Ashley Kesweder

During the drafting stages of this project, I knew that I wanted to have myself in the portrait and that I wanted my eye to somehow have a dominance in the photo. I took many photographs and played around with them a bit, but I was unhappy with my results. Those photos all had my eye wide open, setting a more joyful and optimistic tone. After being disappointed with those, I went back and took this picture. I used a larger aperture, f/5, for a narrower depth of field to still give me the focus I wanted on my eye. Having my eyes closed and my head titled down, the mood is instantly altered.
I took the raw image into Photoshop and got a little crafty, I suppose. I took my image and darkened the highlights quite a bit and then completely chopped up the image to give it this collage-like feel. My life doesn't always fall perfectly into place. It has it's ups and downs and it's complications; I wanted to portray that in this piece. Things cannot always be put into one perfectly square picture that's full of bright colors and straight edges. There are holes, shadows and jagged lines, that is what I show here.