Selfie

Hey there Mr.B! I'm Alexa, this is going to be my third year being in your class and having you and I couldn't be more excited! I like to play water polo, this is my fourth year on the team, and its finally my senior year! I also swim on the team but this year I won't be this year because I would rather train for a Tri and I'm super excited, also to focus spending time with my family as much as I can. 

My goals for this year are to keep up with my grades and do well my senior year, hopefully win states this fall for polo this year, and also to truly find a concentration for Portfolio this year and that will show how I really am and something I feel strongly about, which I'm getting there but its hard to narrow it down and decide. 

For art in general I think I have a strong intention on making really great pieces and I love editing photos and taking them but for my weakness I always have an issue trying to find the true concept behind it and making the pieces come together. 

This year some ideas I have for my concentration are the following:

Insecurity of social roles

Stresses of modernity and globalization

Freedom of Expression

Mask (How people hide)

Water - meaning behind it

Valedictory Final

Valedictory Final

The central idea of my concentration is about sports portraiture, my plan in the beginning was to focus on not just one but several different types of sports but after I took my shots of three football players I figured that I would just work with their shots of just them and football and not worry about taking other shots of other sports but to focus on the football shots. 

After looking at all of my finished pieces I can honestly say that these are my favorite pieces from any project we've worked on this year. I love every single one of the shots that I choose to upload and use because the editing was so simple and easy which made the process of editing them so quick, not that I don't enjoy editing but after doing these it made me realize that if you have the right lighting that you want and need and the models work with you so well it can make everything else to simple and quick, my out come on this project I couldn't be more happy with, the simplicity but the hard details shown in each of the pieces make them all unique and that's what I love about them. The models were a huge help too because they were so much fun to work with but they all did their own thing which made all photos have such a variety. What I did to edit the photos was took them from color and turned them all to black and white and after that I played with the black, whites and grays and worked with what would bring out the best detail in each photo, then took out the grain and background behind the boys to color it black, it was a really simple process that turned out to look awesome.

Valedictory Research

So far for this project i've researched quite a few things. One being about the lighting for taking the photos, there should be great depth against the person that is being shot and the lighting should be darker in some places more than others. I really tried to work with the focus on the person and the lighting which was really fun but slight challenging. I wanted to do this because it seemed like it was really challenging and a lot of fun that will turn out to be a really cool and unique. Another thing I looked up and found is that a person's facial expressions in a photo show so much about them and they're personality. The people I chose to use for my shots I was really happy with because they were so awesome with the facial expressions and poses!

Valedictory Contact Sheets

Surrealism Finals

Surrealism Finals

Contact Sheet

Examples

 Expression Examples: Happy, Calm, and Fun