This is definitely my most popular/winning/infamous photograph yet. Although that's really not saying much...I only had my camera for a year when I took this.
This was taken when my friends and I were making a mini-movie in my living room. My two friends, Emily and Juliana, wanted to do a dance scene from the Labrinth (I haven't seen it). Anyway, my friend Emily somehow thought it logical to cover Juliana's face (she's dark skinned) with white costume make-up to make her resemble David Bowie better. Well, Juliana ended up looking like an extremely wacked out 80s-kiss-rocker-freaky clown thing, and that's when we noticed it.
Juliana said her reflection looked creepy in Emily's eye, who was doing Juliana's 'makeup' at the time. So I went and grabbed my camera and took a close up of her eye. It turned out pretty well and gave a creepy vibe.
About this time, My art teacher Mr.D told us about an art contest called the PTA Reflections program. I wasn't extremely psyched about it, but we had to do a painting for it for a grade. He said we didn't have to turn in the painting for the contest, but we had to turn in something. This turned out to be a good thing because it was my first time doing a painting and I found out that I--really suck. Needless to say, I turned in photographs instead, 3 actually. On of a Blue Rose, one of a Ladybug, and one with The Eye. The theme for the contest was "I wonder Why." So, very quickly on the day it was due, I scrambled to get them on boards and get them names. This one I titled 'I wonder why we have inner demons?' Then I sent them off on a whim.
A few weeks later they announced that I and another student had one awards from our school. I won awards for all three, my Ladybug one scoring the highest. This winning felt bogus though, cuz not that many people enetered. Then a month later, I was told that two of my photos, the Ladybug and the Eye had moved onto the District level. This was better, but when I went to view the district winners, I saw that most of them were little kid entries, music, paintings, writing, and photography. The contest was for k-12 grades divided by age groups, and I was in 12th, so it didn't feel like there was much competition. It was kind of funny though...This lady came up to me and said how much she loved the eyed one and was so happy for me...and then she started crying. I didn't know what to do, I just slowly backed away from her with a fake grin as I said 'Thanks.' It was a funny scene.
Then a couple months later my priciple visited our art room to look around. I pretended to work and then she walked right up to me, told me congratulations, and shook my hand.I said thanks, but was thinking, 'what the hell I got a district award months ago'. Then other people started walking up to me and congratulating me out of nowhere. I was really confused and wondered if there was a sign on my back or something. I finally asked my art teacher what they were congratulating me for and he said I had won the State award of excellence for my age division. I was happier about this one because it said on a n email they sent my art teacher (not me though!) that 61,800 students in California had enetered the contest! I was psyched about this, but then I felt guilty b/c I just sent it out on a whim, not really putting specific effort for this contest.
The cool part about winning state was that they fly you down to the State PTA to accept your award. They even paid for our stay at the Hilton! I thought teachers were poor?! Anyway, I was definitely the tallest and oldest one on stage, which is pretty sad cuz I'm only 5'3''. After all us student winners (there were about 12) had done and shown all their pieces and given us awards, they told certain people(myself included) to wait backstage after we got our metals. Then they called us back on stage, built up the suspense a litte, and announced that we were national winners! That was cool. I only won the awar of merit for my age division, but I'm still very happy.
Anyways, that's it. Always enter contests, that's the moral!
Great story about a great photo. Don't feel guilty; my current high scoring entry took me about 10 minutes to take and maybe 2 hours to process. It took your innate talent to frame and take the shot; it's not all about long times spent setting it up.
Thats an awesome story, I like the inner demon foto, Have you done other processed versions of this. Keep shooting with the edge, Yiu have a good eye for in(sorry for the Pun)
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