School's Out

A bunch of us went to celebrate Victor's birthday at Skylark. This is how we entertained ourselves. Photo booths are always cool.

Ashley, my favorite owl, and me.


Yatzik, Chiara, Ashley, and me. Look closely in the third one and there is the creepy eye of Yatzik. Yatzik, the all knowing.

More 19th

I Don't Go To Sleep To Dream

from a little project in 19th century about anger and insanity. i like where this is going, but i like it much better in color.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Finals

finals are here...

deadline for weisman is tomorrow...

the thousands of photo students that we haven't seen all semester are jumping out at all places...

cold weather? here to stay for a while

stress...yeah...

time? not here....

more photos? .... cool your jets...

Nice To Meet You

Here are some young ladies I photographed in the Hostel I stayed in while in Nice, France. The two girls below, Duanna and Maissa, had just finished their first year studying at Kings College in London and came to Nice to work for the holiday. At the beginning of my stay they were not too welcoming and I tried to avoid them. But one night, while they were talking about boys, I decided to put down my guard and give them a little elderly sister advice. What else could unify girls other than the men that drive us crazy? Afterwards we shared giggles and beach towels and warm goodbye hugs. We are now facebook friends.

On the last day they finally realized that I was a photographer and why I was carrying a 25lb black backpack to the beach everyday. Maissa had never had a formal photograph made of her before, but Duanna was somewhat well learned on the subject of modeling since her dad was an amateur photographer. Maissa was nervously excited, and I was just trying to hurry before the Pink Lady through me out.



Duanna, originally from Ireland, was job searching my entire visit and never found one, so after the beach got boring and fighting off the old men got tiring, she packed up with Maissa for back home.


Maissa, from north of London, was the two week girlfriend of the 28 yr old Guatemalan guy who helped run the hostel. But alas! A new shipment of hostel-sleepers arrived and a girl from Sweden then swept him off his feet. Maissa was hopelessly jealous since she slept right next to the Swede and was in tears about it almost every night.


Olga, a girl from Sweden (not the love interest), was a delightfully sweet girl who originally came with her sister, Elsa, but decided to stay after her sister left. She was most certainly the best drinker and the keeper of the peace. For me, she was a translator that argued with the Pink Lady herself to get my money back on one night's stay that I was not going to be staying. I love her.

Best of Both Worlds

So I've been praised, and I've been slammed, which has left me completely confused. Thursday should be interesting because we're having a guest critiquer: Mary Casey Freedman, i think? So it should be the best of both worlds having the experience of a successful photographer and the unfamiliarity of our work. But it will be a nail-biting experience for sure. If I land in middle ground, I'll be happy...for the moment. Anyways, I remembered I had a pulled back shot of the one in the kitchen and I am directing my gaze at the camera.



But what do I want to do, you ask? I just want to have fun...with Nadine AND get a picture in focus every once in a while. SP's are so damn frustrating!

A Photographer's Photographer

So I became a real photographer today and finally got my external hard drive. My mother gave me one almost a year ago, but it was only for PC format. I've been too lazy ever since to do anything about it...until the other day when i bought a 320gb for $95. huzzah!These are the the first ones to be loaded:

Happy Kee Kee, Photo Kee Kee, Hungry Kee Kee, and Kee Kee the Full

Almost a year ago Chiara took me to the wonderful land called, Wisconsin. This is in a diner in Silver Lake, i think? Eating with Kee Kee is always entertaining, mostly cause she gets something on her face, chows down, then nearly throws up at the end of every meal because she somehow fits a small beast inside her tiny body, every single time.

Piccadilly Market

My second day in London was spent in both Camden Market and Piccadilly Market. The later was more for families, antiquers, and delicious produce. When I first arrived it was nearly raining and the antique booths were packing up with these billowy tarps. No one was friendly because they all wanted to go home so I was a little nervous about taking pictures. I think this was my first roll of black and white while over there.

Be A Man, Woman!

That's what my project is about. I figured it out on train last night. Society (meaning both men AND women) tell women to act like a man in analytical, emotional, and conversational instances. And this is stupid.

Here are a couple of women I can be a woman with, and not be told to do otherwise.



Me and Amber




Me and Suzy

Clue

From last week's critique:




It got a yes and a no. I like this photograph, but it was the first one from this project that I felt inhibited by a square format. This was for sure a 35mm shot in my head. I wanted the length of my arms spread out across the bed and not much in the background. It is so hard to plan out the shots exactly how I like them without seeing the subject in them first. Sometimes you get happy surprises and other times it's just off... like this one. Ben suggested I get a new lense. I suggested he get give me the money to get one. I'm going to try to reshoot this one the way I see fit. However, it does work nicely with my idea, but the aesthetic becomes about the shapes in this one, as opposed to the subject being viewed.

Ben said at this point in the semester is when people either speed up or slow down in their photography. I'm afraid I've come to an ever massive obstacle: non-motivation. ugh...I think this photograph displays that feeling, but it's not necessarily what it is about. It could be about a lot of things.

Better Than A Photograph

Tonight I went onto Facebook and looked at one of the dear families I became friends with this summer on my European adventure. From London, a city which I know I am destined to be completely submerged, I saw that they had a website for their blog, a new addition from the last time I had checked. When reading their blog I was moved to tears of the amazing love story told in just seven paragraphs and the horror it struck me to be invited into the panic that they lived in for a few days thinking that Leslie, the young wife and new doctor, had cancer, and then later thinking that they both might have aids. I cried the whole way through; I cried to the end when the scare ended up being no more than a child saying "boo!" but I still cried. These two people had the strongest impact on me in such a short time than anyone has in a very long time. When I was in Europe, they were the only ones that made me aware that my heart still had a thump. How do they do this? HOw do they do this in only a total of a sporadic 6 days in the total of 2 months? I knew at the end of my trip that they had become dear friends of mine, but not until just now did I realize how meaningful they were to me and how much the effected and changed my life forever.

I wanted to photograph them, but schedules did not allow. I wrote in their guestbook that it didn't matter that I hadn't because I had not seen the last of them; I would photograph them the next time I came back, which would hopefully be extremely soon. Upon reading their blog all I could think is how I wish I had photographed them so that I could show whomever reads this blog their faces. But then I realized that there were plenty of times to photograph them. I saw them plenty of times, there was plenty of light, but it never felt right. I just wanted to enjoy them to see them with my eyes instead of reflected in a mirror. They were and are better than a photograph will always be and no photograph could ever capture what they mean to me.

I think at a certain point in a photographer's life it gets hard to put the camera down, but we must. If we don't, we're only photographing what we see as a photograph, not life. I encourage you to read Paul and Leslie's blog which I will put in my links. I am not the only life they have changed, I guarantee that.

Anything For Art

Yesterday evening Chiara, Suzy, and I drove up to Burlington, WI to do a massively quick photo shoot. We all skipped a class and Suzy and I skipped work. It was worth it. I had to shoot in a particular corn field in a quite ridiculous outfit posing as a creepy Virgin Mary. All three of us were running around frantically trying to get as many shots as possible with the gorgeous light Wisconsin always gives us. I was able to get some polaroids as well:

Relate Female?

more to come from my photo sem project

Ethereal

I'm working on these images for 19th Century Photographic Processes. I have converted these images to black and white digital negatives on lyth film and will make albumen silver prints. It will, i think, be gorgeous. Two of them are from Milan in the house I stayed in, and the other three are in the apartment in Cinque Terre.

Cookies, Cats, and Captures

To the best roomate ever. Love you....and i guess Krasnal too.




oh and i can't get images to load on my home computer from this site so that's why there were not 13 images on the last blog. i assure you i can count. i haven't gotten THAT crazy yet.

Magic 13?

Killing Time, Killing My Mind

PARIS


CINQUE TERRE


FRANCESCA, THE MIME ARTIST IN PARIS


so desperately wish this was in focus.