Ms Sorci’s Year 8 Media students have been capturing a wide variety of photographs in their semester 1 elective course. Students have been learning and grasping the basic elements, principles and composition techniques of Photoshop. This has included branching out into how to make and communicate meaning through pictorial layering of symbols, along with the technical aspects of using Photoshop.

As we move into the winter season the students have observed reflections and refractions that can be seen around the school. The goal is to not only capture some great images but to teach the students to really see their school rather than just look.
Jess Sorci Teacher.

Below are some photos of students work that demonstrates their learning.

Student reflections:

Tiana Martin

To create my photo, I first took photos of things that I considered to be prison and/or paradise because that was the theme for the project. For example a flower for paradise and netting for prison. I then used Photoshop to layer the netting over the flower. I then messed around with the transparency of the net until I found the right amount of transparency. By using Photoshop I was able to manipulate the image to my liking. What I like about the image is how the flower looks like it is actually poking through the netting. I used these two images because I like how the netting curves into the flower but not too much, and with all my other photos it clashed with them and these two just fit perfectly together.

Freya Van Der Steen

In photography went out and take photos in a monochrome setting on our cameras and this setting basically takes a bunch of pictures of the object and each image that is taken has a different colour saturation. I was particularly interested in eye photography at the time and noticed how patterned my photography partners eyes were. We decided to try and capture the reflection and pattern in the eye. Once the camera had focused enough, I took a leap of faith and hoped for the best as most of the time a split-second mistake or movement of the camera can ruin the photograph. I only realised afterwards that the photo was beautiful to view especially in black and white.

Celin Bombase

What I did to both of the photographs is that I tried to be patient taking the photo for the ‘bee’ and making a clear focus point if I can which the genre for that photo was for macro (extreme close up), and also for the crow in the other photo. The other photograph was for the genre ‘Paradise or Prison’ in which the Crow is the prison side and the small magpie looking bird representing the paradise side. For the crow, it was a bit unexpected because I wanted to take a close-up photo of the garden next to the gazebo but instead I found a crow on the roof of an office right above where I wanted to take the photo and for the other bird (looks like a magpie), I tried to take a photo of it which was a bit hard since it moved a lot until I was able to take a successful photo.

I did it because I really love animals and that I also have a pet bird. I liked the photo because it matched the genre that I had to do and creative.