Everyone remembers school portraits. Those days at school when we spent way too much time getting ready in the morning, when there was no saving that awkward haircut. And the photographers would always try to get the perfect angle by asking us to turn our head like we had the goose-neck abilities of a desk lamp. As a photographer, I feared that my subjects wouldn't like the way they were portrayed in my art. Like with anything, however, a little practice was able to bring me a long way from my original fears.

As someone who began drawing at a young age, I always stayed away from portraits because I hated my inability to accurately draw the right proportions and shading. Photography, however, gave me an opportunity to do so. I was able to be the obnoxious photographer telling my subject to tilt their head every which-way in order to get the best picture. With this sense of freedom, portraits have now become one of my favorite types of photography.

This picture literally illustrates the freedom that a camera and technology have given me. I was able to blend in my love of other media by painting the face of my subject and the wall around her, as well as incorporate other pieces of nature to further transform her, while staying true to photographing her as a person. If this were a drawing, then I can promise that each quarter would have differed in more ways than colors. I'm horrible at portraits with a pencil or paintbrush in hand, but I have come to love portraits through photography.

Through my high school photography years, I was able to see how portraits had the potential to be so much more than just school pictures. So many artists use this sense of mixed media in their photography, and I have a deeper, more personal appreciation for it. Photography has helped me successfully create portraits, just when I thought it was impossible for me to do so.