"My Final Sequence" by Ryan Pfanner (Final Post Spring 2020)

My Final Sequence

I can’t say my practice has changed a whole lot from before to after the pandemic. What has changed, however, is my approach to my sequences and compositions. My favorite types of photographs to take are portraits of friends and family. The difficult part was trying to find opportunities to do that. I had traveled home for a weekend but since I didn’t have my camera with me, I couldn’t do any portraits with my family. I was able to take a few portraits of my girlfriend and roommates, camera flash pictures, and raw environment photos, which is what I have mostly been doing the past few weeks.

My subject matter turned into what was closest to me and my intentions changed this semester. Unfortunately, getting colored film processed wasn’t possible during the quarantine, which is something I had hoped to do. I expected to take a ton of portraits, but I wasn’t really able to do much of that. I already had a few rolls of film that needed developing but I never got the chance. I improvised by using my DSLR Canon t2i model camera. Since we weren’t able to have in-person critiques, the blog worked out really well. I learned a lot in class leading up to quarantine and I had to adapt to the online environment and learn a lot more photoshop.

My experience with photoshop has greatly improved. Photoshop has been my best friend and greatest tool for the past month and so has my camera. There were a lot of other photos I took but I posted what the ones I thought were my best. The toughest part in photoshop was manipulating the light within my photos. There were many pictures that I considered posting that weren’t quite right with me. Those particular ones were overexposed.  The most rewarding aspect of taking them was working with the light, especially when I used the rays of sunlight through my windows. There was a select one with an X-Box controller where I took the light of the photo into account and it was especially difficult, yet fun to work within photoshop.

While being inside my apartment most of the time, I had to indulge myself in new hobbies and it included those weekly blog posts. When taking the photos for the blog, I took an artistic approach and made a theme for each week. One week it was a walk through the park with my girlfriend (which was the only outside activity I got to do during quarantine). Yes, I believe I motivated myself just fine. I was on time with my weekly blog posts because it became a fun activity to do. With the blog, my artwork can be seen more than just one day of a critique and that’s something I think should be used in the future introduction to color courses.

I think the phrase “learning to love your prison” isn’t quite accurate for my situation because I constantly wanted to leave my prison but I think that’s sweet irony. Before I’d love to be inside more, I enjoyed doing indoor activities and programming on my computer. What I learned to love from this course (and quarantine) was the outside. It makes the photography that much more beautiful. Some students’ photos may have been from before the quarantine or inside somewhere. I feel like the other students and I really wanted to go out and explore as part of our photography and I know I did so with more enthusiasm.

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