What Photography Means to Me

   What Photography Means to Me

By: Amanda Schaeffer

     I have always been interested in photography and videography. I want photography to be my job one day. I am passionate about taking good quality photos with my camera and getting the right exposure and focus on what I am shooting. In fact, I'm considering starting my photography business this summer for family and friends in my hometown. It's not going to be anything professional, but just so I can get practice with photography and see what I need to improve on with my camera work.

    Photography for me means that you capture an image to reflect or show emotion from it. As well as just what you personally feel about that type of photograph. For example, some photographs make people happy inside if it's a picture of puppies or a rainbow. However, others make you feel confused, outraged, or even heartbroken when seeing another photograph. I believe it's all what you are trying to capture to portray a sense of emotion or feeling to tell a story, inform the viewer, or just entertaining one's eye. In Marvin Heiferman's essay, he indicates that different people will have their own examples and meaning of photography (Heiferman 2012). Which I find that to be true and agreeable since everyone has their own perspective on photographs and seeing things within images. For me, personally, I don't like overly simple or overly complex images. I prefer taking photographs with a sense of purpose such as taking a photograph of the beautiful sunset or a high school senior receiving their diploma. Heiferman's idea about that information is crucial for photography because you have to learn that what I see in an image might not be the same thing as another person looking at that same image.

    Below this paragraph is Marvin Heiferman's picture that he took that I found on the Internet. It's a black and white photo of a young girl with a cigarette in her hand while another younger girl is facing her. Heiferman's photograph speaks to me and shows me that the young blonde girl gives off a tired or annoyed look in her face. Also, her posture helps with that emotion since her arm is crossed over her stomach. Since Heiferman's theory of everyone has a different meaning of photographs, I indicate that this is a strong image of a girl not knowing the dangers of smoking cigarets and relying on it to give her a "high". I appreciate this image that Heiferman took but I would only critique one thing from this picture. I am not quit sure what is going on in the background to her left. It looks like a person without hands or a head which confused me because my focus is on the blonde young girl. I would like it to be all black behind her so she is the center and seems more isolated in the darkness. By examining this photograph by Marvin Heiferman, it really makes me dig deeper into my critical thinking and analyzing of someone's picture, even if I am not a photographer yet.

    

Work Cited

Heiferman, Marvin. “Photography Changes Everything.” Amazon, Aperture, 2012, www.amazon.com/Photography-Changes-Everything-Marvin-Heiferman/dp/1597111996.