The eye of the beholder.

      These are five self-portraits I created for my Elements of Fine Art Photography class at RIT. I tried to make them distinct from one another, since it's difficult to keep interest in the same subject over and over. I'll give a brief description of my thought process for each one, but interpret them as you wish. 

This is the first one I created. It signifies the mental and emotional stress I endure every day when I think about how much I miss my mom (that's her picture in the locket). Sometimes I feel blinded and strangled by this invisible daily battle.

This is the second image I created. This one and the next one go together in a sense, but  their meanings are different enough to keep separate. This portrait focuses on my hair--Nearly every day, a stranger stops to tell me how much they love my hair style. It's happened so much that I feel like my shaved sides and feathery front are what almost define who I am.

Number three: captured in the same style as the previous one, but holds a different meaning all together. This time I focused on what is just beneath my defining hair--it's what constructs every girl's sense of worth and self-esteem at some point in her life. I captured my curves. I love them. I have a very positive self-image; I wouldn't change a thing about myself. 

#4: I am an odd human being. Take this as you wish.

This is the last, and to me, the most compelling self-portrait of the five. I applied makeup to only half of my face and then photographed my whole face and only manipulated and "fixed" the side, which had makeup. This is all one photograph, and the right side of the image is completely un-edited. I wanted this to serve as a wake-up call to those who see beautiful faces in magazines and think all of that magic is just expensive makeup and complex lighting. There is a lot of post-processing involved in the glamour shots we see every day--I altered the arch of my eyebrow, plumped my lips, lengthened my eyelashes, and even changed my eye shape.
. . . Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.