Looking for the Remote Control to My Life

So the semester is at it's end.
I promised my sister that i would start working on my grad school applications today. Mostly just trying to hunt down different professors to request letters of recommendation from. I haven't given it as much thought as i know i should. I'm not really all that sold on any of the art programs i have looked up at this point.
They all have their pluses and minuses.
I need more time and more motivation to figure these things out. It seems kind of odd to me to start working on laying down a plan for the next part of my life before this part is even over. I need a pause button or something. Just a little bit more time to organize my thoughts...

anyway. I had my last critique in a photography class as an undergraduate student EVER. Probably my last critique with Elizabeth Dove, who's been my mentor for the past year and a half or more. That makes me stop and think for a moment. Not feeling very sentimental about it or anything, it's just kind of an odd notion. I have had three photography teachers throughout my career as a photography student.

My highschool teacher, Tom Morris, taught me to use a camera, judge light without a meter, print images (no matter how ghetto the setting) etc.
Elizabeth taught me that just because i knew how to use a camera and make a print, didn't necessarily make me a photographer. she coached me through my BFA and was with me every step of the way as my concept altered and started to fall into place. She's been a phenomenal asset to my education and development as an artist, printmaker, and photographer. The art department may not have the best facilities or supplies available, but the people they have working in it are what make it wonderful.

Last but not least, there's Marcy James. Marcy also helped me develop my concept. She was actually the first person to get me to start direction the jumble of thoughts and images i go about taking all the time and trying to funnel them into an actual idea. I don't know if i mentioned this in an earlier blog, buti used to do a lot of portraiture. I used to love taking pictures of people. They fascinate me, and there really wasn't any substance to what i was doing or how i was taking the pictures. I was just clicking away on the shutter because i could. I had one portrait of a friend in critique at one point. Marcy sat down with me, trying to help me sift through my thoughts in search of a strand of concept and theme that i could hold on to. she held that picture and said to me, "This is a very nice print. I really like the image, but i look at it and wonder, 'why do i care about this person?'" I had no way to respond to that. It was the first time i'd looked at my images and asked, 'why?' it seemed really stupid and irritating at the time, but since that point i've furthered myself a great deal. or at least i feel that i have and it's because of Marcy's nagging question.

Anyway. I am hoping to have some opportunity to pursue more gum bichromate work next semester, but it depends on whether or not the department can organize a place for a group to do them in. Otherwise it will just be printmaking. I could probably sneak into the darkroom occassionally to produce some prints, and i should definitely keep shooting new work.
We'll see what happens though.

On another note, all of the random images in this blog are images from my final series for my photo III class. some of them were produced as gum prints, others didn't actually get presented in class, but here they are. they were taken at the same time as the images from the previous entry. I'm particularly pleased with the 'flying saucer' (which is actually a rather creepy merry-go-round that has/had a catepillar's head on it... the paint's all worn away and you can't actually see the head in the photo b/c it was shot with a Diana camera and my aim was off) and the park benches.
Anyway, best of luck to anyone reading this who's still taking care of finals stuff. It'll all be done with soon, whether you like it or no.

Tripping Down Memory Lane

I went home for Thanksgiving. I've never really been fond of having to claim Billings as my hometown, but seeing as it's all i have, i can't really fudge over it. Each time i go home i think i lose part of my sense of comfort and belonging there. I hate driving in that town b/c i feel like everyone is out for blood, i don't like going shopping because A) it's shopping, and B) i always run into people who i don't want to run into. The people who didn't leave and are pretty much the same since i had last seen them, which in most cases was a rather long time ago, so i can't really just ignore them either.
Billings keeps growing too. Every time i go back there's more housing developments. i find myself wondering who on earth is moving to that town that there's such a need to build more complexes and houses. It's probably just that i'm biased since i have a hard time understanding why someone would want to move there in the first place. I just get the feeling, when i go back, that it's not the town that i grew up in anymore. I have a connection to so many places and things and yet when i go back to visit them all i can't tap into them as i used to. I have a lot of memories of places that technically are still there, but just are not what they were when i knew them.
I wanted to shoot photos of these places. Specifically the playgrounds i went to as a child. I already knew this, but for some reason it hadn't struck me entirely, but with playground equipment upgrades that have taken place over the past decade, the playgrounds and parks i knew aren't the same. At All.
I went to Veteran's park, a park that was directly south of my elementary school. We'd have birthday picnics there, my dad's company had many company picnics there. Sean's little league baseball team played at a couple different fields that are there. There used to be a wading pool there that Billings Parks and Rec. ripped out and planted grass over. You can still see a difference between the grass that was placed over the top of where the pool was and they must have torn it out 8 years ago at least. I was walking through the park, looking at the hideous new equipment, looking for some fragment from the playground i knew as a child. All i could pin-point was The Tree.
A behemoth of a tree. I remember that it was big when i was a kid, but this tree is HUGE. Seriously, the bark on this tree is just crazy to see, pieces are separated by giant chasms rather than mild cracks. It's an impressive tree and i wonder and how long it's been there. There's two benches at the foot of the tree, facing the playground, that have been there as long as i can remember and their age is told by the layers of paint that's crackling off of them.
I can remember them being the mom benches, where kids in strollers would be parked while the mobile ones would goof around on the playground equipment. There used to be an awesome merry-go-round at Vet's Park. They also had a see-saw when i was really little. We used to not be very evenly matched up in weight on the see-saw. I remember a number of occasions where i would be trapped on the end that was high up in the air (high up being maybe three whole feet, but when you're not even that tall, it's HIGH) desperately trying to get the opposing side to let me back down. I probably got to do the same thing to some hapless victim at one point or another. The see-saw was eventually taken apart. Someone probably thought it was dangerous.
Wandering around the one baseball field was also interesting. The field was directly south of the school's playground, and we weren't technically supposed to play down there during recess because it wasn't part of the school's property. We did anyway. There was a cinder-block wall directly behind the bleachers, and they had obviously had to redo one of the walls because some tree roots had started to undermine its strength. I remember that wall being a lot taller at one point... but anyway, I don't know if whoever was finishing the wall did it on purpose, but when they were finishing smoothing the cement they left circular textures on the wall that are very similar to finger prints. I thought it was very interesting at least.
Anyway, i moved on to visiting the playground of my old elementary school. I hadn't been back there since maybe Junior High. I don't remember exactly what year it happened, but the school district closed my elementary school, maybe in my early high-school years... It's not a Head Start facility, and the entire school and playground is encircled by a chain-link fence that wasn't there when i was. There's a lot of things that are the same from back when. The swings are the same ones we used to spend ages counting to 100 to have our turn using, the four-square blocks and hopscotch are painted where they were, the 'newer' equipment (which was probably put in when i was in fourth grade) are still there. The windows that face out from the gym are still cracked and broken from when we used to play wall-ball where we weren't supposed to. The black-top of the playground is pretty much the same, but i'm pretty sure they've resurfaced and repainted it at some point because it's actually black, something i don't remember it being.
Despite all of the familiar things, it's really different. It's almost as if they resurfaced over all of our memories and connections. They cut down some trees, built a fence, resurfaced out playground, and they didn't even ask if that was ok with us. Not that i expected anyone to seek my permission. It's strange to see such changes take place to something you're so familiar with and so attached to, only to realize that once the changes have taken place, it was never yours to begin with. That nobody cares about your memories and connections. Time keeps going and we're left by the wayside wondering what the hell just happened. Or at least that's how i feel.
I guess what made this ring particularly clear for me was the bench. I can't remember exactly, but i think that i was on the student council when we established the bench. There was a crab-apple tree on the corner of the 'soccer field' that we decided to place a wooden bench around. On the bench there's a little placard that says, "Bench Provided By Rimrock School Student Council 1994-1995". Good luck reading the placard now. It's so rusted and dirtied from the elements that the only way i could make it out was because the rust had highlighted the letters a little more than the rest of it. The crab apple tree must have died a while ago, because not only had it been chopped down, but the stumps from it are the dried grey that happens when wood is exposed to the elements over an amount of time.
Anyway. I don't mean to be a Debby Downer. It was just an interesting experience and i wonder if many other people reflect similarly on visiting such places from their past. I feel like i'm grasping at straws. Trying to find something substantial from a pile of vague rememberances

What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen. ~Cynthia Ozick

Lights, Camera and...I need a Subject.

For my Photo III class, we were required to focus some of our energies in the lighting studio. It's a pretty fun setup down there. Intimidating as all get-out, but still, fun. 2400 watts (excuse me, i'm not very techno-savvy, so if it irks you that that's the wrong term... too bad) can be flashed at a time. you can run four strobes off of the power pack at a time, each light can output 600. Why you would EVER need to use that much energy for a single shutter release is beyond me, but then again i'm still pretty big on natural lighting.
The pictures to the left are images i took last spring. The only time i ever went in there last semester, and i was just goofing around with Leah and Keith. It was really fun at the time, but i wasn't much interested it in the long run, because at that time i was working on my journey project, which was more about experience with the world around you. Not so much about fabrication.
Anyway... I don't mean to complain. The lighting studio is actually really fun to test out ideas in. I'm not really all that interested in traditional studio setups. Still-life is kind of static and portraiture is boring for the most part. Whenever i get in the studio i end up using the hard light adapters because they give dramatic shadows and mood.
So this time, in the studio, i was kind of on me onesies. I was setting up light, metering, posing, shooting, the whole deal. Which brings me to my next point: Self-portraits=awkward. Out of an hour's worth of work i got maybe four images i am comfortable with and two (to the right) that i REALLY like. Not because i'm picky (ok... partially because i'm picky) but more so because all of the ideas i would come up with were hard to execute when you're setting the timer on the camera and hoping it's pointing to the right place. I know, life is hard right?
When i showed these images in critique, in association to my "thing/concept" (identity, memory, blah blah... i think i've babbled about it in an earlier entry), I felt like they were an obvious deviation from what i had been doing. I could have gone to the studio armed to the teeth with little random bits and baubles that are significant in my memory, but it would have been little more than shooting commercial images of objects. Boring. That's actually what happened to a lot of the people in my class, which worked better for them in most cases, but i'm not about to go make an ad for rediscovering yourself.
Self portraiture was my next option since i've avoided putting myself physically into my own work for so long. Seemed like a good opportunity to give it a shot.
I don't think i'm going to make a repeat performance any time soon.
Anyway, that's my two cents on the matter. White walls also kind of freak me out i think. There's an awesome seemless wall in the studio that our sculpture professor built out of plywood and fiberglass. It's a great workspace, but for some reason it feels really static to me. Too clean. I grew up in a house where my mom insisted that all walls would be painted white, and i proceeded to plaster posters, clippings, photos and other random things all over them. The white or black backdrops are meant to allow the focus of the photograph to be drawn to the object or person, but it sure as hell sucks out any sort of substance or context you can get concerning the subject.

A day with the darkroom

So yesterday, when the rest of the nation was waiting anxiously for the polls to close and for the ballots to start being tallied... i spent 8 hours in the darkroom... which wasn't so dark, but that's beside the point.
I worked on my Gum Bichromate project for class. Prepare to be wowed... by my utter geekiness. I'm going to give you the play by play (i'm so excited that i actually had the concentration required to not only successfully produce images, but to also compile the stage-to-stage images DURING that process).
So first off i will share the images i worked from. This tree image is actually from a 120 roll of 800ASA film i shot last year when missoula had crazy amounts of snow on one day. It's of a tree that i kind of gravitate to for my holga images... mostly because it's easy to photograph trees. they don't ask you questions or have to be directed to pose in a certain way. You kind of have to take them or leave them. the other thing is that i kind of enjoy the skeletal nature of trees w/o their leaves.
They're just aesthetically pleasing to me. *shrugs* there's a lot of easy bullshit concept and content you can draw from them as well, which is definitely nice when you just want to photograph things you like but still have to explain yourself somehow in a critique.
The other image is the one i shot with my cellphone a while back... it's in one of my earlier entries on here. not the last one, but the one before that. anyway. i'm sharing the base images b/c i think it might be easier to see what's going on in the rest of the images... i don't know, maybe i'm making it too easy.

So the first step i had to take was editing the images digitally. Sizing them, blah blah blah. Then i had to split their channels into CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK). I had to print digital negatives of three of those (because i was doing a three layer color image)
So firstly, the Cyan layer. I cheated and used cyanotype.
I probably should have underexposed these a little bit more... they came out a tad strong. But i'm also guilty of making dark prints in the first place... be it digital, silver gelatin, whatever. *Shrugs* consistency. that's what i say to that.


















I'm starting to think that the play by play here may be kind of boring. sorry 'bout that. I honestly haven't done much as far as photography is concerned... or much anything else is concerned really. Like right now, i probably should be doing reading for classes and studying some of my vocabulary for Irish because i have a test tomorrow. am i? nope.
So at this juncture i kind of spaced scanning the yellow layer of the table image... my bad.
i took a picture of the magenta layer on the tree while it was in the developing bath.














fancy yea? Notice how much lighter the one on the left looks compared to the dried and scanned version on the right... that's b/c the scanner i was using sucks at scanning images. great at scanning negs, not great with scanning 'reflective' as the scanner refers to it. go figure.
So a little on the gum process, technified: What the hell is it? the process involves light-sensitizing watercolors. They're mixed with Gum Arabic (hence the gum part) and then made light sensitive with Dichromate (nasty stuff. Carcinogen. bad for you.) I paint the mixture onto my paper (in the case of the tree above, a magenta layer over the cyanotype) and wait 20 minutes for that to dry. Then i expose it all with the negative for the magenta layer in a UV light box for five minutes. An hour after it sits in a bath of water (yep, just plain ol' H2O) the parts that weren't exposed to light via the negative wash off.
So simple and yet so brilliant!
moving on...

So since these are only three layer color images (dual-layer gum bichromates with a cyanotype base) this is actually the final step i made.


















Seems so simple, yea? took 8 hours. approximately. Just because of prep time. Then you factor in the drying time for each round because it was submerged in water each time. I even cheated occassionally and used a blow-dryer to get them ready for the next round faster.
So that's it.
I look forward to doing a few more. I have an idea for another set of them... we'll see if that works out ok.
keep you posted.

"We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect.... but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs." -Aaron Siskind

"Photographers are lousy editors." -Maggie Sherwood

This is Going to be a long one...

I just realized that all of my pictures are really large as far as pixels go... oops.

So Friday was a fluctuating kind of day. Work was fine, class was fine, and I felt a little shitty because I am sort of at the apex of my cold (I hope) so I wasn’t up for much as people were concerned. Went home and napped for a while in hopes that it would turn my humours around a bit. Worked alright.
I was going to my friend Noah’s graduation at five and felt pretty rested in time for it and prepared for what I imagined was going to be a fairly stressful event. Let me tell you a little bit about Noah. I’ve known him for the past five years as a role model and fellow advocate. Actually, something I’m sure he doesn’t remember, his small group teamed up with mine for the “digesting the slice” small group (post skits) when I was a freshman at orientation. I remember being awed and intimidated by him back then.
When I was going through advo class, we have tour training requirements and I took two piggy-back tours (where you just watch and follow with the tour guide) from Noah. That boy gives the best damned tour of campus. He has great little quips and stories to offer about everything along the way. I remember that one of the best ones he has is for Curry Health Center. He tells about how as a freshman, he accidentally dislocated his own shoulder when he woke up one morning and pulled at his arm b/c he was disoriented and confused. Pulled it right out of its socket. He takes a particularly embarrassing story and offers it up as proof that he’s human too. He always wins people over that way.
Anyway, Noah was getting his degree from the education program. Since 2001 Noah’s been fighting cancer. Brain tumors. He’s been in school 7 ½ years, most of which he’s on and off had to deal with medical issues. I remember when he relapsed a couple years ago, I went to visit at the Advo office in Brantley Hall and Noah had also stopped by for a chat. He looked grey and miserable. It’s hard to put out of my memory because it’s the only time I’ve ever seen him look so run-down.
I don’t want to talk about the negative parts of all of it. I’m not nearly as close a friend as many other individuals on campus and from around the Missoula community are to him. I can only vaguely fathom what trials his family are going through at this point. Listening to people talk about his strengths and what a wonderful person he is was very trying for many people who attended the ceremony.
Showing our appreciation for a man who’s made a difference in so many people’s lives in a very short amount of time. I hate to sound like i'm eulogizing him. It's not something i like to think about, and i guess that's why the whole thing ended up being rather emotional. for everyone.

It was all very moving, but I wasn’t feeling so hot once it was over. There were a lot of people there, which was awesome. Everyone showing their love and support. I was glad to escape though. I went over to my friends’ house for a game night afterward. We spent almost four hours playing Battle of the Sexes and Apples to Apples.
I have such wonderful friends. Not only did we have a delightful time but they drew me out of the funk I would have otherwise been in. I’m grateful for them being so awesome. Even if they don't know it.
Saturday night we also went out to the bars for Emily’s 21st… belatedly. Another good time. I think that that’s kind of the way I prefer to do things with friends for events. Low key, just hanging out, maybe drinking, maybe just geeking out over a board game and finding out just how much random trivia Matt is familiar with concerning baking tools and ingredients... Who’d have known.
I’m not particularly excited for my birthday, just b/c I know it may very well be a madhouse downtown. Mad. House.

That aside, Saturday was spent slaving away on my Day of the Dead board, which I am relieved to say I completed last night. Geekily took some pictures of myself carving. Not particularly successful a that venture either... but oh well. If you look beyond my dirty sock in the first picture you can see the annoying couple who tried using a dremel inside. Allow me to explain why that is bad, MDF is composed, essentially, of sawdust compressed with a nasty heavy duty glue into a board. It’s a really nice material to carve but the shit flakes like nobody’s business. I sometimes feel like I am carving REALLY dense cardboard sometimes working with it. Anyway, the dremel just kind of pulverizes the board. Breaks it back down into sawdust with the glue broken into dust as well.

YOU DO NOT WANT TO BREATH THAT STUFF IN.

If it’s not a carcinogen, then it at least filters into your lungs and clumps up. Ouch. Anyway, they stopped, but I still am annoyed that they were stupid enough to attempt it. And the reason they stopped was b/c it was too loud. Gah! Anyway.
Random babble. Aren’t you glad I keep a blog? I have so many interesting things to talk about...

So here's a good kicker (because i feel like that may have just been a little too much boring life story) i will explain what my Day of the Dead image is about.










So it's a direct reference of Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa. I saw it when i visited Italy last january. Phenomenal work of art. It's a perfect example of baroque art, and Bernini is such a badass when it comes to posing and drapery. Master Sculpter. But that's not why people flood this tiny church in Rome. No. They go to see this exquisite piece of art because Dan Brown told them it was important.
I have to fess up. I have not ever read anything by Mr. Brown, i judge him without experiencing his literature firsthand, which i suppose is extremely unfair of me, but i can't help but balk at it. I don't like that history has to be popularized and bastardized to get people to actually care about it.
So anyway, when we (my sister, myself and Steve) went to see this work we got there at the end of mass.
We were respectful (maureen and steve are both quite devoted catholics) and sat in the back pews, observing a solemn attitude. Around us, a mob of tourists were also waiting quietly. But they were obnoxiously standing and not presenting a particularly respectful attitude.
One guy had his camcorder out and was videotaping.
Then when mass was finished, all of the tourists just mobbed around the sculpture (which is near the front of the church) and set upon it with flashes and video cameras blazing.
I realize that i was there for the same purpose and was one of them, but i was just a little horrified that i imagine the vast majority of them had no idea what the significance of the piece was if it hadn't been for a piece of shit pop novel by Dan Brown. which also happens to be inaccurate.
You can even take Dan Brown tours of Rome. How freaky is that?!
I don't know, i'm probably just being an pompous brat and an art nazi, but it really irked me. I probably spent a couple hours ranting about it to Steve and Maureen afterward.

Anyway. I chose to do that image as a reaction to that event. Because it is a beautiful work of art. People SHOULD appreciate it, i don't discourage that, but not because some crap author told you to. It's kind of deviating from the celebration of life and reverence of death factor that's meant to be regarded for the day of the dead... but i didn't really focus on that last year either... (to the right)
There are at least two people this year who are doing embracing/kissing skeletal figures. gag me.
ANYWAY no more ranting. I'm excited for this week to be over... eventually.
If i can just make it through my quizzes, due paper and completion of my print. i will be ok.

A trip down the alt-process road

I had the opportunity to sit through a 5 hour Gum Bichromate demonstration today. Way fun. The process involves a few nasty chemicals and a lot of time. It's so cool though! It involves making a three color print (based off of a CMYK model usually) with light sensitized water-colour pigments. They're beautiful images if one can overcome the technical difficulties involved. I highly recommend check out Christina Anderson's website (http://christinazanderson.com/) to see some of the phenomenal work she produces in this medium. I hope to be able to create something even a fraction as brilliant as she has with it. Made one single color exposure today that we will have to see if it produces anything worthwhile.

Earlier today i was trying to figure out a set of images i would like to attempt to print with in the gum and started to recall my "journey" project, which i already talked about a little bit. It doesn't exactly match up with what i've been doing in my photography class so far this semester, which may throw everyone for a loop, but i enjoy the possibility of building a 3-part image that would have a vague narrative format. A starting point image, a now image and an end... which according to the whole concept with the journey project, there really is no destination, so it wouldn't really be a period to the sentence but more like an ellipsis (who gets the reference? nudge nudge...)

Anyway, i was going back through the images from that trip and looking at what i had in order to get some ideas of what i want to do. I shot these three color images with the delightful Kodak EliteChrome slide film, which has such a beautiful quality. I'd never used slide film before (and haven't since b/c it's kinda pricey) and absolutely adore it. It just feels good to me. *shrugs*
So things to think about. we'll see where it takes me. at least it keeps me amused in my down time. i spent a good fifteen minutes just trying to visualize a basic layout for it. sad, i know.
i have better things to do. like reading The Táin

Also reminds me, with the slide film bit, about how sad it is that kodak discontinued their kodachrome slide film. I never used it, nor did i know for a long time that it was anything other than a simon and garfunkel song (shhhh don't tell). I guess it was such a specific process that there are few places that can even process it anymore.
Just another film process left by the wayside as technology keeps trucking along.
Not trying to have a tirade about digital photography and how it's taking over.
we'll save that for some other time.

"Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away..."

things that go bump in the night...

It's been kind of a long day. i have to admit, that i've been a wee bit crabby for the past quarter of it. Totally my bad too. I need to stop being so damned moody.
I had a lot of things to get done today, and had to work the first portion of it. By the time i got off at one and was able to get crackin' on my cyanotype project i was already freaking exhausted. I f*cked up two of my cyanotypes... not sure exactly what happened to them, but they were hella underexposed compared to the first two which i swear i had exposed for the same amount of time... i don't know. I have to go back in tomorrow and try to redo them in time for class at 4. not that stressful, it's just an extra pain in my ass that i don't really need much. *sigh*
i spent a lot of the weekend around family which was a nice change of pace.

For some reason being around family is such a low-stress thing. i mean extended family by the way, when my siblings start to squabble or my mom starts to get pissy... not such a friendly atmosphere. Being around cousins and aunts and uncles is low-key. maybe it's just because i never really get to see them much. *shrugs*
anyway.. the photograph is out at my friend/cousins' (not actually related...) home. Their patio light was illuminating the chair and table surrounded by leaves so nicely.
it reminded me of when i was little and we would play games in the backyard. you know, the usual, freeze tag and such.
One of my favourite games was in the evening during summer... at least up until it started to get too cold. my siblings and i would play out on the back porch. I don't even know what to call the game we'd play, but there was an apple tree in the middle of our backyard that kind of marked the border-line of where the light on the porch could reach.
we would go running into the dark half of our backyard, stand for a few seconds, then scream and come running back to the patio as though monsters were chasing us back. I imagine there was some ridiculous purpose to the game at one point, i just don't happen to remember it.
probably just to have the opportunity to scream our lungs out in the early evening. I bet our neighbors wanted to murder us at times.

It's one of those memories that sticks with me though.
Running out into the dark and unknown, away from the safe and familiar porch...
only to turn around and come back again.

I've been gravitating to the familiar much too much lately i'm afraid. I don't have an adventuresome spirit as i wish i did. I really need to take the leap of faith. Move away. Try something different. Something new. Take chances. There's so many thrilling things to experience and i can't seem to persuade myself to venture away from what i know...

PS: i took that photo with my cell phone.
i know, it's kind of a bad-ass phone.

Part II

I have been trying to get myself to continue on with my rambling from the previous post, but i've been busy all weekend with work and family and have a lot to get done in the next couple of days.
I feel as though i would not be entirely unjustified in running away and joining the circus... at least for this week at any rate. Procrastination is bad.
Anyway, to continue on with our epic tale of photography...

On Pins and Pinholes...
(it was almost a clever title... fell a little short)
So i'm currently enrolled in Photo III and it's a non-silver semester, meaning that we are not offering photo I classes specifically because we do not want to have to deal with the silver-based printing (film and prints) because photoI kids are idiots and it's not good to contaminate non-silver processes with silver... long sentence, let me explain.
Iron based processes, which fall under the category of alternative process/historical process (Whatever you prefer to call it) are incompatable with silver processes. in other words, if you accidently mix the two together (which would happen in a 15'x30' space) both processes would end up being f*cked up and you would have some very irritated students on both sides.

But the photoI kids would be responsible for the mix-up b/c they usually are.

at any rate. we started the semester doing pinhole works. the two images above are both from my paint-'can'mera. The next few are from a concept camera i made with cardboard, duct-tape and some felt. It runs 35mm film from its spool on one side, through the camera body and into an empty spool on the other side.
Then, instead of a lens, like a normal camera would have, i have two pinholes on the front of the box that work like bare apertures (which are actually somewhere around an f200) and allow an image to expose to the film when i remove the tape that works as a ghetto shutter device.

If my description of how these things were made has absolutely no basis in reality to you, don't worry about it. It's terribly geeky, and i'm ashamed to go into too much detail about it without giving fair warning to my unsuspecting victims. If you're truly interested (as i feel everyone should be... but that's just me). I can explain it all to you in good detail over an extended amount of time.


This one proves troublesome for some people to see. the background is a fence (OOOhhhh... that's what that is! yes. a fence) and the red blob on the bottom right is a rose. on the left is my shadow. following? i exposed the two pinholes at seperate times, but in the same place. fancy huh? duct-tape and some pin-holes, i tell ya what...


merry go rounds!!! well.. actually just one. for some reason those things just stick out in my memory growing up. Which is part of my concept i'm working on in class right now (i hate talking about such things b/c it makes me feel really bohemian and artsy-fartsy). Up til the age of 8, my family lived a block away from a really small park, which really only boasted a merry-go-round, some swings and a basketball court. I used to love playing at that park... random aside.
anyway...

and then there's sad bear... a poor little abandoned bear who i found in the middle of winter in a parking lot one day. He's kind of silly and cliche with those wings and how i always photograph him when he's a bit down on his luck, but he makes an easy subject.
i don't have to call him up and coordinate schedules. He doesn't argue with the ridiculous things i put him through. one time i left him dangling from a garbage can b/c it had a smiley face drawn on it...
good times.

The images of sad bear were taken with a different POS plastic camera called a Diana, which i guess was the original POS of plastic cameras. They used to give them away for free as little bonus gifts in the sixties and seventies, i guess. I payed a fair amount of money to get mine, but it has a pin-hole setting on it as well.
It's actually quite fancy compared to the Holga. It actually has a number of different aperature settings and functions a little differently. I haven't taken much time to experiment with it yet, but i am excited at the prospect of trying it out more in the near future.

after i stop abusing the poor winged teddy bear i have.


Now what?
I'm currently working on some images for printing in cyanotype (something i actually have to get done tomorrow because it's due on tuesday in class... eek!).
I went shooting on friday though, for the first time in a while, and it was rather refreshing. The weather was gorgeous and i love the fall, so i went to the park to see if i could find anything worth turning blue eventually. I borrowed the university's lens baby (a lens that you can manipulate the focus area on so that it has an extremely shallow depth of field or can blur the image in such bizarre ways).

It was really nice to just go out and take photos. I know, i was still working on a class assignment specifically, and i'm kind of tired of that being the only time i go out with my camera. I used to love taking pictures all the time because it was my opportunity to focus on the way the world around me appears. my perception of the places i frequent... the first pin-hole image i posted above (from the paint-can) is of the doorway leading out to the balcony in the Fine Arts building. above the frame of the door, someone scrawled out, "look up more often."

I know that it's just another kooky art student trying to make profound statements and irritating the living daylights out of people at the same time (not sure how many people remember all the friendly hippy messages that were scratched out with sidewalk chalk all over campus... that's taking it a little too far). I like that message though. Look up more often. appreciate the little things that surround you. people tend to neglect their ability to see. they obviously are using their eyes most of the time, but i wonder at how many little things people take for granted.

Just some things to think about. In the meantime, i promise to try my darndest to get to taking pictures more. posting little bits and pieces here and there.
I'm working on it.
really.

Kicking it off

So i have wanted to start making a photoblog again for a bit now, but haven't had much need for an additional distraction from life and school. I did/do (?) have one associated with my uber site... which may or may not exist anymore. not really sure what the status of that is anymore, but i digress.
So i guess i would like to gear this toward my art and photography as well as just a tool for recording things that happen on a regular basis. We shall see how well that goes.
In the meantime, let's take a trip down memory lane and try to figure out what the heck is going on with my stuff at the moment.
Can only discover where you're going if you reflect upon where you've been, right? so here goes.

Cue The Plastic Cam:

Last Fall I started off my 'final' year in missoula (what a lie that turned out to be) working towards my BFA. I had NO idea what i wanted my focus to be for my work for the year. not a clue.
seriously. so i started on some vaguely firm ground and decided to focus on things that entertained me... or at least photographic means that i had dappled in that amused me enough that i felt i would like to experiment with them more.
Thus i bought myself a Holga and tried to hit the ground running...
I decided i wanted to focus on my own conundrum of identity. What makes someone who they are, is it the encounters we make with people, places and things or is it something that is ingrained on us from the moment of our birth. I for one am a strong believer of the idea that we are the makers of our own destinies and that things we do on a day to day basis affect who we are and how we behave. Focusing specifically on locale, i started doing multiple exposures with my plastic POS camera, layering places and people... trying to develop images that would make my thought process aparent... that we are affected by the places we go just as easily as we can affect those places.
I think i fell a little short of actualizing that concept through the images i was taking, but it was such a thrilling process to me. Something about the way the Holga captures things. To me, it looks a lot like the way the world looks through my eyes. A fairly keen focus in the center area, vingetting as it reaches the periphery... it was just so thrilling to me, that although i dropped the strain of these images and started working in a slightly different direction, i kept using my plastic POS.

Instead of focusing on a distinct connection between individual and place, i started looking at the bigger picture. the search for place and identity. the roving spirit. the wanderer. i have a bunch of other random kind of lame cliches and titles for it... let's see if i can think of a concise way of describing what i mean...

Things turned colorful...

So here are some images that made the cut for my BFA exhibition. And just to be extra thorough, here's my artist statement:
Photography gives the viewer an opportunity to see the world through the eyes of another individual, the photographer’s. There is a sharing of energy and understanding in that interaction. My concept of identity builds upon that exchange. It is my intention for the viewer to share my particular perception of the world around me, so that they may too take a second to readjust their own view of the world. It depends a great deal on perspective and taking the time to look.

I did two large panoramic images that were comprised of multiple frames (like the image to the left). Each frame was meant to signify a separate experience that when united with multiple other 'experiences' could compose a larger picture, a whole rather than a fragment. It was meant to illustrate my view of how identity is developed by every facet of our lives and that all the pieces fit in one place or another.

I kind of had a rough critique on the panoramic images with a professional photographer who lives in Hamilton though. A photographer whose work i find particularly inspiring, and he just kind of shot down my images because the borders of the negatives threw him for a loop. I wasn't overly crestfallen about it because by the time that this happened, the work had already been shown and i was kind of over it. That's what happens when you work on such a milestone. My BFA exhibition was a HUGE deal for me. I had to prove to myself that i could succeed in completing a professional exhibit and series. I did, but it definitely drained me. i didn't even put up a fight for the prints that i had been so proud of only a month earlier.
I now realize that that's stupid and that those images are very important to me, and that i was disappointed that someone i admired a great deal did not appreciate them, but you can't win 'em all, right? he liked other images. solitary exposures that i too am quite fond of, so it wasn't like my ego was utterly crushed.

"If I could Choose the Life I Please, then I would be a Rover...

and if the road is not for me, then I might take another." -Levellers

So at the time when i was pulling my BFA work together, it occurred to me that i was tired of what i was doing in some respects. I wanted to take a different route. I have driven the stretch of I90 between missoula and billings a multitude of times, and every time there's something i see along the way that i look at and think, next time i'll stop and photograph that.
I determined that i wanted to do some traveling across the state at random and actually stop to do the photographing.
It didn't actually happen exactly like that, but ended up being more of a question of destination. The path along the way being the significant part rather than the emphasis being placed upon an end point.


So for the moment, i am going to leave it at that, for the exciting sequel, which is what i've been doing since the summer.
It's a lot of low-tech new fun stuff. be excited.

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” Elliott Erwitt