It's Me

Photography is my little form of creation. I put my heart and soul into my images and although I am rarely the subject, I am always in my photographs. Yet I am also always behind the camera. I, like many, build walls to hide behind. But this is a self portrait. Here, I am revealing myself, breaking down my own wall, and showing you what is important to me and what I consider to be part of my identity. These are my hands, the tools I use to craft my art are art themselves. I am proud to express myself through my photography and expose to you what lies behind my wall.

Sally Mann

This is the second set of my Sally Mann images. I again aimed to capture the raw beauty of my models like Mann did in her portfolios that I studied. 

I’d like to thank my models for working with me on this project. During this shoot, it was drizzling and I had to shoot from underneath a towel to keep the camera dry. But the drizzle really enhanced the naturalness of the lighting and the texture of my images so I’m grateful for that. On a less grateful note, we also had to jump in the trunk of my car during this shoot to avoid the geese that were chasing us through the park...

If Sally Mann ever happens to come across these images, I hope she appreciates my work and I hope that I've done justice to her art because she has definitely inspired me!

Sally Mann

These photos are all part of an assignment for which I was to choose a photographer to emulate. I chose to emulate Sally Mann. Even though many critics have criticized her work as it can often seem disturbing and/or controversial, I love the quality of her photography and I think that her work is stunning aesthetically and on a deeper level. Mann often uses her children as her models and, in her portfolios that I studied, she focuses on adolescents and their raw beauty. With my images, I tried to capture that raw beauty by placing my subjects in natural environments and using natural lighting.

For this assignment, I used a large format film camera, similar to one Mann used, and focused on shooting young girls like Mann did in her second collection published in 1988 titled At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women and like she did in her third collection, Immediate Family, published in 1992 with images of her children. These are the first six images I did for this collection and there are more to come. I hope you like these images as much as I liked making them.

TIme Exposure: Balls in Motion

This image is a part of my time exposure assignment. It was hard to get this shot to work the way I wanted it to because it wasn't dark in the room so I couldn't leave the shutter open for a very long time or it would be over-exposed. So I just had somebody break the pool balls and I pressed the cable release for probably half a second or a second maybe. I love how this image turned out because all of the balls are blurred in motion except for the one orange ball in the middle which draws your focus. I love seeing all of the motion because you can even see how each ball rolled with all of the spiraling colors. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Time Exposure: Ablaze

This is another one of my time exposure images. Again I used the flashlight with the camera on bulb and on a tripod with the cable release. I kept this photo in color and added a little bit of a yellow hue just to make the original red color look more orange. I like this photo because I think it is interesting to see the two stick figures along side a real person because it contrasts fantasy and reality. Hope you like it too!

Time Exposure: Neon Trees

This photo is also a part of my time exposure assignment. I did the same thing for this shot in regard to the cable release and the flashlight. The photo originally had a red tint to it but I edited in photoshop to make it black and white. I think that the image is clearer and simpler in black and white which I like. Enjoy!

Time Exposure: butterfLIGHT

This photo is part of my time exposure assignment. The room was completely dark and I had a flashlight with a red piece of paper over it to make the image have some color. I set the camera on bulb and set it on a tripod and pressed the cable release so that the shutter would stay open until I pressed it again to close the shutter. Then I went behind the person in the picture and drew wings with the flashlight pointing towards the camera. Then in photoshop I increased the magenta hue to make the image have more of a pink tint to it. Hope you like it!