Author: Melissa Sanchez

This photo was taken during my trip to Colombia with my two best friends. It was during our trip to a zoo when we were heading to the exit and realized there was a performance going on. We decided to stay to watch the whole thing. I love the fact that they have bright yellow clothing on, it makes them stand out in this photo and I waited for them to be in the center of the photo so they can look like the dominant impression.

This photo was taken at Madison square garden, at a concert my sister and I went to about two weeks ago. The blue lights came on during a pause in the show and it looked like the perfect moment to capture an art photo. The blue light created an abstract effect that made the arena look beautiful.

This last picture was taken in the beginning of the year. It was new years and it was my attempt at capturing the moment of celebration into the new year. I love this photo because to me it is an example of a decisive moment. I made sure to have my camera near me to quickly capture a beautiful memory.

The photograph A Haitian man grieving at the funeral of his mother in Port-au-Prince, Haiti captured by Maggie Steber, was the photo that stood out to me in the essay. I would consider this photo a documentary because we are seeing pictures from a funeral capturing a grieving family member, capturing reactions from a tragedy. This photograph feels like it’s a decisive moment. In the photograph you can see that the grieving son is showing an extreme amount of sadness to the point where he is physically hurting & is being helped by five men. I think it’s a decisive moment because if the photographer would’ve taken the photo moments before &  the son wasn’t being helped by these five men then you wouldn’t see the amount of emotion & pain you see in the actual photograph where he looks deeply heartbroken. The photograph seems to have been taken during the day, which makes me feel that if I wasn’t informed of the backstory, I would wonder what exactly is going on, especially because usually during a funeral you would traditionally see everyone wearing black, in this photograph the one person that appears to be wearing black is the son himself. Maggie Steber, the photographer of this photo, did a great job of capturing the pain & heartbreak of this grieving son. I find it hard to capture such deep emotion in photos so this photo feels really intense, you can almost feel the pain through the photo.