Photo Essay
The subject of my photo essay is the Boston Marathon on April 15th, 2019. I took all of my pictures in Boston in various places around town, following the marathon route. I decided to do the Boston Marathon for my photo essay to honor all the lives lost and/or effected by the Boston Marathon bombings back in 2013, where multiple lives, once which was a 5 year old boy, were lost. This was important to me because I grew up constantly hearing about the marathon and was upset that I was never able to do something to positively affect the lives of the people who were effected and decided that this was finally my chance. In my project, I tried to communicate emotions of sadness and mourning while also focusing on emotions of moving on, freedom, and a sense of community and family among the people of Boston. My images capture these emotions in many ways. One picture shows a cafe which was the sight of bomb #2 back in 2013, which promotes emotions of great grieving. Also, The symbol of “Boston Strong” and “Boston Police” bring the city together as a whole, while the immense amounts of police communicate emotions of fear yet moving on and getting better with time. I put my photos in chronological order to follow the marathon path and where I went at certain times. My strongest photo in this series is the first one which features the back of a police officer’s jacket. Compositionally, the photo has strong color and is taken from a level point of view, making the words look as if they are written straight on a page. To edit the pictures, i adjusted the size of the photo and the color balance to make the jacket really stick out.