by David Miller
I guess you could say I'm more of a creative, artist person. I'm excited, scared, happy, and sad all at the same time thinking about college. It's something completely different and I'm not quite sure I'm ready to leave my parents and my cats, but I think I'll be OK once I get to Band Camp and see all the crazy nerds just like me.
Sarah Stetz just graduated from Loveland High School, and she is heading this summer to be a Falcon at Bowling Green State University. You have seen her art on the recent cover of Loveland Magazine. It is part of a high school photo project she titled, “Seven Deadly Sins.” The cover photo is titled, Lust.
Stetz said she liked doing the personal project because she had freedom to do whatever she wanted. A couple of things inspired her to do the Seven Deadly Sins. One of them was the song "Seven Deadly Sins" by Flogging Molly, which Kessler introduced her to. She said another reason was that, “I thought it would pretty cool to take pictures of - to put my own personal twist on a famous piece of the Bible. It seemed like an interesting thing to do.” She said that there wasn't much of a theme to the project other than that they all shared the title of a sin. “I just did whatever popped into my head at the time. I try not to plan out photography, because then it just isn't me.”For Lust Gretchen Kessler put a lot of jewelry on and then when we were about to take the photos, she said "Can I use this!?" and she held up a random peacock feather. And so I said "Sure, what the heck" thinking it would make for an interesting photo. We took the photos on a white wall to make her stand out as much as possible. Now looking back on it, I'm really glad we used that feather because I love old fashion stuff. For the editing, I used the filter sumi, then used vignette to make the picture have a round feel, and then change the color balance to make her eyes and the shadows seem darker. Lust is probably my favorite photo.
Stetz said her senior year was her favorite because she was the Drum Major for the marching band. “I gained so many friends and respect, I learned so much about myself, and I realized that I love photography and I want to pursue it in college.” Her favorite teachers in high school were Julie Powers, her pre calculus, and calculus teacher, and James Barrett, her photography teacher. “I got along great with both of them and I couldn't help but have fun in all of their classes.”For Envy I had the subject be Gretchen Kessler and her little sister Molly. I moved around the room a lot for this one. Gretchen was great to work with. She's a great actor, so she moved around a lot and gave a lot of different expressions, which, to be honest, made my job a little easier. For this one, editing wise, I made the edges darker by using vignette, I changed the color balance, and then I went to sepia tone and changed the color and the opacity. And I also patched the rug a little because there was stuff lying around and I wanted it to look a little more clean (remember that I'm an organized person).
Stetz will attend band camp at Bowling Green this summer, and said she is uncertain about her college major because there are so many things she wants to study and learn. “Though I'm leaning more towards journalism, I still want to learn about photography and graphic design.For Gluttony the subject was Hannah Trate. Basically, we rummaged through my cabinets and just put a whole bunch of food on the table. I was in the middle of sitting down at the other end of the table when I noticed she was making a weird face, so I quickly took the photo, and then we went on from there. But the funny thing is that I ended up using that first photo as my final. I think the colors blended really well, so I didn't do much to change it. I made the colors a little darker using color balance, then put the vignette on the edges.
For Greed the subject was Gretchen Kessler. When I went over to her house, I told her I wanted her to be Greed, so we just dumped all her change on the floor of her room, which was luckily green. Once again for this one, I moved around a lot. The one I choose was one of the last ones I took. I wasn't sure if I had gotten a good one because I didn't take that many and some of the money was blurry because she was moving it around in her hands. But thankfully I got this one so we didn't have to do it again. For editing, I used vignette and used sepia tone. For sepia tone, I choose a dark green and actually had the opacity up pretty high.
Stetz likes photography because it's something completely original. “It's me. It's you,” she said. “It's something that can define a person, and can show a lot about them while simply looking at a photograph.” She doesn't really have a photo routine because she’s a spontaneous person and so her photos are pretty random. She takes her camera everywhere she goes, and takes pictures of everything she sees. When she gets home she usually has 100 new photos in her camera. She sits down at her computer and goes through each one and picks out the ones she likes and the ones she wants to save. She’s a really organized person, and likes having a clean memory card. Stetz said, “With the ones I like, I mess around with them on Photoshop.” Her favorite thing to do in Photoshop is “play” with lens flares and sepia tones. She loves the old fashion look of photos.
For Pride the subject was me. To be honest, I was getting really close to the due date and I hadn't been able to get a hold of anyone to do another photo shoot. So I set up the tripod and went over to my horseback riding ribbons and started taking photos. This one is my least favorite because it just doesn't fit the flow of the rest of the photos, in my opinion. For editing, I used sepia tone and used a brown, then turned the opacity up really high, and then I used the posterize filter.
Stetz said she received a Nikon D5000 camera for graduation. Her favorite setting is Macro. “I take so many pictures in the macro setting. And I don't just use it for flowers.” She said she uses the setting for pretty much everything. Also, she adds this “little fun, nerdy fact” about herself. She names everything. Her car's name is Maverick. Her cell phone's name is Alphonse, and so naturally,she named her new camera. Its name is Jim.
For Sloth the subject was Gretchen again. This is another one of my favorites. The whole point of this photo was to have her floating in mid-air right above the bed, but I never took a single photo of the bed by itself so I could crop her into it. So, I just had to stick with her being on the bed. If I could change one thing about this photo, it would be to go back in time and tell Gretchen to relax her feet a little bit more. But oh well, it came out as a good photo. For editing, I used vignette, then changed the color balance, and then set the sepia tone to a light green.
For the Seven Deadly Sins Project, she used her mom's Nikon D90. She didn't have Jim at the time. She used a couple of different settings while shooting this project; auto, portrait, and macro. “I couldn't tell you what each photo's settings were because I just changed it after I took a few photos.” Most of the photos were taken with the macro mode however, because she just leaves the camera on that setting. The photos were taken either at Kessler's house, or her own. Though Kessler was the main subject for the photos, there was also Hannah Trate, Molly Kessler and self portraits.
For Wrath the subject was Hannah Trate, and I was at a loss. This was the hardest one to shoot because I couldn't really come up with anything. When I asked her to just give me an angry face to see what it would look like, we both just ended up laughing. So I decided we had to think of something else other than just a straight on shot of her being angry. So we just ended up going outside to see if anything was motivational, and I just randomly thought of chalk, so that's what I used. For editing, I used vignette and a sepia tone of a dark blue.

























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