![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/campus-van-den-brink-photo.jpg\")
<\/a>Parrotta has worked a little bit with painting and watercolour as well, but she found that she quickly retreated to her comfort zone of photography. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPainting and watercolour\u2019s interesting in the sense that you can still sort of capture what the person\u2019s about,\u201d she says, \u201cbut photography has always sort of been regarded as the most truthful medium.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Parrotta, that\u2019s an interesting axiom to work close to, because, she says, it has been proven time and time again to \u201cnot really be that truthful.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just something really interesting about that, especially nowadays, when you can do anything with a camera,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can do as much with a camera as you can with a paintbrush.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parrotta strives to balance the natural manipulation of reality with the organic truth she finds in front of the lens. When she uses film, it naturally narrows the inevitable gap between photo and reality. Most people use digital cameras, but even what\u2019s in the viewfinder of the camera\u2014unedited, untouched\u2014\u201cis still not going to be reality, in a way,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can always cut something out, you know?\u201d she says, adding that she has been playing with that concept a lot in portraiture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With digital photography, there\u2019s no limit to the number of photos you can take in a shoot. In film, there are 24 or 36 exposures to work with, and the person taking the pictures has to physically go develop the film before they can even see what they\u2019ve ended up with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFilm is almost backwards in the sense that each shot, you have to set up so perfectly, so most of that thought process is before you even take the picture,\u201d she says. \u201cWhereas in digital, after you take the picture, the majority of the work comes into play.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With film, you have to slow right down and focus on everything before you even take the picture, says Parrotta, and in the fast-paced world we live in, the pace of film photography is the appeal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDigital photography, it\u2019s almost like fast fashion to me,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s so quick, and then you always sort of have something that comes out of it. The risk factor is pretty low… You know what you\u2019re going to get if you take the picture, because you can see it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parrotta has had times when she\u2019s spent many hours shooting a roll and then discovered something went wrong with the camera and the entire roll was blank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt the end of the day it\u2019s a lot riskier,\u201d says Parrotta, \u201cand I personally like that, because I feel more connected to each picture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there are situations where Parrotta has to shoot digital, because digital cameras can do some things that the older film ones can\u2019t, she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ll edit the digital photos, but otherwise, with film, I do very minimal editing,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ll colour correct, sharpen it; a lot of times when you scan negatives to a really high resolution they come up as dust particles that have just gotten their way into the scanner, and I\u2019ll edit those out. I like to keep the colour as authentic as possible, so I try to keep [the editing] to a bare minimum.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parrotta is focusing mainly on portraiture during the Van den Brink Residency, because that style interests her the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI just can\u2019t think of anything I\u2019d like to photograph more than the people around me,\u201d she says. \u201cI mostly photograph people who I know pretty well; I\u2019m comfortable with them, and they\u2019re comfortable with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the portrait shoots, which are typically done with her friends as subjects, it\u2019s about getting photos that display the essence of the subject so vividly that even a complete stranger could see it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always going to be a spectrum of what the viewer\u2019s going to interpret, as opposed to what the artist\u2019s intention was,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat your intention was with the artwork is never going to be exactly what every single person\u2019s going to take away from it. I love my friends and I want everybody to catch a glimpse of what it\u2019s like to know them in one photo.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And recently, Parrott has been expanding her horizons and collaborating with people she doesn\u2019t know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSometimes there\u2019s an organic quality to the first time meeting someone and taking their picture that you can\u2019t recreate,\u201d she says, \u201cand sometimes that creates something really beautiful.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In all forms of art lies a space between what the creator of the art intends and what the viewer of the art perceives. Camosun second-year Visual Arts student Nina Parrotta\u2014who was awarded the Camosun Van den Brink Residency, given to a second-year Visual Arts student, this year\u2014intends to narrow that space down through her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,233],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-july-10-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17863,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17861\/revisions\/17863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}