Artist’s Statement: People from all walks of life want to change the reality they are in. This desire stems from the realization that they are not fulfilling the life they envisoned for themselves. This series of photos captures people visualizing a self-curated reality. These individuals will essentially escape the “now” through virtual reality.

Every shot hand held, in manual focus, using the Nikon D7500 with a 35mm lens. To get the desired shots that I wanted I would say something to my subject to capture the right emotions. For instance, in the first photo I said “think back to when you were a kid, what did you want to become?” and for the last I said “quick! imagine there’s quick sand under you”.  In terms of editing, I have never worked with special effects and lights before so I wanted to try something new. I took away a lot of things in the background that seemed out of place in the second picture (ex. blue dust pan) and also clone stamped green leaves to hide the brown ones. I really like the lesson we had on how to enhance shine of jewelry so I took my own approach on it and tried to colour dodge and paint the ‘shine’ directly on her necklace.