ELYSSA Whittaker estimates she took more than 2400 photos around Carrington, Kooragang Island and Newcastle Harbour before deciding on the 16 now hanging in one of the country's most prestigious galleries.
Toronto High student Elyssa - and Warners Bay High student Tahnee Marriott - are among 48 whose Visual Arts major works created for the Higher School Certificate last year have been selected from 8552 submissions for the 36th ARTEXPRESS 2020 exhibition, showing at the Art Gallery of NSW.
"It's a pretty amazing feeling," Elyssa, 18, said. "I didn't think I'd get in. When I went down to Sydney [for the exhibition opening] I was shocked to be included, because everybody else's were so good."
Tahnee, 18, said she'd been on excursions to attend ARTEXPRESS.
"It was crazy to see my work up there," she said.
"It was in a dark area but was lit really well so stood out and was bright.
"I didn't really consider [in 2019 the possibility of my work being exhibited] because I never thought I'd get in."
Both have been taking photographs since they were children and used photomedia to encourage their audience to see their environment in a new way.
Elyssa said her first idea based on urban photography didn't quite work and so she decided to "show off the industrial side of Newcastle" 20 years after the closure of the BHP steelworks.
"It's an aspect people might not see when driving past, between beaches for example," she said.
"Industrial places are out the back of Newcastle where some people don't go. I tried to show people what the industrial world consists of."
Inspired by artists Ansel Adams and Wolfgang Sievers she took around 100 photos every Sunday for about six months, before her teachers helped her choose 16 to edit and feature in her work, NEWCASTLE.
"A lot of the photos I had to get up really close to get them," she said.
"At first there was so much machinery that I didn't know how it worked, but now after taking photos I can see how it all comes together."
Tahnee Marriott was inspired by artists including Carlin Felder and Uta Barth to use macro photography for The Nature of Ambiguity, a collection of six pink, yellow and orange hued images.
She took more than 1000 photographs at Hunter Valley Gardens, her own yard and different parks.
"I started to take photos with clear details of nature but then decided to make it a bit more abstract," she said.
"I got even closer and purposely made them blurry so it was difficult to tell they were flowers.
"I do hope people wonder what the subject matter is - that's the intention. I want to show the focus on details in nature that aren't seen by us on a daily basis."
Tahnee said printing the images on fine art paper made them look like paintings.
Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre; The Armory, Sydney Olympic Park; Griffith Regional Art Gallery; Margaret Whitlam Galleries; and Goulburn Regional Art Gallery will also host ARTEXPRESS exhibitions.
Elyssa's work will be shown at Margaret Whitlam Galleries and Tahnee's will feature in a virtual exhibition, which launches in July.
