Group Photo Project Evaluation

The group photo project overall went well.  The most challenging part of the project was organizing schedules and communicating about what we wanted to do. We communicated through e-mail, which worked well for the most part.  However, sometimes members didn’t reply to e-mails or replied too late, which hindered our progress on the project.  For this upcoming project, making sure to respond to e-mails promptly will help to strengthen and increase our communication as a group.
Since organizing schedules proved too difficult, we decided to have each person shoot their own photos, then e-mail three or four good shots to the rest of the group.  This process worked for us, and allowed us to offer suggestions and feedback, as well as to see what the rest of the group decided to shoot.  Each person had a different idea of how to convey the word ‘wish’, and this diversified the ways we portrayed the word.  Instead of all of the shots being very similar and only showing one aspect of ‘wish’, our different ideas allowed us to show the idea of ‘wish’ in many different ways.
Overall, the project came together quite nicely.  Although some communicated the concept more obviously than others, each photo conveyed ‘wish’.  Our group as a whole is relatively inexperienced with photography, but by applying the concepts we learned in class we ended up surprising ourselves with the outcome.  This project helped to reinforce the concepts we used in class, such as depth of field, rule of thirds, changing exposure, etc. through firsthand experience.  It is one thing to learn and read about these concepts, but being able to put them into practice helps us to gain a full understanding of them.
Often at fountains, people throw in pennies and make a wish.  The photo captured this idea by capturing pennies at the bottom of a fountain.  The exposure, set to +.75, allows more light in to emphasize the light reflecting off of the pennies in the picture.  This reflection also aids in distinguishing the pennies from the un-reflective surface of the rocks behind them to add further emphasis to the pennies. The pennies, placed a little bit off center according to the rule of thirds, made the image more interesting to the eye.