The Best of the Best

Aloha friends and welcome (back) to my website! :)

In this post, I am going to be comparing my best photo of my first semester of this past school year to my best photo now after my second semester of this past school year.

This will also be my last post for the school year :"(

Man, this school year was definitely unlike any other. If we were to describe this past year with one word it would definitely be unprecedented. (Yes, I stole that from the news channels).

Fortunately, I was one of the people who got to go to school in person every day. This means it felt more normal for me than it probably did for some of my other classmates. Also to help myself make it feel even more normal, I had joined 3 extracurriculars. I was on my school's math team, Japanese Club, and peer education program Club. Having these clubs made it feel more like a normal school year for me. Plus, regardless of the circumstances, it’s always good to stay busy, in my opinion.

Looking back at this weird year, I feel that my creative levels have been less than normal, actually. Not because of my photography class, but because of everything going on in the world and my lil’ teenage mind. As the days went on, I found myself having less and less motivation… and even as we speak, I wrote this post at 6:45 in the morning on the last day of school after pulling an all-nighter to get my other website posts done. :”D

But, you know, I’m sure my creativity levels will rise again. Once things start to become less about Covid and more about life, I’ll think my creativity and motivation will be just fine.

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Best of First Quarter

Best of Fourth Quarter

I think this is my best photo for the end of the year. I think this because I have loved this photo ever since I took this photo. I like how calming the scene is. The story behind the photo is that I was on a hike and made it to the top to see this couple having a romantic moment. The man was playing guitar and singing to the woman and it was a very calming song, and it was all as the sun was setting. And right over that ledge where they were sitting was the ocean. So overall everything was super serene and calm. So now, when I look at that photo, I think about the Serene environment and how calming everything was and the romantic scene as well. It was so beautiful to see and hear once reaching the top of the hike.

Although this photo is beautiful and I think it's my best photo, I also like the following photos I took, too.

The first two photos in this slideshow gallery are two silhouette photos of my sister. I had a silhouette assignment but I had never finished so I never got to share the results, and I actually kind of like those two photos. The third photo is of my emotional support rooster MingMing and I like that it looks like he is superior, and I also like to look of the bokeh in the background.

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Now that I have successfully completed a year of photography, one area that I have become stronger in is camera control. A lot of the things that we went over this year I had forgotten about until we went over them. So, it was good to review a lot of the terms in the settings on the cameras.

I feel like I ignored a lot of the settings for a while. I always shoot in aperture priority mode. I never really liked shooting in manual mode. But, after taking this class for one school year, I have started feeling more comfortable shooting in manual mode and setting up my own camera settings.

Now I feel more comfortable and confident setting up those camera settings because I know what they're actually for.

For my landscape photography, instead of shooting and landscape mode, I would set up my own settings in manual mode. I would make sure that my aperture was over f/11, and I would also make sure that my white balance settings were correct, manually.

The same goes for my portrait photography, but the exact opposite of the landscape photography settings. Instead of shooting in aperture priority mode, I would shoot in manual mode, and make sure that my aperture was under f/11 and I wouldn't really mess around with white balance unless needed.

The one thing that I didn't get to accomplish or try out this year that I would still like to do is to learn how to surf. If I were to be able to go back to myself in September and give myself advice, I would say go learn how to surf. Don't be afraid to fall off the board because you know it's just water. Just got to try it. You know you just got to go for it. Stop waiting around.

Also not related to surfing, but I would tell myself not to be so lazy. And I would also tell myself to stop procrastinating. And I would ask myself do I really want to take summer school? Lol

If I could ask my photography teacher to include something so that I would know more about a certain style or topic of photography I would ask her about film photography. I feel like a lot of the tangible photography stuff was really fun, so I would really enjoy learning about film photography. Or at least, more about it.

To be honest, there wasn't anything that I was thinking that would have been introduced but wasn't included in my photography class.

I would like to continue with photography all four years of my high school. So, I plan to take photography 2 next year. I also miss working on the yearbook staff, so if I have extra space in my schedule in the following years, I might want to join yearbook again. But other than classes, next year I will be my class’ historian. I will be using my photography skills to help document the events and the memories that my class makes. Which, I think, is pretty awesome to do.

And with that, that is the end of my final post for the school year of 2020-2021. Hope to continue with this portfolio next year. Until then, aloha. :)

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Thank you for taking the time to read this post! If you like what you read/saw, please be sure to check out some of my other posts!

I am honored to be taking you along on my photography journey! I hope you stay safe and have a wonderful day. Much aloha!

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