check it out, it'll have interesting imagery and sources for printmaking.
now, back to me :)
I've been making an effort to shift gears recently. It's proving rather difficult.
when i kicked off the fall semester i was kind of up for doing a bunch of printmaking. My day of the dead block was a breath of fresh air. I wanted my sharp gouges and oily inks and instead i was enrolled in a photography class. as the semester progressed, I got really into the Gum Bichromate and fell in tune with my photography.
then the semester ended
Now the spring semester leaves me in the opposite position. I feel like i was traversing an interesting road in my photography, and i find that dynamic difficult to transfer into my printmaking at the moment. We had a demo on Lithography on Monday, a process i'm rather excited to learn and test out.
particularly interested in the possible integration of the xerox transfer coupled with drawing on the stone.
that aside, i have images! yes. new ones at that.
For christmas i was given a sweet little toy camera, made in the USSR, that i fondly refer to as Smena.
Note that this is not an actual photograph of my camera, i was lazy and got it off of google images. Anyway, it shoots 35mm film and has fully manual options, f-stops 4-16, shutter speed from bulb to 1/250th of a second. oh, and it's a range-finder, so despite the fact that it has a focusing lens, you kind of just have to guess how far the subject is away from you and hope for the best. unlike the holga, the focus actually seems to do something, so i have had to make the effort of actually using it. sometimes i still forget...
So to give you a sense of how you actually need to pay attention to focus, let me give you two examples.
one, not focused. and one that is... sort of. I rather enjoy the lack of control i have with range-finder cameras. I guess that's part of why the Holga was so fun and liberating, there was a seperation between what i saw and what the camera saw. I couldn't sit and painstakingly focus on my subject, an act that definitely drew me into the image more, but at the same time took away from the instant and experience of the subject.
My basic method of shooting involves going out with a camera and looking for things that catch my eye. That can sometimes be rather difficult for me, not because i can't find things to take pictures of, but because i'm so overwhelmed by visual stimulous. The world is so fabulously fascinating in many different ways. I sometimes have to step back from what i'm doing and try to make the decision of whether or not something is really meant to be photographed. There are some times when it's better to just take the experience as it is and not try to capture a piece of it on film, because it's never going to do it justice. I guess that's also one of my issues with tourist photography. Why spend hours, days, weeks, traveling somewhere only to experience it through the lens of a camera?
But i digress... So this "fire' garage door isn't all that interesting of a photo, it's just kind of my little ego boost as far as my prowess in getting a range finder to shoot what i want in the frame the way i want it to. Doesn't make sense? just think of it this way, the view on a range finder, specifically the Smena, is about two inches to the left, and and inch up from where the lens is actually shooting. That doesn't really have a huge difference in how the image will turn out, there's just a slight variation in how things will line up. i was just really proud of myself for getting the whole of the word in the frame.
Yes. another nerd moment. Bear with me.this image of the road signs just kind of trips me out. the sign was tilted toward the building and then i tilted the camera while shooting it, so the entire world in this image is a little askew.
something is definitely not right there.
all of the images were shot in Wallace, ID and i must give a little note of appreciation and thanks to Matt.
for the camera
for the roadtrip
for being awesome.
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.
-Lewis Carroll
