Mitzee

Like a lot of people, in my house hold pets are just as much a part of the family as my sister, grandpa, or even me. Sometimes, I think my parents think my cat is more a part of the family than I am. And a big part of my family is my goats!

I have two adorable and beautiful goats. The older one’s name is Shadow, because even if there are a bunch of green things to eat, he will follow right behind you and stay by you. Our other goat’s name is Mitzee. I am not quite sure why this is her name. She had it when we got her and I guess we thought she would get too confused if we called her something else. This is a picture of Mitzee I took on a Pentax B&W camera when I was in photo I as a sophomore. I really like this picture because it truly captures the essence of her personality. In a word…derp. She is the weirdest creature God decided to invent. She is tiny, not even surpassing the height of my knees (the knees of a girl who is five foot one) and has the loudest mouth ever. Sometimes I hear her and it sounds like a burly man has the hiccups. She always has to be up in your personal space. When I was younger I thought it was because she just really liked people. Now I realize that she thinks everyone exists for the sole purpose of feeding her.

In any case, I love both of my goats so much. They are the cutest things and I love them so much. Naturally, they would be the subject so of an entire roll of film (mainly because they couldn’t stand still long enough for me to take a picture.)

Carousel

Every summer since before I can even remember, my family has spent one day at Midway Park. Midway Park is located on a shore of Chautauqua Lake, near Bemus, New York.  It is exactly what it sounds like it would be: a park made up entirely of midway rides that have been made stationary. Yes, the park is geared towards children ages of zero to seven, but we don’t let the fact that the youngest one of us is eighteen stop us from still going every year. It is a family tradition that age does not define. The reason that we go there every summer is because my grandfather grew up in that area when he was young. I guess my family had celebrated his birthday there before, so that is sort of where we ended up. We always have a big picnic lunch/ dinner with hot dogs and hamburgers (and veggie burgers for our vegetarian friends!) and a whole lot of side dishes and I remember when I was little, this was the only time I ever got to drink Sunny D. We play Frisbee, and Kan-Jam, and through a football around. My brother and cousins made our own tradition by, right when we got there saying we needed to go to the bathroom, but we really went to the arcade to scope out the prizes before we went there at the end of the day. There are so many things I remember from going there all these years, but I won’t bore you with any more details.

This is the carousel at Midway Park. Everyone in my family rides it together. And as each day to graduation creeps closer, I like to think back on memories that I have made. Not just the ones from my childhood, but from middle school and even those from high school. I like to keep who I used to be alive so that way I don’t forget who I am.   

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Comforting Angel

My parents work really hard. Like, all the time.

When we first moved into my house that I live in now, there was this unruly, overgrown, heap of knotted and dying plants that used to be a garden. It was always the first things hat you noticed when you pulled into my drive way, and the last thing you saw when walking out the door to leave. Little five-year-old me saw this garden as an exotic jungle just waiting to be explored. My parents saw it for what it actually was: a zit of the face of our new home. So, after months and months and months of working to make our kitchen usable, and our living room livable, it was time to start the yard work. The overgrown bushes were pulled out. They laid mulch down, created paths out of stones and fixed an arbor for vines to twist and mingle on. After a while, the seeds smaller than the head of a pin grew to be plants twice the size of me, with blossoms all colors of the spectrum. It became beautiful. Occasionally my mother would add another birdfeeder, or a vintage farm decoration. She put this one statue of an angel praying, and it was always my favorite decoration in that garden. I do not really know why, but it always gave me a sense of comfort.

I got really close up to it, and took a picture. You can see the carvings and the shadows that this tiny statue creates. This picture always provides me comfort, just like the real one does, in times that I feel lost, discouraged, or angry. This angel makes me think of all the hard work that my parents did, do, and will do. When I see this picture it reminds me that working hard will always pay off, even if not right away, someday. 

Simple Twist

The first summer after I got my camera, I had a lot of fun taking picture. Sometimes, they are very artistic and pretty and other times they looked like a high school girl was just goofing around a fancy camera.

This photo I was sort of just testing out angles and perspectives. As I was walking through my back yard, I was playing “Ansel Adams” (a famous landscape photographer) and taking pictures of trees, and plants, and birds, etc. This is one of the largest trees in my back yard. It is the tree that I usually just relax under and read, doodle, or (obviously) take pictures. I know that everyone see’s trees basically everywhere they go. 

They are usually the first things that new photo students want to take a picture of, and quickly become the least interesting things to view. So, with that in mind, I decided to take a different view on it. When I was bored one day I was playing around with hues on a photo editing website. Hue, if you do not know, is simply the color or shade that something is. Instead of just a normal, boring, plain tree, I took a more fantastical lens on this photograph. By making the leaves purple combined with the angle it was taken at, I think it makes a boring and common subject look a little more exciting.

Honestly, there is not a theme, moral, or message I can even make up for this photo. I mean, I guess I can say that it should make you look harder to find beauty in common nature, but it doesn’t even do that. I just think it is a simple photograph and basically just fun to look at. It helps me to visualize some of the basic techniques when taking pictures, specifically keeping in mind angles and composition.

Barefoot in a Forest

This is Liz. Liz is one of the most beautiful and sweetest people I know. Often, she is my guinea pig. I will begin rattling of crazy ideas and she's there like “Yup. I sincerely understand you even though you stopped speaking English five minutes ago.” I have made her climb on unstable rocks, up steep and obviously dangerous hills, and walk barefoot through a forest. And she has done all of those things in the name of art.

One of reasons I love the fact that Liz is my go-to model is because she knows about photography too. Sometimes she has an idea for a picture for me to take, or knows the best way to pose herself. I like the fact that when she has an idea, she doesn’t hesitate telling me. This photo is actually a result of a combination of Liz’s and mine’s genius. While we were walking through Akron Falls Park, she said that she brought this one dress that looked really fluid and pretty when she spun around really fast. So, after when it came time for that outfit we went down by the river bed and weaved our way through a few trees. Then she began spinning and I began clicking. Obviously we took a few breaks because she got dizzy fairly quickly, and I most definitely did not want her to puke. Due to timing issues, most of the photographs I got were of her back. This photo was one of the few that I got her face in the shot. I went in an added the little light speckles just because I thought they looked cool.

This picture has a very ironic sort of theme to it. She is wearing a black dress, but overall the image is very innocent and almost childlike. When we grow up we are subject to facing the dangers, corruption and despair this world seems to spoon-feed us. It is important that we remember what it is like to be silly and childish. We need to have fun, and walk barefoot through a forest just because we can.  

Let it All Out

Again, this picture was taken at a sort of “photo shoot” that I went to with a few of my friends. Actually, this was taken at one of the first shoot I had ever been to. One of my friends and fellow tennis teammate is really into photography like I am. She had done a few of these shoots before and invited me to one.

There were a lot of people there I did not know. It was sort of awkward at first. I was not used to telling people how to pose, or what to do. I didn’t want to seem pushy so even if I didn’t like what they were doing, I would just keep snapping pictures because I didn’t want to tell them to change positions. Halfway through the day, I began to ease into the mood better. I began instructing at least the people that I knew but hadn’t yet worked up to courage to boss around the people I had just met. This particular shoot was conducted in my friend’s back yard. There first was a small, thin layer of woods. There were dead, broken trees, old creepy tie swings, and a moderate hill that sloped into a creek. Once past the narrow, shallow creek it was just fields of tall golden stalks that resembled something of wheat. I’m not exactly sure what kind of plants they were but I gathered two conclusions: They were tall, and they were sharp. The girl in this photo, Phoebe, was pushing the think plants out of her way when one stabbed her pinky and she started bleeding. Normal people would go “oww” and run back to the house for a Band-Aid. Not her, she giggled and wiped her pinky blood on her faceto be "authentically artistic." Yup, unlike my friend Sarah who had fake blood on her face, this stuff is real. So as I saw Phoebe standing there I was like “Phoebe, scream.” So she did, and this is the picture that I got. Then I went on a photo editing website and added in the rusty looking border to add more of an affect.

I like to think this photograph depicts what some people do, or want to do, when they are angry, sad, pissy, or overall just having a terrible day. I know sometimes I just want to scream until my veins pop, and I think the emotion is captured well in this picture. I don't really know what words to describe this picture with. It is sort of like, if you look up the word caterwaul in the dictonary this picture would be there. 

Through the Eye of a Pinhole

Imagine way back when there was no Instagram, no digital cameras, and not even any black and white film cameras to use. People literally poked holes in tin cans using pins and made a camera out of it. Appropriately, these cameras were named Pinhole cameras, and are the most basic, yet most complicated method of photography invented.

When I was freshman in high school, it came to be that time of the year; making schedules for the next year! After I got all of my basics out of the way (such as English, Physical Education and Earth Science) it was time to fill up my blocks with electives. Now, I think it is safe to say that when some students pick electives they base their decisions on three things: The teacher. The amount of homework. And if they fail, will it completely screw their entire final average. I am not one of those students. I try and make sure there is a balance between things that challenge me and things that I am somewhat interested in. When I made my schedule, I signed up for black and white photography. I can honestly say that was probably the best decision of my life.

The first unit we did was learning about Pinhole Cameras, their history, how they work, and such. This picture right here is the first and only Pinhole photograph that I have ever taken in my life up to this point. It is hard to use a Pinhole camera because you cannot exactly tell where your hole is pointing at, or how long and how much to expose the photo paper for. You have to play guess-and-check in order to get a usable negative. I was really proud of myself to get a pretty good negative in one try.

If you would like to learn more about how Pinhole Cameras actually work, check out this link! http://wwwx.cs.unc.edu/~sud/courses/comp235/pin-hole.html

Mischievous, Lonely, and Desperate

This photograph has gotten the most recognition. Actually, it is the only photo I have gotten any recognition for (so far). This is my friend Sarah, and my other friend Emily was the genius behind the special effects make-up that Sarah has on her face.

In the fall of 2012, I entered my first national amateur photo contest. It was a national contest, held by the Photographer’s Forum Magazine, and co-sponsored by Nikon. I entered about five photos in that contest, this being one of them. Actually, the Sarah in the picture was the person who told me about the contest. So I entered some of my favorite photos that I had taken and waited. And waited. And waited. It seemed like forever before they announced the finalists. Then, one day I came home from school and there was an envelope with the Photographer’s Forum logo on it. I knew it contained either really good news, or really sad news. I opened the envelope and unfolded the perfectly creased letter. I glanced down at the paper and had barely read the word “congratulations” before I started freaking out, jumping up and down and screaming! I was so happy that I was a finalist in this contest. I knew that being a finalist didn’t guarantee me actually winning anything, but I thought it was a pretty big accomplishment. I mean, thousands of people from the United States and Canada submitted thousands of photographs, and just being a finalist was a pretty big deal. Then when I found out I won and honorable mention I was over the moon! Since then I have entered two more contests. I didn’t win anything in one, but I am still waiting to hear from the other.

When people look at this photo I get a lot of “It looks like something out of The Hunger Games.” Which I can’t disagree with, but it wasn’t necessarily what I was going for. Besides just goofing around with my friends in the woods with special effects make up, I wanted it to show a darker side of emotions. The girl has an expresson somewhere between mischievous, lonely, and desperate.