Final Performance

Starting to work on the final project in Photo!!! Yaa!!! I wanted to stick to performance/video, cause it's really quite fun for me, being that I do tend to dress up and act like a dork more often than not. It's refreshing.  Here's a little clip. :)

Ladies in waiting

Today is Thanksgiving! It is also momentous in that it is the first thanksgiving that I have not been around family to celebrate it. Not to say that it wasn't great, for it was. That family that is currently housing me, has blessed me so much, and even more so today. I was able to bake with Vickie and share a meal with their friends this evening, and it was lovely.

Anyhoo, so I still am struggling, trying to get negatives to print in the darkroom. I went out to shoot a  couple rolls this morning, and again, there was problems with the camera. Digitals turned out fine though! Hopefully what I have will work... we shall find out tomorrow when I go develop. I'm starting to tire of seeing so much of one idea.

Oh dear Lord, let the semester come to an end sooner than later.

Finals Create Devastation

     It's easy to think then when finals come along at the end of the semester, students would all of a sudden have a strong urge to finish strong in all of their studies, giving their homework that last bit of  blood, sweat, and tears. I am not like this. I have never been like this. I tend to mentally give up two to three weeks before every term is over and tell myself that I will never finish and will die deep in debt with nothing to my name. This has happened to me the entire twenty years that I have been in school.

So here I am trying to do everything besides my homework... I am blogging. :)

   Here is my new experimentation! I have my Grandmother's Kodak Duaflex II currently with me in Memphis, and I have a strong urge to use it for my last photo project. But I need film and with this blessed camera, it's too expensive to just go and buy out of the store. But TODAY!!, thanks to the gods of the internet, I found a video making it clear that 120 film (which is cheaper!!!) can be used in this camera, which apparently only uses 620 film (really not cheap). Ahhhhaaa!! Kodak was making money in the 50's simply by putting the same film on different sized reels, and then making cheap cameras that only fit this "new film". I am happy but also a little ticked off. So tomorrow, off I go to the photo store to buy good old medium format film for my assignment.

Anyways, these are digital photos of the Duaflex II lens.

Meawathon!

     The air was crisp and the sky ablaze with morning light as I drove up to the front of MCA school doors, seven forty-five in the morning on Saturday, the 18th of November. I parked my car and waited for my crew to show up. Today was the Meawathon five-k and I had happily offered to photograph MCA's running group, The Swiftness, as they participated in the run! The morning was cold though, I was in desperate need of hot coffee, and I was using a camera that I borrowed from a friend, of which I wasn't totally comfortable with using. (I knew very well the curse of trying out new recipes with house guests). I also knew that I currently wasn't given any other choice, being that my own machinery was asleep at home, half an hour away.  Slowly but surely members of the team made their presence known at the steps of the school and we trotted down, with cold hands, to the festivities that lay in the heart of Overton Park. 

    It was a cheerful environment, the silent auction and raffle had commenced earlier at seven- thirty, and the sound system set up for announcements  was playing a dandy set of epic music to get everyone in that "running" mood. This varied set soon turned into a perpetual replay of "We Are the Champions" later on during the award ceremony. The Swiftness began their rounds of jumping jacks and stretches which inevitably helped everyone spirit wise And before I knew it, I began to hear excitement from voices that were previously cold and tired. It was time to run! 

    The entire crowd of participants made their way to the starting line and in seconds of the horn blowing,  I was fumbling with the camera and it's foreign triggers and pulleys, trying to keep my cool and pretend to look the part. The running course looped around the park twice and so I had a couple tries to find MCA's star athletes with my lens. And everyone did very well!  To those who ran, I salute: Natalie Schuh, Cris Simmons, Emily Stewart, Nicholous Darmstaedter, George Brooks, and Ashley Homeyer. This group has proved time and time again that exercise and art do mix, and they mix very well. So here is my cry out to MCA...there is always room for more Swift members! 

    The Meawathon is a race dedicated to a feline agency called House of Mews. This agency started in 1994, and throughout the past few years, it has thrived and grown greatly. The house is fully funded non-profit organization that runs off of volunteers and big hearts. This race and the festivities that went with it, was to support what they do; to help protect and care for the feline race! More information can be found at:   http://www.houseofmews.com/ 

Photoshop

     I am not good with computers. I am not a fan of photoshop. I signed up for Digital Foundations, beginning of last semester and dropped it after one day (5 hours) of class. I fearfully fled the scene. I am not good with computers.
    But it was inevitable this semester, and so I signed up again in January. I have survived not because I know what the teacher is saying and doing, but because I can cover things up pretty darn well. My mom would always tell when in college, she passed music theory because she faked it ... well i'm doing the same with this class.  I have found that if I stare really hard at Mr. Zark when he is speaking, and then stare really hard at the projection screen, instead of my own computer, I tend not too look too much like a fool.
I'm not a fan of Photoshop... working with it physically or for it's morals.

    But I do find attraction in intentional photo collaging, or like the good old days, photomontage!!

Paper cuts

     Well instead of heading to the lighting studio this afternoon,like I planned, I decided to work outdoors. It made more sense to take the paper girls to the woods rather than trying to stage everything in the school. . . dirt, time,  too much superficiality..
   I headed outside later than I should have though, and by the time I made it to the park, the light was already fading away. So I left campus a little disappointed. But driving on my way home, I thought, "Why not continue still? I have a plethora of lights that I can always work with!" So I stopped at the local Kroger, and set up a camp next to the stop lights. Slowing down my shutter speed still gave me enough to work with, along and the sun setting gracefully as the cars zoomed on by.

      I was careful not to make eye contact with the drivers. I could feel their gazes heavily on my bent back.

     Ideas are forming! I want to now find lighted advertisements  that I might use as a backdrop for the next photo shoot.

Ideas...

I don't brain storm well. I tend to think really hard without success and then give up. It's only at that moment when I let my mind relax that I seem to spring upon an idea to work on. We are supposed to submit to two paid curated shows for photo class before the semester ends, and I am really struggling with what to work show. I have done quite a bit of experimentation of paper cutouts, but there really is no concept behind my actions or the photos. Why do I take pictures of dress pattern dolls?? The question has been in the back of my mind for quite a few months.
     Then I remembered yesterday of some photos I took during spring break. They played around with the idea of putting odd organic materials, such as sod, into dish-ware. I wanted to make dirt look good enough to eat.

   Well, why not put these fake cut out girls, (the image of the unattainable) in something that is indeed quite real and messy... As if to show the silliness of  "perfection" in advertisements. And hasn't it always been this way? Since the days that photos (photomontage) have been cut up and pieced together, perfection has always been easily viewed but never found. 

So tomorrow, I think I will head to the lighting studio armed and prepared for amazingness.