Tamia: Changing Faces

ARTIST STATEMENT

Ever since the first assignment of the course where we had to compare selfies to thought out portraits, I’ve been hooked. There’s so many different people you can shoot and there are so many different sides of them that you can portray in a shot. I like that you can feel emotion just by altering the frame of  your subject. I feel like landscape photos are nice however, if you have the right subject, in the right spot, with the right lighting, it adds a whole other dimension to the photo.

 Starting off this course, I honestly thought it was going to be the easiest course and I wouldn’t have to put much effort into it. I really thought that all you would have to do is pick up and camera and snap, sort of like the disposal ones. I thought the only difference between them was no film, its clearly bigger, and it can zoom. I never expected that there was so much time and effort to put into one single photo. i never thought about centering a subject or the lighting on or around the subject.

 For me, I would have to say my favourite type of photography is portraiture. There’s so many different types of emotions and stories you can portray as opposed to landscape photos, at least in my opinion. With portraits you can also guide the models to add on to the scenery, lighting, etc. For example, if someone was taking landscape photos with flowers. Yes, you could control how much light comes in the photo, where the sunlight might hit, you could focus on one flower but you don’t really get a story from it. Unless one where to take panelled photos with a timeline of the flowers lifespan per say or if they edited the picture more darker and maybe left the focused flower in colour to represent something. With portraits, your model and the background is story enough. Especially the model’s eyes.. the eyes always tell the true story no matter what they’re doing in the photo.

 My favourite model happens to be my little sister. For starters she’s very photogenic but I’m drawn to her because she’s also very interesting. She’s only 11 but has moments where she’s a grown woman who’s experienced so much in life. My favourite photos of her are the ones I took of her, portraying that side of her. I did a balance of her serious side but also her goofy side. For the serious side i did them black and white so you could really focus on her face and not get distracted by the colourful backgrounds. I feel like a good serious photo can be beautiful but if you make it black and white, it turns into something amazing. it’s the way the shadows back that kind of add onto the feel of the photo and make you kind of make up a story in your head to go with it, even if there might not be one at all.

 This course really just opened my eyes to not only the beauty of portraiture but of photography in general. I never realized how much you can express yourself through a photo, just as equally as another form of art. I most definitely think I’ve found my new favourite hobby and I’d really like to continue to learn about how to take a better photo along with how to edit my heart away without being confused by the different features. I am just starting and i know there’s plenty of room to improve but i really think i’ve found my niche.