
Not everyone gets to experience the feeling of dancing in an SEC football stadium, full of 80,000 fans. Not everyone knows what it is like for hard work to actually pay off. Not everyone gets all of the opportunities that I am going to get this year with being on the Carolina Girls Dance Team. These were a few of the thoughts that came to mind as I was dancing at my first football game this year. Fortunately, I get to experience this and many more exciting performances all year and I am so grateful for it. After 14 years of dance, 20 hours a week, and competitions every weekend in high school, I knew this is where I belonged when I came to the University of South Carolina and I was so happy to be doing it. This photograph shows every feeling I had that day: excitement, anxiousness, and nostalgia. Not only can you tell this by the emotion on my face, but the use of spacing, scaling, and colors all help convey these radiant emotions and make the viewers feel like they are there.

First, the use of spacing creates many different focal points and allows you to see the whole atmosphere of the picture. When you first look at this picture, your eyes do not automatically go to one thing. You see the picture in its entirety and then you look at each element. This is because everything is spaced out and nothing is directly in the center. The dancers are at the bottom, still clear, but not in the middle. Next, the student section wraps all around the stadium and is also very prominent and visible. Then, the large jumbtron is right above the student section, taking up a quarter of the photograph. Lastly, the beautiful blue sky is all across the top of the picture, creating even more color and liveliness. All

of the important elements of this photo are all evenly spaced and almost makes you feel like you are actually there. The spacing creates many different aspects to focus on that all come together to create the same picture of the same place.

Although everything is spaced equally, the scaling of each part of the image tells the audience what to pay the most attention to. The dancers are scaled to look a lot larger than the student section, so you pay the most attention to the dancers, because the student section looks smaller than them. This is the same scaling for the screen also. It looks smaller than it actually is because it is a part of the background and you focus on the dancers more. My teammates and I look larger and taller than everything in the background that is normally larger than us. This is because we are supposed to be the focal point of this photo. The other parts are just a part of the background, helping create the mood. This photographer’s intentions were to capture a photo of the dancers, not the student section or sky or jumbotron. I think that they accomplished that with scaling because the dancers are larger than life. 

Lastly, the use of colors and contrast create the mood of this day the most out of any element. Every emotion I had that day is shown in this photograph from the turf to the sky. The red (or garnet) in the photo symbolizes boldness and love. Dancing on that field, you need to cheer on the team and get the crowd pumped up. The red in our poms shows how we stood out and danced full-out, so the crowd was full of school spirit. The red also symbolizes love. There is nothing better than an SEC football game because there is so much love and passion in the atmosphere for our team and the red symbolizes that the best. Even if it just shows up in little amounts, it still is a large part about this photo. Next, the blue sky represents tranquility. As crazy as game days are in Willy-B, there is a sense of peace and serenity on these days that this photo reflects. You can see the student section and how energetic it is and then you look higher up on the photo to see the peaceful, enlightening blue sky. This shows you both sides of performing in the stadium; the crazy, enthusiastic side of it and the calm, beautiful side. 

It also contrasts some of the dark colors, making the atmosphere happier. Lastly, another prominent color is green. It may only be the turf and at the bottom of the photo, but it contributes a lot to the mood of our team. Green symbolizes optimism and growth, two things that mean a lot to not only football team, but dance team as well. Every team needs to be optimistic, so that you can progress forward and work towards being the best. My team is full of confidence and we work hard every week to show everyone that. The green symbolizes how strong my team is and how we can only continue to grow and do better from here. With this came a feeling of nostalgia also. Thinking about my new team here reminded me of my old team back home. These two teams may be completely different, but in many ways they are the same. Power, unity, growth, and being more like sisters are all similar traits that they share. This picture reflects all of these feelings in my life at this time of transition.

This photograph displays every aspect and feeling of a University of South Carolina football game through my eyes. Being on that felt creates so many emotions like no other. Every part of this picture contributes to these feelings and every design element is important to all of these parts. The color scheme, size of different aspects of the image, and the placement of the elements all affect how this photo is view and what kind of emotion and story is portrayed. This is all only temporary, but I will always go back to this picture and remember how I felt on this day.