Project #2, Portrait.

For this second assignment we were to take portrait photos. Since I was little I was always so skeptical about the term 'portrait' because the cliche definition of portrait revolves around sitting in a studio, big flashy lights, with a photographer telling you to move your chin slightly to the left, not too much though. Taking photography in high school, it was the same thing: when we worked on portraiture, we went to a studio and were taught how to light and set up the set. I was horrible at it. I didn't like to do it. So from then on when I heard 'portrait' it quite honestly scared me because I knew I disliked them so much. 

Portraits are so much more than sitting in a studio taking yearbook pictures though. Portraits do not have to be set up in a studio, but can be captured anywhere, anytime. They can be candid, facial, whole body, one person or many, animals, anything your mind can think of. The photographs I chose for this project involve different types of portrait. 

The first, a non-traditional portrait of a whole scene and event. Instead of just including the 'main' person, the scene shows who is involved. 

The second, a self-potrait. This image I decided to include because I saw an emotion in me that I didn't realize that I had right then. It just reminded me how a moment captured in a split second can show so much. 

The third I chose because this takes portrait completely out of the box. I don't like that idea that the cliche portrait idea is of strictly people and so this captures Charlie in such an almost anthropomorphic way. He has his blanket, just waken up, groggy "let me go back to sleep" look...it is just intriguing. 

Community Based Classroom

This class, though a class, is much more different than the traditional "classroom" setting that most of us are used to. I am going to be honest right now, I am in a class writing this blog. (multi-tasking!) My role as a student is to listen to the professor, what he has to say as well as what the other students have to say. We ask questions based on the material we have read or have heard lectured and expect to learn from those given things.
What makes this community-based class so unique is the fact that I play more than one role. I am a student yes, an observer, a listener. Each class period we learn from the 'head instructor' (i.e. Dawn!) but there is so much more than that. We go in to work with our clients and it is our duty to interact with these people and learn what types of interactions work for them particularly. They interact differently than you are I might interact with each other with words and complex phrases. To speak to them it is my responsibility to learn how my client is going to react to simple phrases and hand motions, more visual clues than words, and to learn what works best for my client.
But I am also an instructor, someone who is being observed. In this experience we are working with clients who need our help, friendship really. I go into each class period expecting to be able to act in such a way that the person that I am working with is going to have a reaction that is speaking against the 'disability' that they obtained. My client in particular struggles with left-side neglect (not noticing or paying attention to things in his left field of vision) so my goal is to get the client to react to me when I am on his left side. Especially in this course, it is my role to help the client understand the importance of the photograph. It's what this course revolves around and I truly want my client to be able to see how much he can express with one picture or five or ten!
In this setting, I am a teacher. I am a student. Both in one.
We also have the Rollins instructors as well as UCF who are able to help us throughout this semester being able to work with and better understand why our clients have the certain disabilities that they have, as well as helping us recognize when improvements are being made.

Hope.

This is what was happening on the Rollins Campus today. Change This World, non profit organization based out of right here in Orlando with a heart for serving. Right now, partnered with Kids Against Hunger they have been able to send over 500,000 meals to Haiti for earthquake relief to feed those who are malnourished. With their recent goal of feeding the hungry, it was brought to Rollins and were able to package 5,000 meals with the help of fellow students and volunteers. 

I only write this on the blog for this sake: This is the reason I am doing this class also. The people in Haiti have a certain need. They are in a place of hopelessness and it has been a goal to bring them hope. This class is working with people who struggle with their voice (though it can be somewhat literal in this case, I mean this metaphorically). They are not so different in my heart-These people that we are working with have had something stolen from them, though globally it's not as catastrophic as an earthquake, to them it is life. I want them to see a hope that may not have been able to be seen before. I want to bring a light into their life. Even outside of the client I am working with, I have seen during group discussions the frustration on some of the other client's faces and it hurts me every single time. But I want them to know that we, as a class, are there to bring them hope and to SHOW them the power that a single image can have. I want them to know how much more powerful it is when they are the one to take a picture and I want them to be excited because so many things are able to be expressed with what they have captured.