So basically what I did here is turn my sister into something she’s not. It stemmed from a couple of my stressors- the pressure to be a certain type of person to satisfy everyone around me, and my little sister growing up. My little sister is an average kid. She plays soccer, lacrosse, and everything that is the opposite of this picture. She’s definitely not coordinated like a ballet dancer, that’s for sure! But she, just as I used to and sometimes still do, feels the pressure of trying to impress the people around her and live up to what people expect of her, and I think that’s what you can see in these pictures. Watching her grow up so incredibly quickly is surreal, but definitely extraordinary. I think the before and after pictures say it all. The girl on the left is a smart, athletic, fun little girl, and the girl on the right is a poised, classy, perfectionist at such a young age. This particular visual assignment definitely made me think a little deeper about my reasons for doing this because, honestly, I didn’t even mean for the picture to turn out this way in the beginning.

My process: I started out trying to focus on what I could do to make my sister “extraordinary” and just plain different, and that what I came up with after sort of freestyling it as I went along. It took quite a bit of time… and make-up. I didn’t need to use any programs to enhance the second photo. I used the basic Windows Photo Gallery to warm up the color temperature, increase the saturation and contrast, and mess with the brightness of her face. After I did all of that it kind of screwed up the pixelation in the picture, but it still gets my point across. Either way, who knew you could do so much with so little??