Portrait Article Reflection

Jessica Gordon does a fabulous job of writing this lovely and inspirational critique on the success, work, and experiences of blossoming photographer, Manjari Sharma.
This article is very in-depth as it goes over Sharma's life and the decisions that led to her love for photography. I really enjoyed reading this article as I feel I actually gained a good deal of insight from it though the subject I appreciated the most, was the uniqueness of the process of the way she caputures her photos.
From what I read, I have collected that when it comes to photography, Sharma's passion is portrait taking. And not only are the portraits interesting and beautiful, the process of shooting and capturing such an image sounds just as enchanting. The article goes on to describe Sharma's discovery of intimacy and relationships in taking these photos. She captures more than just an asthetically pleasing portrait, but also a personal moment as her models turn the shooting area (Sharma's appartment's shower) into a confessional and let Sharma in to their hearts.
When I take portraits, I hope to have the same occurrences, where a model can feel comfortable enough to tell me their memories and stories. It definitely adds something to the photo as you can feel the closeness, and compatibility between model and photographer. Sharma inserted herself into the model's personal ora, and they inserted themselves right back, opening up to her and sharing their lives, making the out come of the photo so much more meaningful.
A portrait does not have to be racy, or happy or depressing, or it infact can be. A portrait is capturing a person, whether they are aware or not. I see it as one of the most intimate types of photography around. But a photograph is just a photograph, an image of a moment in time, and though the picture may be gorgeous, it lacks something when it is detatched from emotion.
Anyone can photograph a portrait, but it is surely something special and unique when you can capture more than image, but a moment, a story, an experience, in that photo as well.

best fraaaands!!

The image I have created is a bit peculiar as the first thing you see when you look at it is myself on a unicorn. The work is a bit abstract and fairly close in view. The photo consists of myself, a pretty unicorn, a billowing and green background, and a few words to enhance the humor in my photo.
The composition is simple and pretty centered. There is a sunny and warm tone to the photo with many shapes accentuating it. The image is focused and this was intentional as I specifically chose this photo knowing its composition ahead of time.
My message for this photo is just to create some laughs and show that this unicorn and I are besties!! The image is light and the background image was, I'm assuming, taken outside including the horse though my photo was staged and taken inside in the photo room.
This work was extremely successful in my opinion as it exceeded my expectations and I love it! It is fun and silly and every choice I made in the process of creating this turned out pretty swell. The process was not too difficult and I appreciated the variety of brush's, colors, etc. that was available for me to use. This was a fairly quick and easy assignment and I really enjoyed it.