Printing

Today in class, we began to print our photographs. It is certainly nice when one's work finally take a physical form, particularly after so much squinting at and fiddling with the images on various screens. This is the first photograph that I printed - it came out rather well on the first try. Nonetheless, as it is an example of my attempts to do something different, I figured that I would critique myself.

Subject: I chose this girl because of her distinctiveness; perhaps unsurprisingly, she immediately caught my eye. She may be yet another unoriginal hipster, but something about her interested me. I quite like her clothing, because it contrasts well with the setting. I also like the extremely attentive, full-profile stance of her dog, because it provides the photograph with a nice sense of geometry. Overall, she is modeling a little bit (unintentionally?), but a sense of tension remains.

Composition: Whenever I hasten to bring the camera to my eye, I seem to struggle with corners and edges. It may stem from the slight nervousness that I feel when taking a portrait (which may be ironic, considering the fact that I like portraits the most). This could be why I began repeatedly taking the closely-cropped face shot, which I seem to screw up far less often. I don't think I did TOO badly with this image, but it's a bit messier and more crooked than I would have liked. Maybe I'm over-thinking it.

Distracting elements: I'm happy with the angle that I chose (as the others didn't work as successfully), but I wish that the guy in the background wasn't visible. I also may have preferred not having those heavy shadows in the shot, although they might also be contributing to it (I haven't decided yet). I would also have liked to blur the background a bit more (which may also have helped with the guy).

Color: In some ways, I like it; in others, it feels like too much, particularly in the background.

Focusing: I'm actually pretty happy with this, although I think that I could have made her face a teeeeeensy bit sharper.

Overall, I'm kind of stuck with one big question: am I actually any good at this, and if so, what is it that I'm good at? I feel that only a week ago, choosing a project idea would have been a piece of cake; now, however, I feel stuck in a dense fog of ???

Where do I even begin?