Jasmine Dupey Artist Statement

As a new photographer, I get my inspiration from a well- known photographer, Jerry Uelsmann. He took amazing photos in black and white and would blend two or more different pictures to create a whole new photograph. Because he was from a time where technology wasn’t as great, he had to blend the photos a certain way, which is pretty confusing. However, coming from a time with advanced technology, I would take photos and photo shop them to create my own new photographs. I used the eraser tool in order to erase what I didn’t want to add to the new picture, and I would use the copy and paste tool to copy one thing to another photo. Then I would use the blur tool to blur the edges of the photo I just pasted to another photo. Also to make the photo a bit better I would play around with the brightness and contrast.

I started taking photos in Black and White to get a more of a vintage look. I would just use the sponge tool, which de-saturated the photos. Later I started partially de-saturating to create more of a wow factor and to focus mainly on one thing in the photo. For this I would use the sponge tool to de-saturate around the area I wanted to pop out.

I then researched Annie Leibovitz, who takes really interesting photos. She was another inspiration for my photography. She always has a visual in her head on how she sees the photo’s outcome. She takes more than one picture of the same position of the models or of objects, but changes angle, or the lighting so compare the photographs after and choose the better one. Like Annie Leibovitz, I have been interested in photography for a majority of my life. It is one of my career interests to go into when I get older. I specifically would like to photograph special occasions such as birthdays, weddings, births, etc.

Now that I have learned so much on photography and photo shop, I feel pretty good in the photos I take everyday, and it has made me open my eyes more to the world. Before I didn’t really know much about photography. I just knew you take a picture with a camera, but I never really cared about lighting or contrast. So I will continue taking pictures and I’ll keep in mind how little things like lighting, contrast, and even angle of the picture can make the picture look even more interesting.

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz has always had a passion for photography. The summer after her sophomore year at the San Fransisco Art institute, she traveled to Japan with her mother, where she discovered her passion for photography. Since the 1970's, Annie has photographed many musicians, actors, and writers. She has photographed people like John Lennon, Whoopi Goldberg, Demi Moore, Johnny Depp and many other people. She began to work for Rolling Stone Magazine, by taking pictures for the cover. Later she began taking pictures for Vogue.

In 1989, Annie met Susan Sontag, author of the book "AIDS and its Metaphors. Annie and Susan became close friends and Annie would shoot pictures of Susan. One particular thing Annie liked about taking pictures of Susan, was that she knew how to work her body in each picture. They stayed close friends til the death of Susan in late 2004.

Here are some of Annie Leibovitz photos:

I personally love this picture because it's really cute how the kid is kissing Angelina Jolie on the forhead. It looks like a normal everyday life thing captured on film. They look like they're having fun and enjoying themselves as the photo was taken.

I also like this picture because the color of the dress goes with the background of the picture, and there's fog in the air. The girl looks like shes running from something, and the mood in the picture is peaceful but you get the feeling that there's tension. Because there's a reason she's running. If you're familiar with the farytale Cinderella you would automatically know that this picture was taken of Cinderella. You can see the glass slipper left behind bad he castle in the background, where she is running from.

On my way to school I noticed how beautiful the sky looked. I decided that I would take a picture with the sun rise over the water. Later when I got to my Media Arts class I was told we were starting typography (the art of working with words and pictures). I chose the poem "Out-Of-The-Body Travel" by Luis Jenkins. It seemed that if I could place part of the poem on the picture to make it look like words were flying over the river, the poem would go great with the picture.