Eileen Zhang has been taking photography since her freshman year. She started in Foundations and worked her way up to Honors her junior year, which is the class she is currently taking as a senior. Eileen signed up for Photography her freshman year because she knew her “painting and drawing skills were not the best.” She took Photography because she “thought it would be easy,” but soon came to find out that it was not as easy as just pointing a camera and clicking a button. Eileen realized “there’s so much to think about” when setting up a photo, like “position, lighting, figuring out how to express emotions.” The more time she spent taking photos, the more she noticed how complicated the process really was. Although it was hard, Eileen enjoyed “learning new techniques” and “turning boring objects, like [her fridge], into something interesting looking.”
One of the most valuable things Eileen has learned from taking photography the past 4 years is to “be patient. You don’t always get the photo right on the first try, even with digital, and you just have to recognize not all photos work out.” Being patient with film cameras was especially hard for Eileen because developing film was challenging and not getting “instant gratification like you do with digital cameras” was not ideal. Having to wait to see the photo, and then seeing it messed up in developing was disappointing, but it led to another valuable lesson – problem solving. She had to figure out a way to fix the photo or learn to mess with the settings more the next time she went out for a shoot.
Eileen loves taking pictures outside of school, especially with her friends and family. With her friends, she does trendy photoshoots and often goes into Philly to shoot in different scenery. One of her favorite photos that she’s taken is one of her brother walking along the Schuylkill River. It is a film photo that she took in one of her first two years of photography. The “weather was odd – the river had frozen in some spots but it was also warm, so everything was evaporating.” Eileen liked “how cool the fog looked.” Her older brother, along with her dad, are a few of her positive artistic influences. Her dad is a “big photo junkie” and she admires how “different their approaches to photography” are. Her dad will take photos of almost anything while her brother takes a more artistic approach. Mr. Wynia, the Upper School photography teacher, is another one of Eileen’s artistic influences. His work is compelling because it’s mostly in black and white film, which Eileen likes, and because he travels so much every image is different.
Film has a “special place in [Eileen’s] heart” because it’s “fun to not know what is going to happen and to reveal pictures from a long time ago.” Eileen always had a good time “experimenting in the dark room and even though digital cameras are more convenient, film images just have a special quality.” The first day the freshman Foundations Photography class received their film cameras is a favorite memory of Eileen’s. She remembers the class getting “acquainted with the cameras and thinking how weird it was going to be to take a picture and not be able to see it right away.” Eileen, despite having the privilege of using a digital camera in class now, still loves the way film cameras shoot. She likes their style and “reminiscing over the memories later.”
Currently, in Honors Photography, Eileen is working on a multimedia project. The project is to choose a person to interview about a personal interest and then take videos and photos at a place personal to them. Eileen interviewed Helen Wu about her ice skating career and shot at the ice rink Helen skates on. Eileen is excited to put the project together but is even more excited for the next project – a photo magazine. She is looking forward to “testing different layouts, but thinks [she] will have trouble because it’s hard to work with [her] own photos that [she’s] already seen thousands of times.” Nevertheless, she is ready for the challenge.
In the future, Eileen “definitely wants to continue with photography into college. [She] hopes to take photography classes and maybe even some film classes, which [she] hasn’t had the opportunity to do yet.” Eileen would love to be a fashion editorial photographer. It’s “been a goal of [hers] to take pictures of models and work for an editorial magazine” for years. Eileen has experimented with camera skills on family, friends, vacations, but still has more to learn about the world of photography. With an open and creative mind, Eileen hopes to explore a variety of photography methods to improve her skills in the future.
