20% Time is when we choose a project to do that is new to us and something we wouldn't normally do. 20% Time is a project we will be working on only on Fridays until the end of the school year. We may work alone or in a small group of 2 or 3 people only but we would have to decide very carefully... Before we start on our project, we would have to write a proposal first and get it approved by Mrs. Crutchfield or Mrs. Hefler. We will also be choosing and asking questions if we need to be assisted with anything to a mentor over email who will guide us through our project twice throughout the year. Once we have completed our project, we will present it to the class and reflect on the process in a 5-minute TED-talk style.
Our 20% Project
For my 20% Time project, I am working in a small group With Isabella & Kaylee and we will be learning photography and the history of it. Our idea is for each of us to take pictures, correlating with the category of photography we’ve chosen. Kaylee will be capturing “the beauty of nature.” Isabella will be taking pictures of still objects. I will be taking pictures of your average landscapes and proving you can find beauty in average places. In the end, we will compile our most favored photos, and make them into something somewhat presentable to our peers. We also decided that Kaylee will be using a Canon IOS Rebel T6, Isabella will be using a FUJIFILM X100F and I will be using a Canon EOS 70D and show that everybody can try photography and become an amateur photographer.20% Time Progress Reflection
Every week, we were supposed to reflect on our progress for that specific day and rate ourselves a score from 1 - 4 on how well we were working to reach our goal so here it is...
September 21 - Score: 2 I decided to work on my project with Kaylee & Isabella. Started our brainstorming guide and wrote a list of ideas for certain topics (for ex. List all of the things you've ever wanted to do, physically, but never been able to.) to narrow down to a set of ideas to choose from. Didn't get to finish our brainstorming guide and start on our free write.
September 28 - Score: 4 We finished our brainstorming guide and our free write where we chose 3 ideas and wrote about each of them for 5 minutes. We decided to learn and do photography for our project and started writing our student proposal outline for our project idea that answers questions like what materials we need and what our end result will be.
October 5 - Score: 3 We continued on our proposal outline and finished that. We started working on our elevator pitch but didn't have enough time to complete it.
October 12 - Score: 3 We almost completed our elevator pitch. Mrs. Hefler gave us a rubric for the elevator pitch and according to the rubric, in order to get a 4, our pitch had to be said in 30 seconds or less so we had to remove a few sentences/phrases. Other than that, here is our pitch:
We want to explore more in the world of photography because we would like to become better at capturing the perfect moment. We hope that people aspiring to be better at photography find our work and see that our equipment isn't exactly extravagant and yet we still had fun. The resources that we hope to use will simply be a phone (edit: a DSLR camera) and easy to access editing software on a computer. We plan to take the time to ask questions to our mentor in order to clarify the basics of photography such as lighting and angles. We will make a blog to post our work weekly, and the pictures we like best will be used to make a presentable record of our work in the end. And with that, can we take mediocre pictures with little experience and inexpensive equipment?
October 19 - Score: 4 We wrote our elevator pitch on index cards. Today Kaylee presented our pitch to Mrs. Crutchfield while Isabella and I were in a different class and we got approved! So that is a good thing although we did only get a 15/16 :(
October 26 - Score: 3 We researched for mentors who work in the department of photography and plan to email some of them if they are available to evaluate our progress until we have Mrs. Hefler's or Mrs. Crutchfield's approval of the mentors.
November 2 - Score: 4 We have found several college professors who work in photography and had Mrs. Crutchfield's approval to email them. We sent emails to 8 professors and are waiting for their reply.
Ex.
Subject--> Interested in Photography: Student Group
Dear ...,
My name is Isabella J. and I’m an eighth-grade student at Lorbeer Middle School. Two of my classmates and I are working on a 20% Time project about photography. A 20% project is when we are given one day a week to work on a project of our choice. I found your information from the Mt. San Antonio College Faculty Directory / Otis College of Art and Design. Would you have time to evaluate our progress in photography(as we would like to become better with different skills in photography) two times - once after we’ve completed some work and again at the end of the assignment? If you are available, we are able to send you a blog entry of our project for your feedback. My email is ijuar23@apps.pusd.org. I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you for your time!
Sincerely,
Isabella J.
Kaylee S.
Angelina P.
Lorbeer Middle School
November 9 - Score: 4 Surprisingly 5 of the 8 professors that we emailed have responded. 3 of them have agreed to be our mentors. One of them is very promising in helping with our work as they specialize in subjects closely related to some questions we have in mind. Another professor said they only worked part-time and that he thought he wouldn't be the best person to have as a mentor but told us that we can ask him for any help if we need assistance in getting contact with a mentor.
⛔ ATTENTION ⛔
< all that stuff was kinda boring ^^^ essentially because I am a very boring person. but if you keep scrolling down, I assure you will start seeing evidence of our progress (except that part when our mentors didn't respond back to our reply) and it won't be as much boring anymore. >
(yes I know I'm very eXtRa but it's not like anybody is gonna see this... but if you do, comment "hAHA you thought wrong.")
(yes I know I'm very eXtRa but it's not like anybody is gonna see this... but if you do, comment "hAHA you thought wrong.")
November 16 - Score: 3 We researched the basics of photography. First, we need to have the basic equipment which is simply a camera.📸 The type of camera that we need for photography is a DSLR camera or at least a camera that can adjust the shutter speed, aperture, and IOS. Shutter speed is the length of time a camera is exposed to light into the camera sensor. If the shutter speed is fast, it can freeze the action completely. If the shutter speed is slow, it can create an effect called "motion blur" where moving objects appear blurred in the resulting photo. Aperture is the hole within the lens through which lets light travel into the body of the camera. IOS is the level of sensitivity of your camera to available light. The lower the IOS number, the less the camera is sensitive to light vice versa. We learned things today. The Basics Of Photography
November 30 - Score 4 We replied to mentors and asked what we should do first as beginners as our main goal for this project is to learn more about photography and the history of it. Anything that anyone is just beginning photography would learn. We also asked for there recommendation as to what to start with. We also decided that Kaylee will be using a Canon IOS Rebel T6, Isabella will be using a FUJIFILM X100F, and I will be using a Canon EOS 70D to show that everybody can try photography and become an amateur photographer.
December 7 - Score 1 Unfortunately, our mentors didn't email us back. Today we asked Mrs. Hefler if we can take pictures outside using our phones because we do not have our cameras on us right now. She said no because we can not be using our phones on campus and that we should be using actual cameras for photography. So tomorrow for sure we will bring our cameras next week so we can start taking pictures. 📵 only >📸
December 14 - Score 4 I learned how to use my camera and how to focus and adjust things. We also went out to take a few pictures outside. They turned out pretty good. :) A 43:39 Minute Long Vid Tutorial On How To Use My Canon EOS 70D
kaylee will hate me for this but it's for my blog and it's not like anybody is gonna see this 👀
(btw kaylee, sTOB saying you are ugly, it's getting annoying :( )
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| (i randomly just took this picture) |
before
after
January 11 - Score 0 Coming back from winter break, all of us forgot our cameras. #Disappointed 😔
January 18 - Score 3 I played around with an editing app called Lightroom using a picture that I took a few weeks ago from that last time we went out to take pictures. It wasn't the best-edited photo but it was okay for my first time using that app. I think I will be using Lightroom to edit my photos from now on. We went outside to take some more pictures again. I found out that we can use presets to edit pictures when we came back so I think that will make editing simpler. I also edited some more pictures.
adobe lightroom (a.k.a. the app I use to edit my photos)
before
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| a lot of saturation. (not the best, my first time using this app) update: o00 it's really bad i don't like this photo |
after
January 25 - Score 3 I finally edited a picture using my phone (that's why it's not the best quality or whatever😑) that I took 2 days after Thanksgiving. The result gave me vintage vibes or whatever lol. It looked pretty satisfactory but then, MY CHROMEBOOK JUST HAD TO RELOAD AND IT DISAPPEARED so I had to edit it again :) My sister was in the picture so I wanted to edit her out. There is a tool in Lightroom called "Healing" where it "replaces" the spot you want to take out with a small section from the photo that matches with its surroundings. I don't know why but the Chromebook doesn't have the healing tool so I had to use my phone. When I went to Lightroom on my phone, my edited photo wasn't on there but it was on my Chromebook. I reloaded my Chromebook after I saved my photo but it disappeared, again. So I had to edit it, again. :) I'm such a mood, that's all for today, toodles.
before & after
(not my favorite, it's eh)
update: it's not eh, it's not okay
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February 1 - Score: 2 I edited another photo today. I just noticed that I haven't been uploading pictures of our progress so I will post a few pictures of my before and after photos that I edited. So here you goooooo.... babam.
(random photo I took because I wanted to try focusing and stuff) >>
before
after
taDA
February 22 (Saturday) - Score 3: Since we thought that we should try portrait photography, I tried to practice on my best friend Zolina... I also explored some different settings and creative filters to see how they look. I think they turned out nice.
February 8 - Score: 3 I searched up some areas to take photos at and I found some sites that I consider taking photos at for my category...
- Bonelli Regional Park (recommended by Susette) - San Dimas
- English Springs Park - Chino Hills
- I wanna go to Yosemite National Park but it's 5 hours and 44 minutes away :(
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| bonelli park (not original) |
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| english springs park (not original) |
I am thinking about going to Bonelli Park this coming Monday (the 11th) || update: I wasn't able to go that day and I won't be able to go this coming Monday, I will just have to wait 'till Saturday.
February 15 - Score 3: We started making our slideshow in google docs to compile out most favored photos for our ted talk in the end. We were also thinking about taking a portrait of each of us and of course, edit them and place them on the first slide to start by capturing our audience's attention of oUR fAcEs. I also uploaded some photos from my phone and edited them. Ted Talk Slideshow Of Our Photos
February 15 - Score 3: We started making our slideshow in google docs to compile out most favored photos for our ted talk in the end. We were also thinking about taking a portrait of each of us and of course, edit them and place them on the first slide to start by capturing our audience's attention of oUR fAcEs. I also uploaded some photos from my phone and edited them. Ted Talk Slideshow Of Our Photos
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light/scene-based shots: shade
setting: brighter creative filter: miniature effect
setting: monochrome creative filter: toy-camera effect
setting: warm creative filter: fish-eye effect
setting: warm creative filter: miniature effect
she's such a model, I'm so proud of her!
(this was just for fun)
(this was just for fun)
I also um wanted to try to take a few pics of bread. I don't know how/why the thought dAWned on me to do this but it didn't turn out the way I thought so but whatever.
I watched some videos on portrait photography for beginners, the one I watched is restricted but I thought it was helpful, it's called Outdoor Portrait Photography for Beginners by Josh Katz. I learned that the person doesn't have to have their face towards the camera for it to be a portrait ;)
)
golden hour is the best time to take outdoor portrait photography
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(Friday) - Today we went outside to take photos again and attempted portrait photography because we want to try something that was new to us. (I let Isa take some photos of me but she won't let me see them until she uploads them onto her blog :/ )
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March 1 - Score 3: We added photos to our Ted Talk Slideshow and uploaded our photos from our first month to show our improvement in photography as we grow. We also went outside to take a few more pictures...
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| before |
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| after I think I could've gotten closer to the butterfly, but I thought I would've flown away |
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| after I don't know why I took a pic of weeds, but I did anyway |
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| before |
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| after just saying, the pic Kaylee took of this is better than mine 
not one I took on my camera but on my phone
it looks cool though
(you might have seen it on me and Kaylee's poetry deck)
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| the clouds were pretty and low today (not edited) |
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| this bird has some big ol' eyes |
attempts to take decent photos of flying birds*
March 15 - Score 2: We received an email from a professional photography professor named Stephen Swintek on the 27th of February and just looked at it today. We got sidetracked during class and started talking about baccalaureate. Just 12 minutes before class ended, we went outside to take pictures. I got three mediocre shots (no, not alcohol) ...
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| they're so cute and tiny |
March 22 - Score 3: We replied to a professor from Mt. SAC that replied to us.
Hi Isabella,
Sorry for the late reply. I am a professional Photographer and teach only occasionally, and I am just now getting this email as I prepare for the Spring term. I would open to help out if needed.
Best,
Stephen
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Mr. Swintek,
We are very sorry for our late response. Thank you for replying to our email. If you could please take a look at a few of our pictures (below), and maybe even give is a few pointers to what we can do to improve ou photography(?)
We've kind of just been taking pictures around our school, and occasionally on our own in other places.
And then we just copied and pasted some of our photos from our slideshow to the email.
We went outside to take a few pictures. I also found out that my Lightroom trial expired today and now I have to pay $9.99 a month for the photography plan which includes Lightroom and I don't want to pay so now I have to download this app called Canon Camera Connect and find out how to use it so I can transfer the photos from my camera to my phone and edit my photos mobility in Lightroom. Even though the same thing happened before and I miraculously found out how to get back on my free trial and then I got so happy, it didn't happen this time ;(
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| wow, it's spring |
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| ye ye ye🙍 -that was so random, I'm sorry. but ima just leave this here- |
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| it's focused on the flowers |
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| this is the canon camera connect app👍 |
April 12 - Score 3: All we did today was go outside and take a few pictures. In Mrs. Crutchfield's, I was looking around the classroom to see what I could take a photo of. As I was looking, I found a clock and took a photo of it. yay. I edited the photo on my camera using the "miniature effect". Oh, and btw, I can now edit my photos on my phone and then upload them into my google drive so I can put them on this blog of mine.
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| before |
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| miniature effect |
In the morning, Isabella was talking about how much she loved geckos and about how she always wanted one as a pet. So as we went outside, I found a LIZARD and took a photo of it. I know lizards and geckos are 2 very different animals (wait, but aReN't geckos a type of lizard?) but I will still show Isabella the pic I took of her "look-alike" (or whatever) dream pet. omg, why do I have to be so extra?
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| the lizard was on the side of the brick wall, I took the pic from above |
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| ooo it's looking straight at my camera |
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| before (i took these without her knowing) #photogenic |
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| before (these too) |
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going into Isa's brain, whoosh whoosh whoosh
(contemplating whether to dab or do a peace sign)
(contemplating whether to dab or do a peace sign)
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| does both* |
| starts giggling about this "peace-dab" she created and will contribute to the world
-that was really random, please forgive me-
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(not edited)
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| is it the flowers that don't smell nice or the pollen? does pollen even smell like anything? |
May 3 - Score 3: Mrs. Crutchfield is grading our reflections at the beginning of 6th period, AND I DON'T HAVE MY THING (i really don't know what's it called but you put your card from your camera into this thing where you then plug it into your chrombook and ya, back to my unreasonable rant) TO UPLOAD MY PICTURES FROM MY CAMERA TO MY CHROMEBOOK BECAUSE I LEFT IT AT HOME SO I CANT SHOW MY PICTURES WE TOOK TODAY (btw we went outside to take pictures again) SO PLEASE I WOULD HOPE THAT MRS CRUTCHFIELD WOULD NOT MARK DOWN POINTS. i am very sorry if my grammar is really bad. it's because i was rushing because i thought i wasn't gonna be able to do the reflection for today (I'm in science hahahaha). i also don't know why i typed in all caps for half of this entry. i will revise it when i get home, maybe not? i might just leave it like this and like make another paragraph right under this one. i have no idea. maybe i do? okay, see you later... :/
It's really fun when Isabella comes outside to take pictures with us. She's the model in our group and we practice taking portraits on her the most she doesn't really mind (i mean she does, but she doesn't really care, i mean she does but okay, nevermind) and she doesn't start getting really mad at me and starts saying I make her feel self-conscious. hahahaha. :(
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| this is Isa's camera |
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| the background is nice, the colors of the boxes and everything makes it look like a painting? |
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| it's a concept, my dudes, it's a concept (wow i really never say "my dudes on here) |
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| never before seen performance caught on camera |
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| wow, isa really didn't know i took this |
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| i guess isa got bored :) |
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| this is someone's water bottle centered right in the middle of the photo |
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wow, she really didn't know i took this photo
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| 6:30 p.m. ish |
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| this is what i got when i trespassed to get a pic of the lake |
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| i couldn't go any further so i mostly got hills |
btw, i never stuck with the category i chose, which was landscape, ha
i wanted to take a diversity of photos
final assignment
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYour work with focus (I love shallow focus) and your modifying shade and color is impressive. Wow, I see a lot of growth since the beginning of your project.
ReplyDeleteIt's called a memory card.
ReplyDeleteThese are interesting, entertaining, and I feel like I know some of what you guys experienced. And you're funny, too! (I love lizards - unless they're in my house.)
ReplyDeletekaylee is going to sue me three times
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI am currently procrastinating on my baccalaureate essays right now so don't judge me. But on your May 3rd reflection entrance let me just say from the rant queen herself, yes I am doing self promo right now, no rant is unreasonable, you really do not know how many times I've ranted about tv shows. Also all caps are necessary in order to have a rant, if you have lowercase letters then by rant law, it is not a rant and will be exiled into the dungeon for 10 years unless you are me, but that's because I am rant law.