Lauren Shon, junior, represents her growing artistic talents from behind the camera lens, computer programs such as Photoshop, and old fashion pencil-and-paper drawings. Both inside and outside of school, Shon expresses her artistic abilities through her unique photos.

Q: How have your family and friends become involved in your art?
A:  I was really young when I wanted to be a fashion designer, so I would always draw clothing and people. Then after that I got more into realistic pencil drawings and I think thats what I enjoy most. Drawing was one of the earlier things, I didn’t get into photography until 7th grade.  I don’t really want to look for a career in art but I would definitely do it as a sideline thing for me. One thing that I was interested in is interior design and architecture, so that is always a possibility. My family knows that I always draw. My friends know about it because I have friends in my art class who help me with what I can critique on. We critique each others photos. I also use [my friends] for modeling sometimes. I would ask them if they wanted me to take pictures of them, and we would go somewhere and take pictures.

Q: What types of responses have you received in the past and still get today from your pictures that you share?
A: My Instagram used to be all of my photography but since then I’ve changed it to more of a personal account. That was one way that I liked to share them, but I also use Pinterest and VSCO Cam. I guess it was just something different that people didn’t really see much. And some people would say #laurenshoninspired. It was different because you don’t see stuff like that on social media these days. In 8th grade, two of my friends came up with [#laurenshoninspired] because they replicated one of my pictures that I took and they were like “oh my gosh this is #laurenshoninspired” and I had 10 seconds of Instagram fame, it was pretty cool.

Q: If you could express your high school experience in one photo, how would you portray that?
A: It would probably be something very abstract and crazy because high school has been a huge crazy journey for me. It wouldn’t be simple and clean cut, it would be some kind of maze that you really have to go through.

Q: What is your favorite photo that you have taken?
A: My favorite is probably a series of photos that I took for my photography class where the theme was a color and I picked white. So I had a picture where my friend was in a bathtub that was full of cotton. It was really fun to take

Q: What would you say is your favorite form of art?
A: Probably photography [would be my favorite] because it’s the least time consuming and I like editing photos and cleaning them up with Photoshop. But, I think drawing expresses me better because I can make it look like whatever I want it to look like. In photography that’s a little harder unless you do a lot of digital editing.