Beyond: A Senior Black + White High Dynamic Range Diptych by Jacqueline Conn (2016)

On the left side, I have an image of my dog and on the right side, I have a picture of a beautifully cloudy sky. The story I am showing in this piece is that there is always something more to everything in life. There is always another side. I chose these two photos because dogs sometimes bark at nothing, or things that humans are too close minded to see. They use all of their senses to really explore their surroundings and life in general while the majority of us humans tend to depend primarily on our sense of sight to get through life. I chose to take a picture of my dog because, as I explained, dogs use more of themselves to understand more about their surroundings and life. I chose to place this with a picture of clouds because, to many of us, this seems like a normal, everyday thing. Sure the sky is pretty, but we just see a sky. However, there could be so much that we don’t see, or are too close minded to see.

I had to first plan out what I wanted to photograph and how it would relate to the story I wanted to tell. It took me a lot of time and thought to really figure out a way to show the story that I wanted to portray, but once I figured that part out, it was pretty easy. However, dogs are very energetic, fidgety animals, at least my dog is. So it was difficult getting my dog to stay in the (relatively) same position for the amount of time it took me to take an HDR photo, which takes differently contrasted photos and puts them together to form a very interesting photo. I also had to change the S-curve of the contrast in my photo many times to get it to my liking. Other than that, it was a pretty easy assignment that was fun to do and I’m pretty happy with my finished piece.