Photo Contest 2003 | Palo Alto Online |

12th Annual Palo Alto Weekly Photo Contest
First Place, Youth Award

"Study of the Circle"
By Mike Reis

About Mike Reis

Hunched over his homework at 11 p.m., Mike Reis suddenly had an idea. He decided to photograph a series of shapes -- but he wasn't sure which ones would be best.

Click on photo for larger image.

"It was either going to be the circle or this one," he said of his original idea to shoot rectangles. But he had another thought.
"I had taken a bunch of photographs of friend's eyes and it was going to be the same thing but with eyes instead of circles, but I realized that it wouldn't be as interesting."

Reis finally settled on circles, but snuck one eye into the graphic montage.
"It was one of the better looking eyes of one of my friends," Reis said.

Reis, a Menlo Park resident and sophomore at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, is the photography editor of both the school newspaper and yearbook. School responsibilities often require him to photograph sporting events, but his real passion lies in architectural photography.

"I like doing things that are less obvious and a little different from what people normally take," Reis said.

Household circular items were shrunk to uniform size and situated beside each other in his graphic tableau. What began as a collection of more than 40 photographs was narrowed to 25 that he shot with a digital camera and sized in Photoshop.

"I also do a lot of things with repetition in them. At harbors. Repetitions that look good - they usually take an eye to find because they are not as obvious as animals."

Reis hopes to develop his camera skills even more.

" I'd like to do photography for a job. Advertising or work for a magazine. Do a little photojournalism, maybe. National Geographic type stuff."

-- Grace Rauh

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