I grew up with a large family of big personalities. We are all so different but unified through family, as all have our own unique strengths. This led me to my inquiry "How can I use photography to show diverse individual personalities within a family and how each piece of that family comes together to form a stronger, unified whole?"  My work shows a series of photos, unified by the symbolic theme of the Natural Elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. I represent individual emotion and personality traits through an exploration of color, exposure techniques, movement, and experimental editing.

Throughout my investigation, I worked with many new and difficult materials but they made my work more impactful (SIs 4-13). In the beginning, I used more Photoshop (SIs 1-3), which I believe didn't show any emotion and was significantly less realistic. I then experimented with using the elements in front or next to the subject in SIs 4-9. This was better but still not to the level I wanted. I then revised how I used the elements in my photos by having them interact and be closer to the subject. This gave the photo a realer & more raw emotional feeling, making them my best works (SIs 10-13).

(original) My inquiry is "How elements connect to human emotion" I have a big family and that family has a big personality and everyone is different. I have always been interested in how people can be so different but come together to create something amazing and strong. I like nature and emocional over dramatic photos and this is something I think can let me experiment with both. I want to use photography, double exposure, long exposure, different lightings, as well as some cool editing to achieve the emotion I am trying to convey.