Photojournalism Proposal

For my photojournalism assignment, I am going to be attending a Cumberland Valley Dance Team practice after school one day. This dance team is one of the highest ranked high school teams nationally and my friend is one of the lucky people who was selected to be on it. I'm very excited to see these girls hard at work with their coaches and just interacting with each other! :)

Final Portraiture Shots

I picked one of my best friends Sammie as my model for this project. She actually volunteered and was very enthusiastic and willing throughout the entire photo shoot! We spent three hours together, driving to both Hampden Park and the high school. Sammie is one of the most kind, funny, and free-spirited individuals I know and I thought a park would be the best place to truly showcase her unique personality. We also took pictures in the Cumberland Valley High School football stadium because that is where track and field meets occur and Sammie is one of the fastest girls on the team at the 400 meter race along with being talented in many other events! I told Sammie to bring three different outfits- one dressier outfit, one casual outfit, and her cross-country uniform, which doubles as her track and field uniform. Sammie and I had a lot of fun wandering around the park, coming up with creative and hilarious poses for her to attempt. For my first portrait photo shoot ever, I would say it was a complete success!

Out of 150 shots that I took, I narrowed it down to about 50 decent shots. From there, I found my favorite seven and proceeded to edit them in fun and flattering ways. Overall, I think my final product turned out very satisfactory- showing a true representation of my model's personality and a nice mix of different photographs and editing styles. Sammie said she really loved both the individual photographs and the completed expression panel and she was glad that she had agreed to the shoot! 

I would definitely recommend to anyone else attempting this assignment to pick a model that wants to  have their pictures taken and is completely willing to do a variety of poses for the photographer. Also, really have fun! Don't restrain yourself to typical and boring portrait shots- do something new and interesting and exciting! 

The most challenging aspect of this assignment for me was designing a nice expression panel and coming up with unique actions for Photoshop, because I'm not a very creative person and I often prefer doing things more classically. I think I did a fairly good job of representing my model's personality in the photographs and expression panel. I ended up liking this assignment much more than I thought I would, and I'm glad that I did it!

Actions and Expression Panel

Artistic

Black and White

Color