Showing

Having another showing at a popular restaurant--a black and white collection. Getting enlargements, cropping properly, and matching ink tones to images is exhausting. I am pretty dissatisfied with the prints hanging up. For some reason the printing company only printed some of the photos I submitted (and of course, the ones they accidentally left out were my favorite). I also had to design a business card (which was pretty fun) so hat customers interested in the prints could contact me. I'm really happy with their design. Pictures of showing will probably come in a week or so.

Old Photo Flashback

One of my oldest photos, but still one of my favorites. However, I can definitely see through my work how much I've grown as a photographer since then. I didn't even have an SLR at this point!





This one is old too--I like it, but it doesn't have much artistic style/vision.

Advertising

Photographs are available (with negotiation) for book covers, magazines, prints, etc. Contact me through my flickr account, which you can find at the bottom of my first blog post. However, no ripping from the site or I will be very angry :(

Saskia Photoshoot

Had a brief photoshoot with my friend's little sister, Saskia. She is extremely photogenic, but I think I could have gotten some better photos than I did. The second is the study and the third is a close crop of the one below.

Cambridge

Last summer, I attended a program for a month in Cambridge, England. Though the photography class was not very structured, I learned a lot by taking photos in my free time. The beauty of Cambridge inspired me, and seeing a hundred new faces sparked my imagination for new photos. During an interview with a lady from the town newspaper, she asked me what inspired me to take pictures of people. I said that faces inspire me--I don't view beauty generically--big eyes, pointed chins, and idiosyncrasies attract me to future models. I have no problem going up to people and asking them to model for me: in fact, that's what I did at camp during the first couple of days, to people I barely new. Camp was one of the biggest leaps in photography for me--I had free time for hours a day and was free to roam anywhere about Cambridge. My freedom explains the wide variety of photos: from the college gardens, to the street, to the ancient colleges, and to the art museums lining the wide avenues.

Kelly Photoshoot

I was hanging out with my friend Kelly and, even though I didn't really think I'd be taking photos, brought my camera along out of habit (I bring it basically everywhere that's safe and has another person to model for the photos). We were baking cookies and I looked out the window and saw this area of reeds around her house. I dropped the dough into the bowl and told her we had to take photos this instant, before the light faded. We took quite a few shots--I love her exotic eyes and facial structure in front of the camera. Unfortunately, her cat got a bit annoyed from being picked up, lol.

Digital Young Photographer of the Year 2007

Yay! I won the title of Digital Young Photographer of the Year 2007 for my age category (11-14). There were over 81,000 entries, and I was really thrilled to have won first! Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to contribute to the adult contest because people under 18 are disqualified. I won 600 dollars, was featured in a London exhibit (Malls Gallery, London), and was published in the Photographer of the Year 2007 portfolio, which comes with the March edition of Digital Camera magazine. It's one of my favorite photography publications, and it feels great when people email me on flickr and say they recognize the photo from the magazine.

Sample Photos

My Favorite Books

I just visited the most amazing bookstore (a mixture of used and brand-new books, my two loves), which inspired me to compile a list of my favorite books:

1) His Dark Materials (ingenious)
2) Pride and Prejudice
3) Jane Eyre
4) The Chronicles of Chrestomanci
5) The Rainbow Opera
6) Lirael
7) The Arrival
8) Flower Fairies (Cicely Mary Barker)
9) Coraline
10) The Hobbit
11) Adrian Mole
12) The Dream Merchant
13) Rebel Angels
14) A Separate Peace
15) Earthsea
16) The House of Green Knowe
17) The Enchanted Castle
18) The Great Tree of Avalon
19) Howl's Moving Castle
20) The Legend of King Arthur
21) I, Coriander
22) A Crack in the Line
23) The Thirteenth Tale
24) The Legend of Deirdre
25) The Ruby in the Smoke
26) East
27) The Secret Garden
28) Roverandom

As you can see, I love fantasy. I read all types of books--I love love dusty classics that have an air of mystery. Realist Fantasy is my absolute favorite genre. I don't limit myself to books that are for my age group--I will read picture books, teenage books, adult books, classics, myths anything really. I adore celtic legends and unknown, beaten up books that have not been read since they were first published. For me, fantasy opens up a whole new world where there is no limit to possibility. I love reading but often neglect it because of school, photography, the internet, etc.

Construction Photoshoot

This was one of my favorite photoshoots. Kira is my favorite model, and the site was so good for photos because of all the different shapes, textures, and components. The light was even throughout the photoshoot, except at the end, where I got one of my favorite photos of Kira leaning up against the wall, her shadow casting a bold black shape that catches the eye even more than the model herself. When I took the picture, I didn't expect it to be good--in fact, I almost deleted it. When I reviewed the shots on the computer, however, there were many that held my eye even though I had little confidence in them when I had originally taken them.
During this shoot, I tried to create a range of different shots in the same place. I think I was more aware of all the components that make an interesting photo.

My Photography

Hello, 

and welcome to my photography blog! For me, photography is magic because you are taking the world and capturing beauty in tiny little squares (usually 4 by 6 inches!). There is so much to see in the world: good and bad, and by capturing the most poignant moments you can, in a way, create your own world. 

In terms of me:

I've always been creative--my first love was drawing. Now, my principle passions are writing and photography. Luckily, these passions go hand in hand--with writing, you are creating a world out of words, and with photography, you are creating a story out of images. Often one inspires the other. For the past year or so, however, I have had trouble balancing my two loves--to be truly amazing at something, I feel like you have to concentrate all your brain powers in one area, so one of my two loves is often neglected. 

I am fourteen years old and received my first camera at age 11--a point and shoot. Surprisingly, I was disappointed with the gift: I hadn't expected or wanted a camera, but I used it just so my parents wouldn't be disappointed. Luckily for me, I soon recognized my love for photography and have, over time, become more and more enveloped in the world it brings to me. My world is a strange, magical one, filled with colorless forests (my black and white photography!) and skies in every color imaginable (my color photography!). Almost every day I will see something and yell "STOP! That, right there, would be an amazing photo." My friends have become used to it, as well as the constant modeling they are forced to do. Whenever I think I'm on the verge of an amazing shot, my whole body tenses up and I start shouting, because I am so nervous that I won't pull off the image I can see so clearly in my head. When I do get it, my whole body relaxes and I let out a breath, only to begin shooting again. When I take photos, I experiment with all different angles and backgrounds--I love nothing more than having a huge stock of photos to edit. 

During a typical photoshoot with one of my favorite models, I take approximately 500 pictures. Though my memory card easily fills up, I believe my method is useful--even though many of the shots are similiar, I can spend hours picking through them, eliminating twenty or thirty just because it is a quarter of a centimeter off in cropping, or the expression of the model isn't EXACTLY as I imagined. As you can probably tell, I am a perfectionist in terms of my artwork, and this, so far, is the only way I can capture my idea of the perfect image. 

I am starting this blog because I want to have a creative journal that I can look back on to get ideas. Here I plan to describe my latest photoshoots, ideas, and camera gadgets, as well as examples of my artwork. In doing so I hope to improve my photography and become even more dedicated to it than I already am (if that's possible, because photography is basically a compulsion for me now). Feel free to look around, and if you would like to see more of my work, go to:

www.flickr.com/photos/ireland1324

all photos are copyright Susannah Photography 2008.