Through the experience of taking pictures for the Yearbook, I become more aware of my communication skills and learning capacity, especially when facing a completely new area – photography. Before this activity, I only took pictures for fun to record the precious moments in my life and the beautiful landscapes. Yet now, I perceive photography as a responsibility to the others, and thus become more serious and conscientious when doing it. This process is very meaningful to both me and the people I take pictures of.

Although it is my first time doing photography, I have became more and more familiar with the skills. I had never thought that I would be this skillful on photography. Through this activity, I realize that I have huge potential and capacity on learning something new, and I can quickly adapt and apply the new knowledge. This also gives me the confidence to stepping out of my comfort zone and be a risk-taker. At first, I was really scared that I would mess up the photographs which are very meaningful for those people, but then it turned out that I was doing much better than I thought. Therefore, from this experience, I learnt that when facing challenges and difficulties, I shouldn’t just avoid them and choose an easy route.

I realized that photography requires good communication skills, which I still need to develop further. This not only includes communicating with the clients clearly, but also in a humorous manner to make them feel relaxed and happy when taking the photos, so that I could capture the best moments. Besides, sometimes when I was taking group photos, the students didn’t know what to pose and how to achieve their intentions of the photographs, then I would need to come up with some suggestions to help them. This challenges me because I don’t think myself as a very creative person. To improve this, I searched up lots of creative photographs online to collect and accumulate ideas. Therefore, developing communication skills and creativity are the main goals for me.

I’m also aware of the ethical implications during this process, because some people would not feel very comfortable at photo taking, or they might be too shy to be exposed under the camera. I had met one girl who was really shy, that when I tried to take photos of the activity that she was in, she always hid behind someone else. I noticed her nervous expressions, so that I tried to avoid taking her in the pictures, and instead found other angles to take photos of the activity. I fully understand and respect that not everyone would like to be in a public photo. Not taking photographs without that person’s permission is the ethical principle that I always uphold during the yearbook activity, and I think this applies to other situations as well – not forcing anyone to do something they don’t want to.

 

LO1: AWARENESS (Increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth)

LO7: ETHICS (Considering the ethical implications of actions)