Photos taken by Ana Dendy

Ana Dendy: Student Artist AnD photographer

Photography through a student lens

ARTS AND CULTURE | December 2024

Ana Dendy is a sophomore and a student in the Photography and Advertising Art I class. She developed an interest for photography this year, leading her to take the class. 

Dendy explained that no experience is necessary for photography. “The class covers basic concepts of photography like aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, which are applied to outside of school photography assignments. Although, something that could be difficult is using Photoshop. It may be helpful to watch some YouTube tutorials on how to use some of the basic tools in Photoshop.” 

Additionally, “a concept we cover in class is the exposure triangle, which consists of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. They determine how bright your photo is, and the school’s cameras have individual settings to control these.”

As a photographer, Dendy understands that “time can be a problem sometimes, because some methods of photography require two people. Trying to set up times to meet outside of school can be difficult, especially when you need a certain amount of natural light for the pictures to look right. As it gets later in the year, it’s more difficult to take pictures outside before the sun goes down,” Dendy said.

“I definitely like landscape pictures more, or product photography. It’s a lot of fun to change to a monochrome or vivid color setting and see the difference in the picture. Product photography can be fun because you can set up items in a decorative way, and adding different lights can create a cool effect. Landscape pictures can be interesting because there are multiple settings you can add which make each picture drastically different from the last. Examples of this are the monochrome or vivid color settings.”

Dendy said, “Photography has changed the art world in multiple ways. “We see photography everywhere, from advertisements to Instagram. It’s all around us, and it’s gotten very easy to take a picture with today’s advancements. Photography has made it easier to save a moment instantly.” 

“Cell phones have made it very easy to take a picture. Instead of using a camera when you want to take a picture, you can just take out your phone. Your phone will automatically adjust to take the best photo possible, which has made photography a lot easier for everyone to use. Whether I use a camera or a phone to take pictures depends on what I want to take a picture of. For assignments in class I use my camera, but if I’m taking a picture of something I want to show to a friend, I’d use my phone. Sometimes I’ll take pictures using my school camera if I find an interesting idea for a picture, messing around with the settings to take a better picture,”

When approaching a photography assignment, “the obvious first step would be to determine what exactly I need to take a picture of and what settings or concepts I need to focus on. Then I’ll consider some locations I can take pictures at. My favorite place to take pictures is Sleepy Hollow. There are a lot of trees and trails and the bridge with fairy lights on it looks pretty when it’s starting to get dark. If needed, I can edit the picture in photoshop to lighten or darken the picture, remove grain, or change other aspects of the picture. Then I submit pictures by adding them to a Google Drive folder that is shared with Mr. Lies, the Photography and Advertising Art I teacher.”

“I took a picture of the sunset behind my house. It’s my favorite picture I’ve ever taken. I used a vivid color setting, which is one of my favorite settings to use because it accentuates color in photos. When I see a subject that could be an interesting photo, I’ll usually take a picture just because I think it could end up looking nice. One of the best parts of it is that it has a lot of different color tones in it.”

“Something you should know if you want to take up photography is one of the best ways to figure out what settings or styles you like is just to try different settings. It’s also fun to take different versions of the same photo with different settings and angles. Don’t be afraid to try different things,” Dendy said.