Artist Statement
The first set of portraits is of my dog, Bremen. My family got her 7 years ago from an animal rescue when she was a puppy. She is very playful and energetic, and always wants to play with me when I get home from school. She means a lot to me because she always brightens my day when I get home. The environment where I took the photos is my backyard. I arranged the photo by taking them off my deck while she was sitting in the grass to get a slightly overhead photo, and used a selective focus to blur the background and put emphasis on Bremen, and not the background. I faced a lot of challenges when taking these portraits because my dog was jumping all around and she would not look where I wanted her to. I got a lot of blurry photos before I got a treat for her to look at while I took the picture. In the color portrait, I held the treat right next to my camera to have formal balance. When I took the black and white portrait, my sister held the treat to the side to give it a sense of depth.