Jeremy Baker (Photographer, assignment #2)

The person I chose to do this assignment on is my high school photography and art teacher. His name is Jeremy Baker and he is thirty four years old. He was born in Myrtle Beach, SC and he moved to Independence Missouri when he was about five. Today he lives in Blue Springs Missouri and teaches art and photography at Blue Springs South High School. He is married and has two beautiful little boys.

Jeremy’s interest in photography began when he was in high school. He took a basic level photography class and did very well, so he decided to explorer further into the world of photography. He likes to take picture of everything so it was difficult for him to pick just one kind of photography that is his favorite. His boys are two of his favorite subjects though, so portraits are one kind of photography he does and does well. He told me a story about another kind of photography he likes to do as well. Every once in a while he will take someone’s senior portraits and if they are outside or anywhere and Jeremy finds something that catches his attention, the senior pictures get put on hold and he goes off and takes pictures of nature or any other number of things he happens to see.

Before I talk about the picture he took I’m going to share a little background of the picture and why Jeremy decided to take it and what the picture means to him. The image is of his son Kylan. He took it when he and his family were on vacation at a beach in North Carolina. Jeremy grew up around the beach every summer, so the ocean was nothing new to him, but for his sons, it was the first time they had ever seen the ocean. He told me that his entire family went to the beach one day and Kylan just walked into the water and felt it. It was a very solemn moment. Jeremy took the shot and later did some edits on Photoshop. He took the color out of the ocean and left it in the child. To Jeremy, the picture represents the curiosity of a child, their ability to soak-in their surroundings, and basically the life created and sustained by the ocean.

In this photo, the first place my eye moves to is the child. With mostly the water in the picture the eye automatically focuses on the main place of interest, or the place where there is the most going on, and in this picture it is the child feeling the ocean water. This photo is very expressive to me. The little curious child is feeling the water and touching for the first time something that is so much bigger then him. To me, it represents the innocence and curiosity of a child, which is a very expressive meaning.

This picture is not only a portrait, but a landscape as well. The ocean makes some nice organic shapes in the picture but is has representational shapes as well (I.E. the child). The areas that are the sharpest and stand out the most is the child in the water, where the water is all flowing together and not really standing out as much as the child.

There are definitely shadows in the water and also in the wave that is coming up in the distance. The natural light in the photo provides us with the information that it was day time when the picture was taken. There is also a very soft light to the picture, perhaps the kind of light that would appear just after a rain storm. There are also a lot of evident lines in the picture as well. The most prominent one is that of the ocean line meeting with the sky. It is a very thick, straight line and it doesn’t interfere with the subject of the photo which makes the line even more noticeable. There are also many lines in the ocean water itself which creates the illusion of the ocean moving towards the camera.

There is a lot of depth in the picture. You can clearly see that the sky is very far away behind the child, who is close up to the camera. The flowing ocean water creates the effect of depth in the picture. The texture of the water is also very prominent in this picture. If someone were to feel the picture they would feel water and the bubbles on the surface of it. The picture also has a lot of color value. There are very clear lights and darks in the picture. The lightest values are the bubbles in the water and the sky, and the darkest values are the wave coming up on the right side and the child’s shorts.

Overall, this is a great picture because it has great composition, lines, and value, as well as meaning. This picture can be interpreted many different ways but any way you look at it, it is still a beautiful picture of a small child feeling the big ocean, for the first time.