You Can Be

 

Thank you to my best friend, Erika, for being my model for most of my assignments throughout high school! Reflections and Motion was the assignment for this print. It was a windy day and originally, I wanted to try to capture motion with her hair blowing in the wind with her looking upwards towards the sky. I thought the light, white clouds against her dark, brown hair would contrast well and look pleasant when I worked with the photograph in the dark room. You're probably looking at the picture and asking, "what happened, because that doesn't look like that at all.."

Unfortunately, it didn't capture motion like I wanted it to. So I decided to try something with reflections. I gave her my sunglasses and tried getting some sort of landscape shot in the reflection of the lenses, but it didn't really capture my attention; it was just a pretty picture. Then I noticed the shirt that she was wearing; it was captivating and interesting. It was colorful and the words all had different fonts and it really drew my attention. That's when I got the idea of this picture. I wanted the first few words on the shirt to be visible, and then I wanted the reflection of the glasses to reveal more of the words that weren't visible to the viewer.

Honestly, I don't consider this very well composed at all. There are many things that I wish I could change about it to really make it how I envisioned it at first. My feet are visible in the reflection of the glasses, which is something I feel takes away from the photo. The shirt isn't as visible as I would like it to be in the reflection, also. That was an important element of what I wanted to include in this picture, and it didn't come out the way I'd hoped. In face, several picture from that roll didn't come out the way I wanted, but that's how you learn.

That's the beauty of being a photographer. You learn from your work. You realize what you need to fix and alter next time to create the impression you want.