Semester 2 Blog posts
Keep your workspace neat and clean!
Never pour water into acid. Always pour acid into water and remember to always be safe!
Weekly reflection 1
Our first week of school we got an overview of how our semester is going to go and what we are going to do. We got to meet our teachers and I really like them. Im really exited about our project because my dad is a photographer and he's always wanted to tech me about photography.
Weekly reflection 2
This week has been a great week. I really enjoy taking pictures and have been learning a lot about photography. What's even better is that my dad is a photographer and he is teaching me as well and also gave me one of his cameras. Below is one of the pictures that I have taken this week. I really like this picture because it shows the sun breaking through the clouds which created a black and white kind of background for the dead tree.
Weekly reflection 3
This week has been a little more busy. We've had a lot more writing and reading to do rather than go outside and take pictures. But in chemistry we are finally doing some experiments. Were creating emulsion in chemistry and we also created a dark room to create the emulsion in.
Weekly Reflection 5
This week we took a field trip to balboa park to take some cool shots. Personally this was my favorite week so far because we finally got to go outside of school to take pictures and I had a lot of fun going to new areas and exploring the park. Plus there was a lot of opportunity for photos which was great for us.
Weekly Reflection 6
This week was another great week. This week we began to develop our photos in chemistry. We also began an experiment with balloons. They are called H2 balloons. One interesting thing about them is they create a fiery explosion when they touch fire. In humanities we studied the Hetchy Hetchy dam. We learned that it is a very beautiful place but they are planning to get rid of all the water. I think it's a cool topic but I'm not very interested in it.
Weekly Reflection 7
In chemistry we have about all our photos developed and ready to go. Most of the work has just been done by the students themselves. We are now getting ready for phase 2 of our project. We will now be focused on landscape shots outside. We will also be doing some night time photography as well. Im very excited to see how all of this goes.
Weekly Reflection 8
This week we began Phase 2 of our semester. We are now focused on landscape photography. We also have started to do a little more writing. For phase 2 we will be planning trips outside of school to get our landscape shots. Overall I am excited to see where this phase will take me.
Humanities
For humanities this week we had to choose a picture between 6 landscape photos and write about it.
Weekly Reflection 9
This week we went over techniques for taking good landscape shots. We also got to visit an art gallery in liberty station which had some amazing photos. In chemistry we learned about elements emitting light.
Humanities
Humanities we watched a long documentary about these people hiking the Pacific Crest trail that stretches over 2,600 miles long! They took months to complete it but got a crazy experience out of it. Later that day we walked to an art gallery down in liberty station to look at some crazy photos.
Chemistry
For chemistry we got to learn about elements and what color light they produce. you can tell what an element is by what color of light it is emitting. Our class tested this by burning different types of elements and they all produced a different color flame.
Weekly Reflection 10
This week was mostly focused on preparing for exhibition. My groups job was to edit everyone's portraits and get them ready to be printed on metallic photo paper. I liked this week cause I got to work with others and make new friends.
Humanities
For humanities this week we got to choose a photo we liked and wrote about it in the style of "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck.
Chemistry
For chemistry this week we learned about dry ice and got to experiment with it.
Weekly Reflection 11
Week 11, we all worked on editing our photos. We had the chance to take photos this week for our landscape but Andrew, my chemistry teacher told me I should use the photo I took in the beginning of the year. You see this photo in blog post #2. I then edited the photo in photo shop. I changed the contrast so that the bottom of the photo isn't so dark, but the sun still pops out. Now all I have left to do is print my photo and print it on metallic photo paper then put a layer of epoxy on it to make the photo pop out.
Weekly Reflection 12
This week we began our astrophotography phase. My group chose to be planetary because we are all very interested in the planet saturn. We have all chose saturn because it stands out to us the most. We will be going out on a few weeks to go camping at night and that is where we will photograph saturn.
Humanities
For humanities this week we started a new writing piece and the question was How does the work of scientists, artists and philosophers lead to wonder and curiosity? We worked on this piece for most of the week and got it revised multiple times.
Chemistry
In chemistry, we learned all about epoxy. like how it works and what it is.
Weekly Reflection 13
Week 13, we finally got our permission slips to go to Lake Cuyamaka where we will begin our astrophotography. We leave next week for 3 days. This week was all about about planning what we need and who our groups were.
Humanities
For humanities we created a giant list of items we needed to bring for our groups like food, camping equipment and all that.
Chemistry
My group is the planetary group and we are going to photograph saturn. We chose this planet because this planet really stands out to us. We are going to stay up to 4am to photograph saturn. How it works is we take a video of the planet and combine all the good frames to create a high quality picture of saturn.
Weekly Reflection 14
Finally we arrived at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. Here the sky was very clear and open. Perfect for taking pictures. Im not much of an outside person, but I really enjoyed hiking, fishing, and . I also hung out with others that I haven't talked to before. I feel that this trip has brought us all together. Our class got some very nice pictures there but unfortunately our group did not get any photos of saturn because we had some problems with the equipment but overall it was an amazing trip that I will never forget.
Weekly Reflection 15
For our last phase of the semester, we have worked on all of our 1,000 word pieces and finished any writing pieces that needed cleaning up. We've also started to focus on our TPOL's. For my TPOL I plan to present my growth as a learner through all the pictures i've taken this year and how i've improved.
Humanities
This week we focused on getting ready for exhibition. We finalized all of our work for the semester and are now preparing for our traditional presentation of learning to our teachers (TPOL). A TPOL is basically a presentation to our teachers of what we've learned throughout the semester.
Chemistry
The Planetary group has been planning a trip to take our astrophotography shots and will hopefully get them very soon but we are unsure if we can get the shot in time for exhibition. We will also epoxy more photos since over half of them sold on our first exhibition.