There are times when I wonder where life will take me. Will my dreams come true? Will I become the person I want to be? There are so many things for me to seek out in the world, so many things I want to do in life. I wonder, If I take a certain road, where will I end up? Will I regret it? Will I have fun stories to tell my grandchildren? Or will I have to settle for a boring, monotonous life? I guess I just have to “take life by the horns” and make sure I do everything I have always wanted to do. Life is too short to waste it away on routines and monotony. 

1. The young/naive one

2. “devout” catholic

3. Girl who loves cooking/ spends most of her time in the kitchen

Despite the fact that I am always me, there are times when I feel like I can be more “myself” than other times. When I am alone with nobody around, I can act without worry of anyone judging me. I can dance to the music on the radio without embarrassment or sing to that song as loud as I want - in a way, act as my true self. When I am round close friends, I still feel like “myself” but in a way I am more conscious of what I do because in all reality, I cannot completely be myself even in front of my close friends. I can’t say what is on my mind at all times, I still have to censor myself even if just a little. This changes when I am around people I don’t know, or hardly know. I become a person who is completely aware of how she acts and comes off to others. In these situations, I “act out” who I am: a quiet, but easy to get along with girl. I act this out in front of others by smiling more, helping out more, when I first meet them. Although I usually am a polite person and like helping person, I exaggerate this in front of people I don’t know too well.

            Most of the time I don’t feel like I am playing a role but there are times when I do. One example of when I do feel like I am playing a role is at my job. At times I feel overworked and underappreciated but despite this, I try to live up to my role of “one of the best employees” and “hardworking”. My “true” self would have said ‘no’ to staying extra hours or doing work that is not mine but my “hardworking” self keeps her thoughts to herself and keeps working. My roles sometimes conflict as well. At my job, I am expected to be open and talkative with costumers, when in reality I am a quiet, shy person. The role of the hardworking, talkative, perfect employee clashes with that of the quiet, soft-spoken girl who keeps to herself most of the time.

Many of my roles are physically defined. I am a woman, and am expected to know how to cook. I am expected to marry and have children and be responsible for mothering those children. As a woman I am expected to be feminine, emotional and caring. As a Latina, I am expected to be part of the 88 percent of Latinos who do not get a college degree. As a catholic, I am expected to be a good girl - and maybe even to some - intolerant of those who do not share the same religious views as I. In reality, though society expects this from me, I can say I am almost none of those things.

For me, the decisive moment was more exciting, the time when I was capturing something that was happening at that very moment, I would get caught up in trying to take a perfect picture. The time leading up to “the decisive moment” was also very exciting for me, since I was carefully envisioning how I wanted to portray my subjects. The moments after I took the photographs were not very exciting to me. I saw my pictures for the reality that they were and sadly, they were not as great as I expected them to be. Presenting the audience with only the before, during or after of one of these moments would mean their point of view would depend on whatever moment I chose to reveal. If I chose to reveal the moments before anything exciting started happening at the park, where I was still deciding on what to photograph, they perhaps would have thought that the park was peaceful, quiet or maybe even boring and still. If I were to present the audience with the “during” pictures, the audience then would see the park as full of life, exciting, colorful. If I chose to only reveal the “after” pictures, the audience may again view the park as not so exciting. These moments would reveal that the state of activity of the park is constantly changing.

In Renais’s Night and Fog, Nazi concentration camps were presented during the height of Nazi power and after WWII. Just like in any image or film, it was easy to see how one could get caught up in the ‘now’ rather than view something objectively. During the times of Nazi power, concentration camps were still horrible, but people seemed to be blinded by the promises of a better country, and happiness while after the war, things could be seen clearer to what they truly were. Just like in photography, getting caught up in the moment may be easy, but it will not effectively portray an unbiased view on things.

Although I myself am not a photographer, or have ever experimented with photography, there have been times when I have seen “photographically”. To see photographically means to view objects in a way you normally would not, taking into consideration things such as lighting, the geometry of an object and angles. I tend to see photographically while I am alone, taking walks, in my room or when I am feeling particularly pensive. I often look around, look at ordinary things - grass, cars, streets, people, buildings - and begin to mentally photograph these things, experimenting with different angles, taking lighting into consideration, seeing in what ways the object would look most appealing to me. I tend to see photographically when the sun is out in the daytime, when the lighting is bright and my surroundings look rich with color. There are also times when I like dim lighting when taking my ‘mental photographs’ to create a more mysterious, or eerie feeling.  ​Seeing photographically can be both a good and bad thing. It is good to see the world around you in a different light, different perspective. Paying attention and appreciating things one normally wouldn’t and focusing on the beauty or ugliness of a particular scene or object. Seeing photographically can allow a person to see different perspectives on how to look at an object, to view it as more than a mere thing, to make the object seem extraordinary.   

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