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