F●R●I●E●N●D●S

Lucas Gray, Contributor

Three friends recreating Abbey Road on a busy NYC night
Two friends in a field during Fall in upstate New York
Two friends sharing a moment outside of their school
Spider-Man and his friend having fun swinging around NYC

Throughout almost everyone’s life, they have a friend. Throughout my life, I have made many friends and I have kept friends that over a long period. In my experience with friendship, I have seen the way it can impact one’s life. The way that friendship has impacted me and benefited me is at a high level. I have grown up with friends all around me and this has made me a better person. Living in NYC allows people to make new friends all the time, due to the tight community. As a New Yorker, I moved to a new school after elementary school, middle school, and high school. This change in schools has allowed me to adapt to new environments a lot and get used to making new friends. This ability allows me and other fellow New Yorkers to feel as if they can open up more easily. The human connection that develops between friends over time allows them to open up with each other. This openness causes emotions to show their “true form” and become very truthful. Emotion is another way for people to connect, so when friends share an emotion and it’s displayed it allows for a whole different view on the emotion itself. So when I attempted to capture these emotions it brought a different type of photo. These photos capture emotions in a sense that brings them out more than one would think.

In these photos, I was trying to capture whatever emotion the people in the photo were displaying. The essence of friendship and how it can impact the way one displays emotion. I captured them by taking multiple photos or getting people to take multiple photos of friends sharing a moment and displaying emotion. I think that by doing this I had a large selection of what photos brought out the best emotion. I was aiming to get photos of friends but that also fit the weeks’ themes. I was hoping to get the casual photo, that seems the most authentic. I chose these images to represent my work because I personally felt as if they captured the theme I was going for. The way they resemble how emotion shows their “true self” when with friends. For these photos, I was either the photographer or the one being photographed. When taking these photos I was acting casually with my friends. Other than in the superhero photo which was obviously posed to make the point of a superhero with his friend. I was trying my best to just act naturally to get the best, most real photo. Depended on the photo but three out of the four were taken during the day to capture the light on the photo. For example when I used the bright lights in the dark for the Abbey Road it shines light on the photo which adds a cheerful night in the city emotion. But for like the photo in the field, it shines light on the people and the whole area which really adds to the happiness. These photos all had inspirations that came with them, but there was one main one. That inspiration was my friends and my experience with them. The way that my friends have impacted me in my life has changed me to be a better person. I wanted to show how that happens when friends are together just in a photograph. When I think about these photos  I think about what was going on that day and what led to taking the photo. Like with the Abbey Road recreation photo I remember figuring out where in NYC I would decide to take the photo. I was debating on whether people other than us three should be in the photo or not. When thinking about what the reader should feel about my photos I think that I would like the viewer to try to put together a scene in their head of what was going on. Like what led to the photo being taken. I think that gives the viewer an easier understanding of what the photos should display. Throughout the photos, my goal was to express different emotions that friends are sharing together. After reflecting, I think that after editing them they all came out very good. I think I did exactly what I intended to do with these photos and I’m happy. I was surprised by how different they all are but yet they can all be tied around one theme. I think that was very important when creating the scene.