Jessie Short Photography

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

This is a self portrait I took for my small format class back in Spring 2020. The topic that week was how COVID-19 has changed our lives and what our lives has looked like during COVID. While this blog post isn’t about the same topic, I think the stress and frustration shown in this image still goes with my new topic: learn and re-learn.

I’ve had to really step up to the plate these past couple weeks of a new semester and really focus and study hard. I hadn’t had portrait classes for over a year before coming into my portrait concentration this fall. I’m having to try to remember lighting patterns, ratios, main light and fill light techniques, and vocabulary that I haven’t heard in quite some time. It’s been a little difficult having to basically re-learn everything, but at the same time, I feel like I’m getting more out of it this time around. I learning new things while I re-learn old things. I’m understanding things more this second time around than I ever did the first time a year ago. It’s kind of a rewarding feeling, being away for a year and then coming back strong, although my images aren’t perfect, they’re getting to where they need to be. It’s been stressful and mighty difficult but oh so rewarding.

This week, we had to come up with a series of photos for a portfolio. It just so happened, that I had a senior video for my multimedia class to shoot as well. I figured I would knock out two birds with one stone and get both assignments done. Although I do feel like it has taken me longer to put everything together, I’m definitely glad I was able to do both assignments together. I now feel like I’m a little bit ahead of all my other assignments and I love that feeling. As many of my classmates know, what we do at school and at home isn’t easy. We get thrown a lot of work all at the same time and it can be very difficult to keep up with it all. That feeling of getting ahead and accomplishing things a week or two before they’re do is a really good feeling, especially when you have like eight other assignments due the same week.

Back in June, I did my first ever newborn photoshoot. I was very nervous obviously because it was my first one, but, I’ve also never been that good with babies or kids. I’ve never liked it when they would cry or anything like that. So I was going into the shoot pretty worried about how I’d react if he cried. Luckily for me, Nyjah was one of the best babies ever! He slept pretty much the whole time and didn’t cry at all! Doing a newborn photoshoot was so much fun and also relaxing at the same time. I loved the way the images turned out, and better yet, the parents loved them too! I’m excited to be able to grow and do more newborn photoshoots later in my career.

One of the many things we learned this week was Portrait Retouching. At first, it honestly was a little confusing, figuring out how to use all the tools as well as memorize their shortcuts. I’ve learned that it’s very easy to over-edit if you’re not careful. I’ve also realized that the more you do it, the easier it is. Another semi-difficult thing I’ve come across while doing portrait retouching is honestly trying to remember what things to edit first. Technically, I don’t think there’s really a specific order you have to do basic or final adjustments in, but at the same time, it’s probably a good idea to have a form of workflow in which you edit the same exact thing first every time and then move on to more difficult and time consuming parts. Overall though, I have enjoyed learning a good workflow for retouching and learning new tools and how to use them.

Every year students (and possibly staff) get the jitters because of school starting. This year, the jitters may be a little more extreme. You see, we’re going to school in the middle of a pandemic. No class is normal. One student per desk, masks, no gatherings to chat with friends in the hall, consistent hand sanitizing and wiping things down with wipes. It’s all different. This school is going to look very different from other school years, but that’s okay. It’ll be confusing and unbelievably stressful for awhile, but again, that’s okay. This school year is probably going to be all about making due with what you have.

All around campus today, I saw anti-bacterial wipes. hand sanitizer stations, classroom limits, 6-foot space markers, and all things pandemic. Classrooms look different with smaller class sizes and separated desks. It all looks different. But this is our new normal and this is how we get to learn now. It’ll take time getting used to, but it’ll all be worth it.

This layout of images is from my first lab assignment in my Digital Image Technology class. We were instructed to go around and take a series of images. After taking the pictures, we had to come back to the classroom and put together several different things using Lightroom and Photoshop. One of the things we had to put together was a 4-image layout. My four images are from around the photography building as well as the AE building on RCC’s campus. They show how RCC has implemented social distancing, mask mandates, and other pandemic requirements in order to keep students and staff safe. Through this assignment, I was really able to brush up on my Lightroom and Photoshop skills as well as learn how to put a layout together and learn how to switch back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop easily.