The strongest technical aspect of my work is the way I was able to build a piece of art with pieces of tissue paper, buttons, sequins, keys, magazine photos, a circle texturizer, and bingo circle counters and turn it into a picture known as a photogram. I was able to do this through the use of an enlarger in a dark room. The technical aspect of my work that I can improve on is the amount of light I let shine through the enlarger onto the picture. In order to get the bright white, no light is allowed to shine onto the picture and in order to get the black space or "negative space", light has to be fully shining onto the piece of photo paper. Some of the white on the photograms are more of a hazy white rather than a bright white like I would've liked to have had. I also do not like how white the top right photogram with a magazine picture had come out. I would've preferred it to come out darker so you would be able to actually make out what the picture is supposed to look like rather than it being very white in certain places and not being able to tell what the picture is even of.
The easiest part of this art activity was creating the image outside of the dark room to ensure that I had all of the aspects needed to complete the assignment before going into the dark room to recreate the image. This was the easiest part of this art assignment because I was able to see what I was doing and was able to take different materials to create images such as a landscape, a symmetrical image, and a design with the use of a magazine and other objects placed on top to create different values including black, grey, and white in each image. The most difficult part of this art activity was having to recreate the image in the darkroom. This was the hardest to do because without the light I was not able to see very well and I had to wait a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the light difference in order to attempt to recreate the image I had made the day before in the classroom with the lights on. It would have been easier to recreate the image in the dark room if it wasn't a dark room but that would obviously defeat the purpose of the dark room, plus that would destroy the paper used to create the image. Because of the lack of light, my images are not centered the way I would've liked them to.I demonstrated the objective in this art activity because I created three photograms in the dark room on one enlarger at the f-stop F11 which makes it so there is very little light that shines through onto the paper, but there is still enough light for the image to be created. I also created the landscape and symmetrical photograms with the light shining onto the paper for only four seconds rather than ten seconds like the magazine photogram needed. The magazine photogram needed more light in order to create the image because the paper of the magazine is thicker than the materials used to create the images for the landscape and the symmetrical photograms. After the images were created at the enlarger, I brought the photo paper to the chemicals were the photogram would actually be created and would develop onto the paper. First is the developer, next is the stop bath, third is the fixer and once the photo has gone through this stage, it is safe for the photo to be brought out into the classroom to see how the photogram has come out and troubleshoot it. Once I have troubleshot the hologram, I'd bring it back into the dark room to finish the process. Next the photogram would be placed into the fixer remover, then the pre-wash, and finally the fish tank which will finish removing all of the left over chemicals off of the photogram. If I could do this art activity again, I would use a different magazine page because the one I had chosen was a little too thick and not enough light had shone through and the picture on the magazine didn't fully come out and just looks like a big sloppy white mess which I do not like at all. Although, I wouldn't change the other two of my photograms except maybe redo the symmetrical photogram and let the light from the enlarger shine onto the paper for a longer amount of time than the four seconds because the white isn't a very crisp white like I would've liked it to have been. I'd also try to line the paper and materials up better in order to create a nice, crisp and clean white border around the image due to the easel that overlaps the piece of photo paper. Other than that, I am very happy with the works I have created with very little materials and in the darkroom without having much light to even see anything that I was doing.
