I am Stephanie C, and I practice digital photography. I often encounter myself with images that I took and surprise me.

The image of the Chihuly Garden pieces was a shot taken to test exposure of my image. Looking back through those images I was surprised by that image and the spontaneous framing of it. I was drawn to the contrast between light and shadows, and the combination of colors that made the image feel warm despite being relatively dark. I enjoyed the composition of this image and the clear details of the closest glass piece. 

For this image I had an idea in mind of connection. I choose to depict my mom and my grandma braiding my hair because this action connects us all and is also pretty personal to me. My connection to my hair is seen a lot within my culture, so having that moment captured was intimate while also being relatable.

My name is Stephanie, I am 18 years old and I go to Hazen High school in Renton. I practice digital photography centering myself in images that depict people, sometimes in candid moments. I am influenced by the environment around me and the people that bring me joy, and joy for me can be through people I know personally or strangers whose presence seems so alive and dear. I also explored a lot of color editing in this.

For my movie poster I searched and searched for inspiration, until I found a theme of eyes being a portal to know someone. While the process of taking the image was straight forward, making it in the style that it is took time mostly because I was just experimenting around to see what it was that I wanted. The image depicts an eye with this little flower in the center of it, representing as the title says, blooming, and what that means for me is the process of my perspective growing as a flower does. The use of colors in this poster was mainly for my own experimentation of something out of my comfort zone, I wanted to try something new and this is what it resulted in. 

Continuing with the theme of color, I edited this image with similar colors, and I liked this one because I am drawn to people in whatever setting they are in, specially in candid moments because those are ones you can’t fully replicate.

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Through these images I look for ways for the ordinary things in my life to be taken into new perspectives. I explored many different approaches, but it was motion and reflection the ones that captivated me the most. I like the idea of movement, since everything around us is in constant change, I wanted something that represented those transitions. In my view, I seek the ordinary and make it memorable, which is why photography becomes so impactful for me. I took the environment around me and made it everlasting through the click of the camera. 

(First) image includes the movement of hands, showing the change in position over a small portion of time. This technique is something really fun to experiment with, because the results are often unexpected. It truly has the effect of seeing something as simple as hands in a new abstract way, which makes little things more engaging for me. 

The (Second) image is simply my cat. He is the most entitled muse ever, but my go-to subject when experimenting photography. His eyes are often something I want to focus on, especially in the reflection of what he sees and what he finds entertaining. His mind is always a mystery to me, and I felt that capturing his eyes would give me a little clue of his weird mind.