and depth. I have not yet started researching anything for the digital editing part of my project, so I want to start on that this week also. I am not sure how much I will have to look up for this part of the project, or how much will just be me experimenting with different buttons an...

I have gotten my project pitch for learning/mastering photography approved and have started working on what I am going to research, where I am going to take photos, and what I am going to do for my final project. So far, I got the camera I will be using for my project. It is my aunt’s Canon Rebel T6 that she got with a lens kit, so I have a normal (I guess??) lens and a super zoomed in lens. I have taken a couple pictures out in my backyard of flowers, trees, and ripples in water puddles. I think they look pretty good, so I am excited to see what I can do once I have better technique and have edited them. I also checked out a couple of books from the school library to read. My goal for this week in the research aspect of my project is to look through the books I checked out and figure out what I need to research more. I paged through them a little bit already, and I am not entirely sure how much they will help because I am one step above knowing nothing about the technical aspects of ...