Art Walk Includes Teen Photographers

They both came to photography in an odd way.  

As high school students, they needed arts electives. They chose photography as the best option they could think of.

Even so, look what they've done with that decision.

Senior Pierce Pronovost and junior Isabel Reeb are two of the students who will be exhibiting their photography at Champions Real Estate during the Edmonds Third Thursday Art Walk on April 21, 5 - 8 pm.

Pronovost's photograph, that of a boat's reflection in water, is a striking black and white image.  

He took the shot as part of building a portfolio for an advanced placement class.  The portfolio's theme was "reflections."

Looking for inspiration one day, he went down to the Edmonds Marina.  "There were a lot of interesting reflections on the sunset," Pronovost said.  

He took about 50 color images that day, one of which was the boat. Later, looking at the picture in Photoshop, he decided it might look better if he altered it to a black and white image.  

It cetainly worked. The final result is a dramatically poignant work, almost ethereal in its ghost-like quality.  

In fact, I wasn't too surprised when I saw it, for I grew to respect Pronovost's eye when he shot candids of the play You Can't Take It With You that .

During that rehearsal, I asked Pronovost to weave around the actors, even approaching a few inches away to get a shot if he thought it was worth it.  

The actors, I assured him, would keep their focus.  And they did.

"It was kind of difficult," Pronovost said, "I had to keep moving."  He shot over 1,300 images that day.  

Another of the teen artists, Isabel Reeb, produced an image of a small crop of tulips, with one bulb prominent in the foreground. She shot it not long ago at the Tulip Festival in Mount Vernon.  

"I like shooting flowers," Reeb said. "They're perfectly shaped. Tulips are my favorite."

She had to work for that image, though.  Unable to find many tulips in bloom, she had to hunt for quite some time to find any worth photographing.  

Finally, she found a small field with a handful of good samples.

"I took, like, a million pictures of five tulips," Reeb said.

While Pronovost exhibited during the Art Walk last summer, April's Art Walk is Reeb's first exhibition, ever.  

"I'm kind of nervous and excited at the same time to see what people say about it," Reeb said.

More information about the Art Walk is available at www.manyaveeselects.com/artwalk/artwalk.htm.