I talk a lot about my experience as a photography student in my blog. As my studies come to an end, I have been taking time and reflecting on all that I have learned and my personal growth as a photographer.


For the most part, I have really enjoyed my time in school. That said, there were a few classes that I dreaded going to. One of these being a course called "Creative Vision," that I took in my third semester.


The course consisted of weekly artist talks, and a term-long project that was to create an emotional body of work that was outside of your comfort zone. To experiment with different techniques to create a unique body of work that stands out from the rest of your portfolio. Looking at some of the examples, they all seemed to be incredibly emotionally and spiritually driven. From the very first week of the course, we were challenged with creating a concept for this project, that would ultimately be presented to our peers in the final week.


I took a lot of time to think about this. I wanted to create a body of work that felt personal to me, but moving to others.


When I was fourteen years old, I lost my father suddenly. Since then, I have always drawn creative inspiration from how that happening to me at such a young age had shaped me as a person, and how grief is something that will forever change you. I remember scrolling on Pinterest, a mere few weeks after my father had passed, and stumbling upon a quote that read "The weight of grief does not get lighter. You just get used to carrying it upon your back."


I wanted my project to reflect on this quote. I didn't necessarily want this project to be about my father, but rather wanted it to focus on me and how my perspective of the world, and how major life events change when your loved ones are no longer here to experience them with you.


I really wanted to shoot for the stars for this project. I wanted it to be something that both I, and my father would be proud of. From the moment it was introduced, ideas were swarming around in my head, and I was starting to come up with a twelve-week plan to create this extraordinary body of work.


Unfortunately for myself, I can be a huge procrastinator. Maybe a part of this stems from my perfectionism: I want to create work that is the best I can produce. So, in turn, I used to put things off until I was confident I could do my absolute best work.


This project had two deadlines. One at midterms, where you presented your rough ideas, and one at finals, where you presented your fully finished body of work.


It came the night before midterms, and I still had no idea what I was doing for this project. We needed 30 conceptual images, and I had about one idea and a Pinterest mood board. The one idea that I did have, was to start recreating events in my life that my father's lack of presence felt significant, and to make art that captured how those vents felt. The first event that came to mind was my fifteenth birthday, the first birthday I celebrated after his passing. The thought process here was that everyone expected me to be happy, because in a lot of times, only the grieving people can feel it in happy moments.




I wanted to capture the feeling of having people around me, but still feeling alone. To eventually achieve the full image count on this project, I took this photo and re-processed it as many times as I possibly could. Playing with colours, shadows, cropping; anything I could think of to change the look and feel of the image.  


I didn't end up doing too great on the midterm part of the project. My professor told me my ideas felt scattered, and that it would take a lot of hard work on my part to come up with a successful final. From here, the countdown was on, and I had six weeks to make an incredible body of work that spoke to my life experience.


Five weeks and six days pass. It's the night before presentations. This was an 8am course, and it's 6pm the night before. I had just gotten home from my part time job, I open my laptop, and my heart just sinks to the floor. How in the world could I have forgotten that the final was the next day? In a panic I truthfully began to cry. I had pushed things off so far to the point that it was truly becoming too late to make any kind of successful project.


I began to think to myself, "What would happen if I just didn't do the project at all?" It was only worth 30% of my grade, and I had a high enough standing that I could've skipped the project and still passed the course. Of course, risking completely tanking my overall GPA.


I really was ready to run with this idea. Just skip the project, and pretend like nothing happened. Until I realized that I had this same professor for three courses the following semester. I don't think I would have been able to handle the shame of looking him in the eye every day knowing that I skipped his final just weeks prior. Thus, I got to work. I had absolutely no plan nor any idea of what to do. I got two energy drinks, my camera, a barely working speedlite flash, and began shooting.




I continued to work with the idea of recreating memories of mine but highlighting how my dad's passing changed them for me. Three of the images above are about my high school graduation. The first one inspired by after my graduation, seeing all of my peers take photos with their fathers after the ceremony. I went home crying that night, jealous I couldn't do the same. I went to my bedroom, held up a photograph of him, and stared in the mirror for hours. I titled this piece "where we should be," knowing that holding his photo next to me would be the closest we will ever physically be next to each other again.


The two in the middle are also about my graduation. Twin pieces titled "That was supposed to be your seat..." and "...but I accomplished this thanks to you." The actual process of creating the images was a bit rough. I didn't have many props or a big space to work with, so I popped on an old graduation cap and gown, set up my camera on self timer in my bedroom, and anything that didn't fit nicely, I filled in with generative AI. Maybe not mt finest moment, but what I needed to do to get the project done.


The fourth image is titled "dress up." This was inspired by wearing the clothing or accessories of a passed loved one to feel closer to them. Almost like a child who wears their parent's clothes because they want to be "just like them." My father was always my biggest inspiration.


I got this half of the project done, and felt defeated. I began thinking "well, at least having half of the project done is better than having none of it done. Maybe I can just submit what I have." This really did feel like the only option for me. As I was just about to pack up for the night, I felt my phone ringing: a FaceTime call from my group chat of classmates, Mattie, Sydney, and Ava. I answered the call and everyone was stressed about presentations the following day. I was calm, cool, and collected. They asked me how I was being so chill, and I explained to them my idea. How I wasn't going to present, and I would just submit the five images I had. They told me I was stupid. Rightfully so. They asked to see what I had so far and I physically cringed before sharing my screen. They saw what I had created so far and began to giggle. "You're cooked," they said to me. I hung up the call, and took their words as motivation to create better work. By this point it was 11pm and I was running incredibly low on time, so there was no sense in restarting, but rather picking up where I had left off.

I presented this project in the winter semester, with this particular presentation being done right before holiday break. The next two images I created reflected on that, and how even years after loss, the holidays can feel hollow. The piece on the left titled "Please come home for Christmas," and the right piece called "A place saved." These are two pieces that truly made me emotional white creating, because they hit so closer to home during that season. I wanted to show that even with my father gone, I still honour him and his traditions.

My father asked me once, when I was six years old "If you could be one age forever, what age would you choose?" Being a young girl, I automatically said "Sixteen!" The thought of being sixteen always excited me. I thought that I would have a car, a boyfriend, and be able to hangout with my friends wherever and whenever I wanted. What I didn't realize then, was that when I turned sixteen, I wouldn't be bringing my father with me, and that is just the price to pay for growing up. This inspired my piece on the left, "Forever (six)teen." Pictured is me, sitting in my prom dress, staring at a reflection of younger me with disscontempt and jealousy. I wanted back the life she had.


The image on the right is titled "Second Verse," and it is about passions being passed down generations. My father always wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and then passed shortly after he began taking playing seriously. I picked up where he left off, letting his music live on through me.


"Between faith and fall" was the final image of this portfolio, and the most controversial one. The other images felt light, where this one showed more of what life was like behind the scenes in early days of grief. In days of grief where I wanted nothing more than veto get better, but not knowing where to turn. I began to struggle with my faith when I lost my dad, and fell into bad habits. I would wrestle with my mind trying to find the right way to cope, and it seemingly felt like there was no way out.


I ended the series with this image, because it felt the most raw. The most like grief.



I finished all my images around 2am. Class was just six hours away, and I was an hour and a half commute from the school. At this point, to me it felt like there was no point in sleeping, so I stayed up until it was time to leave for class putting together my powerpoint presentation.


I was growing more and more anxious. I hated the body of work that I had created. I thought that it was possibly the worst representation of me and my work as a photographer. I was embarrassed that I had to show up in just a few hours and present this in-front of my peers.


I got to class an hour early that morning. So did most of my classmates. To my surprise, everyone seemed just as freaked out as I did. I was pacing around the room, and I even said out loud, "no laughing at my presentation, this does not represent me as a photographer and I'm sorry that you all have to see this." This wasn't from a place of attention seeking, it was from a place of genuine shame.


I was the second to present that morning. The presentation before mine was about my classmate and the similarities between him and his living father. He did an excellent job. The class spent 10 minutes after his presentation critiquing and sharing ideas, and the professor spent a few minutes giving comments and feedback. That set the stage for what I was about to do.


I went up, I plugged in my laptop, and began my presentation. I started with my artist statement:


Post-Mortem is a body of work inspired by the process of grief and parental bereavement during adolescence. Though not something everyone will experience, it is important to view the ways that these events change the course of a young person's life. This series goes over two main concepts of grief: how it looked, and how it felt. I would often get asked in the first years after losing my father if I was “over it yet.” Simply, because many grieving people are told to mask how they are feeling, in order to spare the comfort of those around them.

This series explores through self portraiture how life events, both major and minor, are changed when you no longer have those important people in your life to share them with. From birthdays, graduations, to those quiet moments alone, it is a bittersweet feeling to know that life still goes on, even without your loved ones there to witness it.

The process here was quite simple– to recreate experiences I’ve had, and ones that I anticipate happening, capturing the emotion of the moment. I have had this idea for a project for some years now, because I had never been able to find similar work that told the same story.


This body of work is dedicated to my late father, the man who made me the person I am today, and the person whom I will continue to become.


Absolutely shaking, I began to flip through the images on screen. Although I was insecure about my work, I presented it with confidence, avoiding saying anything negative about it in front of my professor. I made my presentation very vulnerable, just like grief is. With every image on screen, I told the store behind it. Not the story of how I created it, but the story of the event that inspired it. Everyone in that room learned so much about my father that day. Everyone in that room got t o hear about how amazing of a man he was.


One of my favourite quotes is "a heart that's been broken is a heart fr that's been loved," and that is something that I made known while presenting. The impact of his loss on me was to hard because I know I was loved so much. I loved him so much.


I got to the end of my presentation, and the room was silent. 30 seconds of radio silence. I began to shake, I almost began to cry. I anticipated things going bad, but that bad? No way. I looked over to my professor, and saw a tear shed from his eye. I looked to the other side of the room, and I saw my classmate with his hand raised. He says "I don't have much to say, other than 'why were you so scared to present this?" I looked back over to my professor, and he says "how did you keep yourself together throughout that?"


Those were the only comments that were made. No critique session, to further comments from my classmates. Just radio silence, and a singular tear from my professors eye.


I sat through the rest of the presentations, still feeling anxious. I knew grades would be out later that afternoon, and I still had a lingering feeling that I bombed it.


I checked my hone hours later, and I saw my grade updated. I anxiously swiped to reveal the grade. I open my eyes, I see the grade. 100%.


My professor made it clear before grades were posted that he would not be posting any feedback, and all feedback would be given live during presentations. However, I saw feedback attached to my grade. It reads "only the second perfect assignment I have seen during my time at the college. Well done."


I was blown away. Perfect grade? This professor was known for being a hard marker. At first I thought that it was just pity points, and that he felt bad of me. But another student in the class did a project on nearly the same topic, and the outcome was different.


I didn't believe I deserved this grade. I even went to ask my professor about it, and he said "They may not have been your best photos, but they were your realest. And you were confident about it. That is sometimes what matters most."


I learned a lot that day. You hear all the time "confidence is key," but I never truly believed that until doing this presentation. That's something that is truly important in the photography industry, is that you need to learn how to sell yourself. To sell your work. Never talk about your faults in front of people who have the power to hire/fire you, or in this case, grade you. Go up there with full confidence, convince people that your work is phenomenal. Sometimes attitude is what matters the most.