As a student and photographer, how did 2024 treat you, and what did you learn about yourself? What aspirations do you have in 2025?

As a student, I think 2024 was one of the most eventful years I’ve ever had. I’ve met so many new people, tried new things, and traveled to exciting places. For 2025, I want to start working on myself and focus more on my studies and sport.

As a photographer, in 2024 I’ve learned a lot about photography skills, from the different angles that make a major difference to the elements I should put into my photos. The class has helped me really understand that just snapping a picture once isn’t enough. It has taught me that to take a good picture, it’s going to take multiple snaps of a camera and several different trials.

Specific personal goals!

A short-term goal for me would be to really work on deep cleaning my room honestly. It would look really nice if it wasn’t so cluttered up.

A long-term goal of mine would be to become more focused on my studies and hopefully break my 200 free scy personal best time.

What photography style would you like to seek after in this semester?

There are a ton of amazing styles of photography to choose from. Personally, I think I would like to start focusing on abstract photography. It’s really simple, but when I look at the abstract photos, it sort of feels calming in a way. There aren’t many distractions, just playing with lighting, color, shapes, and texture.

Hey! Here are my top 10 photos from last year, hope you like them!

The images above were from our Elements of Photography and Rules of Composition project on 10/7/24!

The overall process was learning each of the elements and rules and incorporating them inside of a photograph. It teaches us to work and analyze the photo and things around the photo instead of just straight up snapping it.

The image above is from our mobile scavenger hunt project on 9/26/2024!

The process was choosing 3 types of photos/portraits and incorporating each of them into their own photo. The topic I chose for this one was “pet”, so I captured a photo of my dog in the pool.

The images above are from our ABC project on 12/6/24!

The process was training and teaching our eyes how to view items around us differently and creatively and form them or view them as letters of the alphabet.

The images above are from our selfies project on 12/17/24!

The process was choosing 3 things about us and capturing us in it while showing something about us. This taught me how to be more creative with the items around my house and having an open eye for ideas. The first picture just shows items that describe me. For example, the Christmas tree shows my love for Christmas, swim equipment shows my passion for my sport, and the perfumes show that I like to smell good. All of those photos don’t have me in it but still describe stuff about me, so it went under the conceptual photos category. The second photo shows that I am a nail tech, and I incorporated the “text” in it because that’s one of the topics. Lastly, my favorite color is pink, so I dressed in all pink and posed for the camera. This went under the regular selfie category.

My top project was the selfies one because I had so much fun finding props and combining them to express the kind person I am!