My surrealistic self portrait is a photo of me at our school. I am half-sitting on a rail in the fire lane area. I chose this spot because it is where I first met some of my best friends. I met them my Freshman and Sophomore year. Without my friends I would just be another guy that plays water polo. These people changed me for the better; not only in the way I act and talk, but more importantly the way that I look at life and all it has to offer. I used to have a rather pessimistic outlook on life. However, when I met the water polo guys, my outlook on life completely flipped. I now have a rather optimistic outlook on life and to me that is very important. I can’t give only the water polo guys all the credit however. My family and best friend Dylan Tyler Cooksley also helped me to turn my life around. As a freshman I was not a very happy person for a while. I got into smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol not even necessarily at parties or with friends. I got so deep into a pit of self-loathing that I smoked and drank at any given opportunity. I was very unhappy and to simple-minded Freshman Jared those two things were the only ways to help myself. I am not proud of my mindset and what I did my Freshman year. That was a very dark part of my life and I don’t like to look back and think about it. I depicted my dark past in my photo by lowering the exposure to my left drastically in the app snapseed. This portion of the photo means a lot to me because my head is turned away from the darkness of my past showing that I will not let it take me over any more.
The lighter portion of the photo on the right side shows the brightness that could and hopefully will be my future. I chose to raise the exposure on the right side to show that as long as I stay focused on my priority and don’t look back to and repeat the dark part of my Freshman. Water polo has shown me to work hard, stay focused, and has taught me discipline. I am very grateful for the opportunities that I have been given in life not only through water polo but through life in general. I have been truly blessed to live the life that I live and although it may not seem like it in person, this is my mindset 90% of the day. I don’t tend to reflect this mindset when I’m out in public because it’s not something that I would like to be made fun of or judged for. In the past I was bullied for numerous things: the clothes I wore, my parents’ jobs, the way I talked, and even my religious background. I was made fun of for these things in middle school and they partly carried over into Freshman year until I met the water polo guys. They changed my life and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. Lastly I chose to add a double exposure effect to my picture with a pool being the foreground and the photo of me being the background. I chose to do this because once again it shows the importance of water polo in my life. I don’t know if I would be where I am today without water polo and without what I learned from it. The pool that I took the foreground picture of was at the wave. The wave is another very important place in my life. The wave is important to me because it is where we practice and hold our home games for water polo. I have made some of my best and worst memories at the wave with my water polo friends. I know I sound like a broken record talking about water polo and the friends that I made during it, but when you go from the position I was in, to the position I’m in now, it is understandable why they have become such a major part of my life and why I would want to talk about them so much. Only time will tell where water polo and what comes along with it will take me in life. But if I put my head down, work hard and focus on the priorities and bright side of life, I think I’ll do just fine. Effects/Tools Used: Snapseed:
Pixlr:
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AuthorMy name is Jared Dowdy, I am relatively new to photography and am eager to share my experiences with the world. Archives
June 2017
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