Anna Christodoulou
As I continue to explore my relationship with the camera, I hope to focus more on human interest pieces and to continue my landscape, nature, and portraiture styles, not for monetary gain or fame, but for the celebration of humans, nature, and the imaginary. My creative process is simple, it may start with an idea or by just picking up the camera and venturing into an uncomfortable realm with no preconceived goal in mind, either approach which I always call the experimental phase helps me lose myself into a fun and non stressful way to open myself creatively. The fun continues in the post processing phase, where I can cull and review the images and decide which ones jump at me with instant interest, followed by the editing for the final outcome. It is common for me to edit an image and then wait a few days, weeks or even months before returning to it to discover a new approach or outcome. Many times I have gone back years and reviewed images I've taken and found gems I hadn't noticed before. I find it exciting and motivating to do this especially when I can approach them with a new perspective and techniques I had never used before. My journey of discovery, expression, and awareness has been through art. At times, it has been my only friend and lover, the only one who has accepted and nurtured me without judgement. My early exposure to art, music, and many cultures led me to explore architecture, sketching, watercolors, acrylics, and hand thrown pottery. Through photography, I have been liberated from the constraints of the world around me, allowing me to explore boundless creativity without being constrained by one style or medium. As a result of this, I have had the opportunity to volunteer for organizations like Camp Janus.org, a burn camp for children ages 5 to 18, as well as the organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.org, that provides gifts of remembrance portraits to parents experiencing the loss of a child. As I continue to explore my creativity, I hope to be able to present stories that inspire and invoke thought and emotion, which is why it is so exciting to use my camera in many different ways, because the process itself is always to learn something new no matter what or who my subject is, and the end result is for the outside world to enjoy and explore.