About Me

My name is Kaylee!

I'm a high school photography student.

I took this class to learn more about taking quality photos and how to use a camera.

My mom used to be a professional wedding photographer, she was pretty excited when I told her I wanted to do photography.

Besides taking pictures, I really like drawing and writing, though I'm not all that good. I also enjoy cooking, my favorite thing to make is a Japanese dish called katsudon and apple cinnamon scones.

Even though I live in a nice town, I've always dreamed of traveling the world. Being able to take pictures of amazing sites and being able to show them to my friends and family and say, "I took these!"

Artist Statement

  When I first started photography, I thought it was as simple as finding a good angle, pointing the camera, and taking a picture. But this class has taught me shutter speed, ISO, color, and depth of field. I only knew color before this class. Because of the skills I learned, my pictures turned out much more enjoyable to look at. Composition is another major thing I learned, it's what really pulled everything together. It's things like rule of thirds, use of frames, balancing elements, leading lines, etc. etc! I believe the most used and well known composition would be rule of thirds. It's used in every photo, no matter what your photo subject is.
 Out of this entire semester, Color Composition was my favorite, it was a bit of a challenge and forced me to go out. But it fit my boundaries well and didn't force me to look to hard. Though my least favorite assignment would probably have to be Shutter speed/Motion.  I feel that I never stuck with my original theme, but I kind of bounced all over the place. At the beginning of the year, I wanted to show more emotion with my pictures, but I didn't really follow through with that.
 My most successful project so far was defiantly Color Composition, all of the pictures are different and don't correlate with one another, other than the theme being orange. And if there's anything I suck at, it's shutter speed. I can never get a still picture, and if I do it's by chance, that's the reason I always do still life. But I'd like to do more assignments on movement so I can get better at figuring out the shutter speed.

Shutter Speed/Motion reflection

This is a picture of me sewing fabric in the fashion and textiles room. I thought that a sewing machine was the best thing to try a freeze picture, since the needle moves at an incredibly fast rate. It was pretty easy to set up too, all I had to do was thread my machine, put the fabric under the presser foot, and push my foot on the peddle. I could’ve used rule of thirds, but I figured since there was so much to look at that it would distract the viewer from realizing that the main subject was in the middle. Although for the most part that was an accident. I happened the remember to bring my camera to school the day I took the photo. As I was sewing, I realized this would make a great photo. I suppose this picture helped me look the world more closely, see the details in things.

Lighting/ISO Reflection

For this picture, I set my room as the scene. Despite my room being small, I’ve learned to find stuff to take pictures of in there. Such as this picture. I choose to take this as my subject because it gave off that gloomy kind of vibe. The only source of light is coming from the sky, it’s raining, and you can only see things that are close to the window. Such as the drawer, and the corner of my bed, along with random objects on the windowsill. For this image, I mostly used rule of thirds, along with background. Without these two compositions, the picture wouldn’t be all that good. If you could see the walls and floor, it would distract the viewer from the actual study.

The subject matter I choose was the rain in the window. I remember my original goal was to show that everyday objects could be seen in a more emotional way than we usually see them. This scene was the perfect opportunity to show that. But at the same time it could be considered calming, relaxing even to some.

But, this assignment proved to be somewhat difficult for me. I had a hard time finding stuff that fit the ideas I had. Though, I managed to get some pretty nice pictures. If I had to change anything, I’d make there be less night pictures and more indoor lighting pictures.

Depth of field reflection

 For this picture, I decided to take it of some rusted pipes. It was taken in the Downtown Noblesville square in an alleyway. I was walking down it and thought the pipes would be an interesting picture. Pipes really don't look all that interesting, unless you know where to look at it from, it's all about perspective. I ended up taking this picture a little late in the project, so I was really just walking around, hoping I'd find something I'd thought might make a good photo. But this assignment made me realize that depth of field plays a huge role in photography. 

Color Reflection

 Out of all the pictures I took, this one was honestly my favorite. My family had taken us to a donut shop, which had orange donuts! Seeing as my assigned color was orange, I took the opportunity and managed to snap and awesome shot. I originally was planning on taking a picture of a donut with orange sprinkles, or orange frosting, but I got an orange donut. Since I knew the inside would have the most vibrant, I took a bite out of it then set it on a napkin.

 To make to the picture more appealing to look at, I used rule or thirds. With the color elements and point of view, it made the picture much more interesting to look at. I figured I'd use a donut because of the detail they have that not many pay attention to.

Rules of Composition Reflection

 I had taken this picture of myself, seeing as no one in my family would allow me to put fake blood on the! and since I didn't exactly have anywhere to go at the time, I decided to take the picture in my bedroom; the lighting was perfect. As for setting up my scene, I just out a dab of stage blood running out of my nose then I added fx makeup to my knuckles with some blood on each one, to give off the impression that maybe I was just in a fight of some sort. I made sure to focus in on my knuckles and leave half of my face cut off and blurred. But, even so, there is still something to look at.

 The main principle I used was close and far, then a little bit of color and point of interest. The reason behind the picture, is that it's strange, it's gross, it's new, you might even consider it as deep. What I want my viewers to ask when they see this is, 'how did they end up like that?' 'what's their story?' And that's what I want to add into my pictures and art as well. This assignment gave me the chance to look at things different. To ask more questions.