Born in Arlington, Virginia on October 8, 1990, Sarah DiNardo is a student at Washington-Lee High School. She is a junior in the class of 2009. Her education background of photography consists of one full year of photo and she is continuing her second year of photo this year at Washington-Lee High School. She has always been interested in taking photographs but her skills were not developed until last year in photo one. She is now learning more about digital photography in photo two. She has a very open mindset when it comes to taking pictures. Her ideas develop when the instructor gives the class a project to complete. Sarah thinks about what would be interesting and compelling to shoot. She tries to take the project the instructor gives and then add her own details to it and make it more creative. Through her first year of photo Sarah progressed from just wanting to take pictures to thinking about would be artistically compelling to shoot and interesting for the viewer to look at. Sarah is motivated to take photos because she wants to express her interests and her point of view to the audience that is looking and the photographs. Another reason Sarah takes these pictures is so that she can learn more about how to shoot film and others can critique her work to help he become a better photographer.
She takes picture using a 35 mm SLR camera with 400 speed T-Max black and white film. She develops film by hand and prints her photos by using Photoshop Elements on E-Mac computers at Washington-Lee. She creates contact sheets using Photoshop elements. She uses an Epson printer to print her contact sheets and pictures. She has also just purchased a Cannon Rebel XTI digital camera. She uses a tripod occasionally when taking formal portraits and panoramic pictures. The pictures Sarah takes reflect her personal life because she takes pictures of the pool and picture of Washington- Lee. She takes these pictures because she loves to swim and she is a student at Washington-Lee and she wants to show the audience who she is and what she finds important. She also takes pictures of the environment she lives, due to the fact that she lives in Washington, DC she takes pictures in the city to show her hometown.
There are many artists that inspire her artwork. She is a fan of Ansel Adams because of his use of great depth of field in his nature scenes. Sarah likes taking pictures with great depth of field because when you look a beautiful landscape you want everything to be in focus. She also likes the work of David Baily who was a portrait photographer in the 1960’s. David Baily took pictures of famous singers and models in Britain. She also enjoys looking at abstract artwork that has bright colors. Annie Leibowitz is another famous portrait photographer who inspires some of the photos Sarah takes. Sarah went to the Annie Leibowitz exhibit at the Corcoran museum in D.C. in December, 2007. This show has influenced Sarah because she now wants to take formal portraits of people.
Sarah DiNardo has changed as a photographer in the past year because she has made mistakes, learned from her mistakes and has experienced what it is like to be a photographer first hand. She has learned a lot because her teacher gave her lots of direction in the beginning of the year and then let the class take those skills and apply them to real life situations. Sarah has enjoyed the experience of taking photography one and hopes to keep taking photographs through out her life. Now that Sarah is in photo two she is learning more about the digital aspect of photography. She has learned how to create digital images through the use of Photoshop Elements. She is still developing her skills of using a camera especially the new digital camera.
