Photography by Grace McDaniel ’24
Photography by Grace McDaniel ’24
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- Spark
Photography by Grace McDaniel ’24
Ravenscroft Communications
The Ravenscroft senior — winner of a Gold Key in the 2024 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards — shares her favorite pieces from her award-winning portfolio.
Ravenscroft senior Grace McDaniel ’24 was recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards with a prestigious Gold Key for her portfolio “Movere.” She also won a Silver Key and an Honorable Mention.
Here, she shares some of her favorite pieces from her award-winning portfolio.
“Allegro,” Digital Photography
This piece captures my sister’s movement as she dances in front of a cement wall in my yard. I used a slow shutter speed to create streams of light from her body that show where she has been in space. I edited this image to be black-and-white because it allows the range of value and ghost-like feel of the photograph to come through.
“Horizon,” Digital Photography
Believe it or not, this is actually a photograph of the stream of water from my bathroom sink that I took with a macro lens. I wanted to depict water moving in a way that it is not usually seen: horizontally. I edited the image to be black-and-white and rotated it to contribute to the transformation of the water and abstract feel that I desired.
“Reflections,” Digital Photography
Through this image of a finger in a small puddle, I was able to create balance and contrast. This photograph was taken with a macro lens because the shallow depth of field it creates draws the eye to the point where the fingertip touches the water and then to the reflection. I like how the reflection produces interesting shapes in the photograph.
“Splatter,” Chemigram
Unlike the digital photographs in this portfolio, this piece was created without a camera. I made this piece in the darkroom with expired positive photo paper, developer and fixer. I repeatedly dipped the paper in developer and fixer and exposed it to light to create layers of drips. The experimental quality of this piece made it very exciting to create because I had no idea how it was going to turn out.
About Grace McDaniel ’24
I’ve taken art at Ravenscroft since I started here in the sixth grade, and I plan to continue to pursue art in some form in college. This year, I am taking AP Art and AP Photography. This story highlights four of my photographic works that are part of a larger portfolio that I compiled for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. This portfolio explores movement through water, dance and even darkroom chemicals. I stuck to mainly black-and-white works for this portfolio because I like how the black-and-white editing style highlights the range of value and contrast apparent in my work. In this portfolio, I worked to transform subjects by depicting them in a way they are not usually seen, which produces images that have an abstract quality that I enjoy.