Story Behind the Shot

Welcome to our newest addition to Teen Photo, the “Story Behind the Shot”. We’ll frequently feature a new photography with an interesting process or procedure in taking it.

Today’s photographer is 16 year old Vanz Essa from the US! She’ll  be giving a little info about herself, and then giving us the story behind one of her most striking, and interesting photos.

So, tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m Vanz Essa, a 16 year old self-taught photographer from the US. Being a self-taught photographer has it struggles but I’m truly passionate about photography.. Besides portraits, and surreal photos, I have always been fascinated by stop-motion photography. The fact you can capture an action so fast that our eyes can’t see makes it almost magical when you see the final photo.

How did you take “Brain Overload”? Walk us through what you were thinking when you took the shot.

To create this photo it was quite simple. All I had to do was set-up the location, including a tripod and moving my mom’s furniture around. I used an empty spot in the backyard so the green leaves would complement the brownish and red owl mug. While I was setting up this little photo taking area and moving the table (the one in the photo) into the empty backyard space I realized the leaves I was throwing away and considering trash would actually intensify the colors in the photo. Of course, this type of photo consists of trial and error, I set up my cameras self-timer to 8 photos each take and used an aperture of f/1.4 in the AV setting. In which that time I would throw a chunk of clay into the mug, hoping that in one of the photos the clay would actually fall into the mug and the perfect splash could be caught. So after taking millions of photos of a flying piece of clay finally this came out! The title of this photo is BRAIN OVERLOAD because with the way the splash is positioned, it looks like the owls head is exploding!

Thanks Vanz! Keep up the great work!

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Email Ed Borsteine at <edborstein@yahoo.com> or justin@teenagephotographer.com

Ed Borstein

I've loved art, specifically photography my whole life. I try to showcase the small details of things that might be overlooked, or not fully appreciated in the rush of a day. I hope my photos will encourage people to stop and enjoy the beauty of the world that is around them.

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