January 27th

     Writing has never been my strong point when it comes to school. I have never been good at writing essays about books and research papers, but for some reason it seems so easy for other people. When I signed up for this class, I knew that a big factor of the project was to writing and I knew writing is not a strong point of mine, but I figured that people only get better at things if they keep doing it over and over again. That's why I thought that writing a research paper and blogging about something that I am interested in may help me a lot with my writing skills. I also figured that I should probably become a stronger writer before I go off to college, where I will be doing a lot of writing.

January 26th

     This is the first week of second semester. Everyone who has graduated before me always would say, "Oh, you are going to love second semester senior year. It is so easy and you have practically no work." Well to all of those people who have said that to me in the past... you lied to me. Second semester has barely even started and I am feeling overwhelmed by everything I have to do. On the top of my things to do is this Senior Project. I have already been working a little bit with Photoshop. I am editing some pictures of my friends and I. This way I can practice on pictures that I will not be using for this project, I am simply learning the technique. I have been working with the liquefy tool. It is what magazines use to make all of the models more slender and make the muscles in their legs and arms stand out more. I am excited to start editing my other pictures.

Time to Start

     In one week, I will be starting my senior project. Most people say that senior year is a very important year because it is the year before you leave home and start living on your own. I guess that I am hoping that this project will test if I am ready to be on my own. I have always been a person who depends a lot of the people around them. For this project, I will not be asking my parents to drive me places or to help me find someone to interview. I want to know I can accomplish something big, all by myself.
      Yes, the main idea of my project is to expand my photography portfolio and learn how to edit my pictures, but I am hoping that along with all of that, I will grow as a person. I want to become more confident that I can do things on my own. I am going to be going into San Francisco and other areas. I will be taking pictures of things that people do not usually notice. I will also be helping in a few soup kitchens. I have spent a lot of time doing service projects and I want to continue that with this project. As I am working in the kitchens, I will hopefully get the opportunity to take pictures of the people I will be feeding and get to talk to them about their story. I find people and what they have experienced very interesting. Hopefully through this project I will get to do two of the things I love to do, help people and do photography. I also want to go to our sister school and take pictures there. Along with that, I want to ask some of the teachers what they need in their classrooms, such as paper, pencils, books, games, etc., and find a way for them to get what they need.
     I am actually very nervous to start this project. I do not think that I will have a problem with the organization side of the project because I have always been very organized. I have more scared of the final presentation. I have never been good at talking in front of people. That is also one reason I wanted to do this project, to become more confident with my writing and speaking because both of those are a big portion of the project. Hopefully, in some way, this project will help me with leaving next year and feeling like I will be able to do it.