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