west side storyiowa city west high school 2901 melrose ave. iowa city, ia 52246 wsspaper.com volume 1 issue 1 Februarary 2016

small and mighty photos by samalya thenuwara

2 FEBRUARY 2016

small and mighty

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photos by samalya thenuwara

pages 4-5: framingPages 6-11: Shutter speed and AperturePages 12-13: Portraiturepages 14-15: LinesPages 16-18: LightPages 20-22: Perspectivepages 24-26: free form

FEB3

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Below: I was sneaking around the orchestra cupboards. (hoping not to be caught by Mr. Thelander), when I found these two cellos. They were screaming to have their picture taken. This is Thunder Thenuwara, en-dearingly called Thunthun. Thunthun was minding her own business on the windowsill until I showed up and decided to accost her with my cam-era. The result is that she got annoyed and started to walk away; however, I did manage to snag this picture before she left.

FRAMING

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Above: The LP spinning on this vinyl is from a Reader’s Digest collection of cocktail music. It’s definitely a favourite - best Goodwill bye ever! I de-cided to make this picture black and white as a form of tribute to my vinyl player’s vintage vibe. Right: This is the American flag that stands tall in front of West High School. It was pretty windy that day so the flag was flapping about quite a lot.

SHUTTERSPEED

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Left: This is my cat Rain Thenuwara. I have no idea why she looks so freaked out…Above: The black cat is Thunder and the gray one is Rain. I took the picture from behind Thunder’s head so I could show how Thunder was looking at her sister.

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APERTURE

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Left: This is probably the strangest and most disturbing picture I have tak-en yet. I put the figurine so that it looked like it was battling my cat. My intention was to make my cat the villian so that the little figurine looked like it was defending itself. However, it ended up looking like the figurine had an evil little vendetta against my cat. Above: This is a mother-cat-and-baby-cat statue that we have in front of my house. It’s been snowed, rained, hailed, and sunned on and now it just looks creepy. I took the picture so that the mother was infocus and the little baby cat would be looking up at her.

APERTUREcontinued FEBRUARY 2016 11

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Above and Right: This is Haejoo Yoon’18. I would love to say that these pictures represent the complex relationship between one’s inner humor-ousness (represented by the clown head) and one’s serious self (repre-sented by Yoon). Sadly, I can’t, there happened to be a creepy clown head in the classroom and I thought it would be fun to make Yoon put it on her head. I’m actually surprised she did.

PORTRAITURE

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Left: I was walking past my bedroom into the bathroom when I saw Rain sleeping with a line of light leading right to her. It was the perfect picture! I ran around my house for ten minutes trying to find my phone. I prayed she wouldn’t move until I found it - she didn’t - luckily Rain is usually pretty lazy. Above: These are literally lines. They are a part of the metal bench that sits in front of the main doors at West High. I thought the metal would look cool because it was a sunny day and the sun was reflecting off the bars.

LINES

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Above: This is the church I walk past everyday. It’s pretty ugly as far churches go but the sky around it was breathtaking. Top Left: This is Haejoo Yoon ’18, she is standing in a door-way at West High School. The sun was so bright that day it illuminated her to make a pretty cool outline.Left: This is Yoon’s head. I thought the way the light brought out the flipping of her hair was a cool aspect that I couldn’t show in the picture above.

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LIGHTFEBRUARY 2016 17

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Left: This is Rain (again). She is so petite that I thought it would be inter-esting to make her look like a giant. I came down to her level and snapped this picture, with dumb luck the lighting was quite nice too.Above: This tree is located on the front grounds of West High. I am a rela-tively short person and I never get to look down on things but I decided to embrace that and take a worm’s eye view picture. I had to get down on my back to get this picture. It would have been easier if the ground hadn’t been covered in wet snow and if I had decided to wear a coat that day.

PERSPECTIVE

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The following pictures have one thing that ties them together. Can you see it? No? I recommend glasses... All these pictures have the same bridge. I found this bridge when my mother took me Kent Park. It is right next to a small lake. Below: This picture is my favourite because of the sun that shines brightly - but not overpoweringly. Right: This angle is special because of it’s blue sky. The color is so deep that it almost looks painted.

ONE BRIDGE

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Above: I was trying to get all the angles of this bridge. Here, I am looking it more from the side so I could catch more of the details. Left: This picture was taken from across the lake. I took quite a few but I settled on this one because I thought the details on the rocks were a fun addition.

ONE BRIDGEcontinued

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