photography paper
When I was around ten years old I was about 225 pounds at five feet tall. I was a fat kid, everything was cold and bitter in those days. Each day I was awake it was torture and I was psychologically tearing myself apart. I was bitter, angry and jealous of the people that didn’t have to worry about their weight. I wanted to spend everyday just laying in bed, I listened to depressing music all the time. My family was worried about my well-being. One day my brother was going into the seventh grade and he signed up to take a tennis class. He needed a pattern to hit with, so we started playing. We both started at the same level, but he soon excelled in skill level at least for the time being. Physically my appearance started to change and by the time I went to high school I weighted 170 pounds at five foot eight.
For the work I choose extreme high and low angles to create a scene of movement. I wanted to give the viewers a sense of what kind of intense that I feel on the court. I wanted to feed the viewer a level of psychological space to fill in the motions of the human form that are about to proceed. My girlfriend took the photos with my direction of what I wanted to see. I believe there is much beauty in tennis not just in the movement of the body, but the beauty of power, the beauty of control, and of the uncontrolled. I wanted to capture the action before the actionI tried to create angles to resemble movement, as in the movement on the court. the court we shot on was the first court my brother and I first learned to play tennis.
Tennis is 80% mental and 20% physical. I want to show that mental process the went into each second on the court. If I look at my oppontent and see his hand is shaking I am going to serve to his backhand and come into the net. When a person is nervous the racquet becomes heavy, so that is when I strike. The serve is the only time when I have 100% of the control of the point, and because my serve is the best part of my game this puts me in a go position to win. Most of the photos are of me before or during the serve because that is my greatest achievement to be at a high level to be capable to serve at great speeds. Tennis is my savior, and hopefully my brother and I will play even in Heaven.
