Grace is my assistant for senior pictures this year. She took both my Foundations of Composition and my Basics in Exposure class this spring at The Arts Center. In true Grace style, she soaked it all in. For the above image, I held the camera and set exposure, but the composition is all Grace, and it's brilliant.
Grace has photography completely her own. She likes street photography--particularly night scenes. She also uses photography as a medium to document her life. Some of my favorite pictures are from a school walkout she participated in this spring. Over and over, I saw her images posted on social media as the means of telling the story of the day. That's powerful.
Photography is a pursuit of creativity, but it is so much more than that. Paul Strand said, "I've wanted to use photography as an instrument of research into and reporting on the life of my own time." The "research" part of that statement is what stands out to me. I wouldn't see the world the same without my camera. That's the most rewarding part of being a photographer. My camera helps me observe so that when I am ready to "speak," I have something worth saying.
These are some of my favorite of Grace's pictures.
