My name is Jasmine and I am from Sweden, but currently I am living in Colorado as an exchange student. I go to Polaris Expeditionary Learning School and get the opportunity to take a photo class here. My teacher's name is Cree Bol and she's a very inspiring and positive coach in my way of learning more about photography.

I took a photography class in Sweden about 3.5 years ago and that was when my interest for photographing increased. It wasn't a very detailed class and we met about two times a month, but we learned about shutter speed, aperture and lighting a little bit and then we got to take photos with old cameras which didn't have a screen, to practice getting the right photo without taking a thousand photos.

My photo class here in the USA is way different though. Each week we learn new things about how to take the 'perfect' photo. It is very interesting and it has brought out a much bigger passion for photography in me.

I prefer photographing people and abstract things. I think my interest for taking photos of people is because different people can give so many different expressions and styles, which can make the pictures look very alive and sometimes even very odd and unreal. I like to photograph abstract things because I think that it is very fascinating how I can take a weird looking object and turn it into something beautiful with help of my photo skills.

I use both snap and shoots and SLRs to photograph. My own cameras are a DSC-W170 and a Sony a390. Most photos I post here will be taken with the second mentioned one. I don’t have the opportunity to use as fancy equipment as many other photographers, but I try to take as many photos as possible and edit a lot in Photoshop to get the result I’m looking for and I think it’s a great way of developing my photo skills.

I hope that you won’t use my photos anywhere without my permission… except from that – enjoy!

Jasmine Varg Etemadi