Arte 352: Week #4: Write-up

Marla Schreiber
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This week I’ll be discussing some of my own photography, as well as that of my older sister, Marla. She took a dark room photography course when she was in CEGEP, and did some similar projects that we’re doing in class this semester. I remember her placing me in different rooms of our house in order to capture the best lighting and to create a lot of contrasting shadows. We spent an entire afternoon one Sunday staging the “prefect” shots for her project. One photo that she took is of her fiancé Adam who was then eighteen. I loved that picture so much that I decided to draw it in graphite. To this day, it’s still hanging on the living room wall of his parents’ home. The other photo that stood out from her album was of a man walking his son home from school. I’m really drawn to the composition, and I like that the subjects didn’t even know they were being photographed.

My photography is amateur, but I enjoy taking photographs and capturing memories. I had the opportunity to travel to Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia a few years ago, and one of my favourite things to do is to look through all of the photos I took. Each one has a story behind it and reminds me of a specific day in my life. I don’t know if they’re technically “right” or not, but I consider some of my shots to be aesthetically appealing. According to Michael Smith, I like to do "my own thing". He wrote in his article that, "the more we live, the more we understand, even if that understanding sometimes consists in knowing how very little we really know. And of course, the more we understand, the more we can put into our own work— our own photographs." I thought that was a very appropriate statement that truly describes what kind of photographer I am.