Final Project

Final Project Reflection 

My final project was aimed to analyze the similarities and differences between my Father and I's mental health. I wanted to represent this project in an obtainable way to an gallery audience that would enable the content to relatable and fairly easy to interpret but also to be personal enough for me that it has deeper meaning.

The style of photos I chose and created relied on heavy contrast which was achieved by using the red filters to get the perfect amount of black but maintain the highlights. In class we spoke about how happy accidents are real part of this project specifically looking at  how the photos of me have a lot more white and the photos of my dad are have a lot more black. I find this unique and could portray a deeper meaning not obtainable by the audience member but open to interpretation. 

For this project I did a lot of testing in the dark room and fell in love with the enlargement process. This is the first time I have actually felt like an artist and think this is exactly what I have been looking for my whole life. I love subtly tweaking and working on a print to make a piece of art and not just a photo. I found that for most of the photos the sweet spot was between 30 and 36 seconds on the 3, followed by 4-8 seconds on 5 to deepen the blacks. 

I used dodging and boring sparingly in this project as I felt I couldn't get the results I was looking for and was running out of paper near the end! In the future I saw illford sells warm tone paper that makes the whites creamy and I for sure want to try it! 

I spotted on most of my prints but found that I was very much not good at that and felt like it was ruining some of my prints but I do feel for my first attempt it wasn't't horrible I just need to dedicate more time and have more patience when spotting. 

This project is far from over for me and I really want to pursue it farther to flesh out the details unobtainable in such a small exhibition.