DetermanPhotographic

Vilkommen, Hello, Kia Ora!

Welcome to my little corner of the Internet Ecosystem. This portfolio is an ever unfolding experiment, up here for both my benefit and yours: mine, so that I may squirrel away everything that I think is cool that I've made; and yours, so that those curious souls among you may see what new bits of insanity I've concocted.

The navigation of this site is fairly basic. The frame on the right hand side of your screen contains links that will take you to the different sections into which I have categorized my work. (Within each section, there are "Previous," "Main," and "Next" navigational links to move through the images. To return to this main page at any time, just click on the words in the gray banner at the top of the section page where this website's address appears.) The frame on the left holds a Table of Contents and pertinent links, like one to my personal weblog, Shuttering. Below this welcome, you will find a mission statement of sorts (or at the very least, a long-winded rant about why I *heart* photography) and a resume.

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to drop me a line at detephoto [at] gmail [dot] com if you like, love, hate, or are blithely indifferent about what you see, but just want to say hi.

ETA 2 March 2006: I haven't been satisfied with the categories set up on this site since I created it last fall. So I have decided to do a bit of a revamp. The ever-evolving creme de la creme (the portfolio that I would rip onto a CD and mail with an internship or scholarship application) will be at the top of the column, and contain at least ten singles and one story. Down the column will be a mass group of singles, then links for each of the stories (or shoots I've done that haven't quite made it into storyhood), then a link for Alternative Process pictures (as a journalist, it would be cheating and a bit conspicuous to throw TechPan and multi-exposure photos in with my singles and features), and finally a link for work done as DetermanPhotographic (weddings, etc.). I may have links up for other projects done in multimedia as well ... but that remains to be seen. Please bear with me as I go under construction ... it shouldn't take too long!

Manifesto & Mission Statement

This past weekend, a friend and I went to see Jarhead. The movie was full of masterful images -- the oil wells burning stark and apocalyptically orange against a murky smoke-filled sky; the scene where Jake Gyllenhaal sits and chats with a circle full of charred corpses, horrified to the point of puking his guts out; the horse that wanders through the desert smoking and slick with oil. Jarhead showed the impact and power images have in relation to their audience, making the point during an emotional scene where a room full of Marines get psyched to go to war by watching a movie about an army at war.

The idea that images are a universal language is one that I've played around with for quite some time. Jarhead is just possibly the best example in that it is the most recent and most blatant.

We learn to be human, to be participants in our world, through images. Humans, while certainly capable of living completely independent and solitary lives (though usually only under very extreme conditions), are much more commonly and comfortably social animals. We burn with the need to tell our stories, like wolves howling out to each other at night or random graffiti artists scrawling, "Hi Mom!" or some other epithet on the concrete supports of an overpass. And we also need the reassurance of others and their stories.

We need to communicate, and images communicate most strongly because of all the synesthetic triggers buried inside a single image. One blurry photograph of a train, taken worm's-eye-view, speeding through the night with a few figures illuminated by a yellow compartment light conjures up so many sensual, synesthetic responses: the feeling of that onrushing train's speed, the roar of it, the shriek of its whistle, the tranquility of night traveling, the loneliness of the figures staring out the window.

Such is the power of images: to make vastly varied or somewhat culture specific experiences common (I've never been to Spain, but one great picture of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona could certainly give me the impression that I had been there and experienced that festival).

Some are critical of this power. There is a fear that the prevalence and pervasiveness of images are creating false memories.

I see it as a positive thing, though; a tool with which to breach the divide between East and West, Democracy and Tyranny, the industrial nations and the developing world without belittling the differences between them or enforcing the assimilation of one into the other.

I'm sure this belief or recognition of power makes me either a megalomaniac or a naive and sheltered American, but in truth it has made me a photographer.

I love to talk (my elementary and middle school teachers and report cards will attest to this) -- I talk with my mouth, with my hands, with my facial expressions, my posture, my clothing, my posters on my bedroom wall, and, most importantly, with my images. I want to talk to as much of the world as I possibly can: see it, taste it, wander around in it till I've worn the soles off my shoes and burned out another camera's motor drive. I want to use my images to say, "Look! I was here for this moment. This is what it looked like, what it smelled like. This is how it felt."

There are too many voices out there, too many disparate images of the world, for one dialogue to assume totalitarian control over viewers' perceptions of the world, so I don't worry about this power of photography being abused. Photography, being able to draw with light, is probably the best thing to happen to methods of communication since the human brain made the leap from pointing and grunting at an object to pointing and naming that object, describing it with one word carefully strung after another.

Now we can send pictures of that object -- in a sense, the experience of it -- all across the globe, to those who would never normally have the opportunity to see such things, let alone synesthetically experience them.

This is why I am a photographer. This point of view, this photographic philosophy, is what I bring to every endeavor or situation I encounter, and what I can bring to your newsroom, or, as DetermanPhotographic, to your event.

Resume & References

AMANDA DETERMAN: PHOTOGRAPHER

EDUCATION
University of Montana Spring 2002 – present
Admitted to School of Journalism Spring 2005
--Photojournalism Option
--Studied abroad at Massey University Spring 2004
--(Wellington, New Zealand)
University of Oregon Fall 2001
Broadwater High School (Townsend, Montana) Class of 2001

EXPERIENCE
Owner and operator of Determan Photographic 6 years
--Weddings, portraits, various special events
Photographer for Montana Horse Country Adventures 2 years
Head Photographer of High School Yearbook 2 years

OTHER EXPERIENCE
Co-Director of American Legion Auxiliary Montana Girls’ State 2005 – present
Intern for Montana Public Interest Research Group Fall 2004

SKILLS
Knowledge of Photoshop
6 years traditional darkroom experience

AWARDS
National Merit Scholar 2001

REFERENCES
Available upon request.

http://www.peregrination.typepad.com/detephoto
detephoto [at] gmail [dot] com

Download a printable copy of my resume