Quick Disclaimer: The specks of dust you see (most clearly visible on the black parts of the print) are most likely from the scanner.
This was my first experience working with film and looking back at it now that's pretty clear. Since this was my first film class I didn't really know what I wanted to photograph so my subjects were very sporadic and random. I'm definitely more aware of a connecting theme now.
Composition: I don't think it's too terrible but everything was so new to me that I was just snapping frames, using up 5 rolls of film in one trip without any real thought behind composition. I especially notice this with the image of the woman tanning. If I had placed her perhaps in the upper left corner her limbs would be pointing diagonally across the page and your eye would follow that more than just seeing a body plopped in the middle of the frame.
Borders: You can't really see the borders obviously since it's white borders on a white screen. I usually print 6x9 leaving a pretty significant border. I've never really strayed from that but I want to start experimenting with slimmer borders.
Exposure + Lighting: The majority of the images here were either taken on Coney Island during a class trip or The Cloisters. So either my image is incredibly gray because of the intense sun making it hard to have contrast or pretty dark because of stone rooms and such.
I'm probably being a little hard on myself but I'm proud that I can look back at my work and see where I could have improved since I think I've grown a lot by taking another Black and White I class.
Nice first images, Kathy. Shooting in the harsh sunlight is definitely a challenge. That sort of washed out gray look is fairly easy to correct in photoshop, probably a bit more involved in actual darkroom. I do remember that different papers have different contrast profiles, so you could experiment with those, and then some dodging and burning for the shadows. You could also play around with toning, like sepia. All for another course I suppose!
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