Musings

Aha! Reading and visiting Nashville always does me good, creatively anyways. I've currently started writing my screenplay that I am super duper excited about. I didn't think that I would be excited really at all, but I am. I've also got some vague ideas about where my burdened project will continue. Donna Arntzen has gracefully allowed me to use her for my model temporarily. Here is a polaroid sketch of sudden inspiration I gathered from her house:


Here are some more musings from that day:







I've also just today started to storyboard an idea that I've had for about a year or two now. It will be fun, but all I'm going to tell you now is that it involves this car, or one similar to it. So if you know where I can borrow one for a day, let me know.



In the steady stream of trying to find a job that doesn't sell my soul, I came across this artist, Helen Maureen Cooper Beautiful Inspiration from her series "Birds of Appetite."

Mint Rhubarb Spritzer

I will update soon.
I promise.
But now i'm too busy making rhubarb spritzer.
In other news:

none. except that everyone is getting married. which is really no news at all.

ReBoot My Robot

So Graduation is over and life after school begins....okay what now?

1) do NOT work at Starbucks or any coffee/tea cafe
2) do get a decent paying job probably at a restaurant
3) climb my way up the gallery-working ladder
4) get a job at anthropologie so i can get an adult's wardrobe
5) organize my life
6) start paying back loans
7) take a break, but keep photographing

Still, I wonder when my life really begins. Even after all these things can be checked off. I wonder how long it will take me. I wonder if I ever will. Or have I really already? blakglkjaslkdhalogop.

This picture makes me chuckle a little every time I look at it. It's from the set of Peer Pressure, the practicum film I shot film stills for.



Here are some other favs:

With A Wink & A Smile

Hint Hint.

This is where my project has taken me: to a lot more work for me. but at least i'm actually somewhat excited to pick up a camera now. I just got to get out of my uber lazy streak.

The God in Goddard

This scene made my day. I was t.a. -ing for jon gitelson, it was the class' midterm so we just got to hang out and watch movies. this was the last one we started watching and didn't get to finish. It is not 171 in my netflix queue. The classic French filmmaker, Jean-Luc Goddard, in his masterpiece, Bande a Part (Band of Outsiders). You can also tell the HUUUUGe influence it had on Jim Jarmusch while he was making Stranger in Paradise.

Spring Break

Wish I was here again.



{Nice}

Instead I'm excited that it's 50 degrees in Chicago. oh well.

Happy Spring Break.

And Happy Birthday Alanna!




And for God's Sake, Happy Napping!





{venice}

System Overload

Right now is a time of solitude. I am becoming a recluse. I am suffering from severe senioritis and i don't want to do A NY THING! I am so bored out of my mind with photographs right now. Everything has turned into a chore, a systematic way of life, where i feel like even the art world falls into a robotic ignorant state of mind. I thought the art world would bring me away from this but really the art world is just a different version of roboticism. We have our own language, that when you stop and think about it, is absolutely absurd. "I really enjoy this image because..." God if I hear that one more time my brain is going to explode through my corneas. Along with: This image is "painterly," "juxtaposition," "your since of light," etc. Im just so sick of it all that it is draining all inspiration i once had. We've become so soaked and marinated in the "art world" that we start making "art" for only the art world; art that can only be understood by this absurd language and that looses all its meaning because the art is just another form of materialism for this world. We envy it, we lust after it, we create it, we become a slave to it, we conceit it.

Anyways, it's times like these when I retreat back to music to give me a since of direction and placement in this world. Today, Bjork is helping me do that. Everyday I am realizing that I need to stem out from photography. A flat still image is boring me. I have more than that. I feel more than that.

enjoy:

New Inspiration

T.A. - ing for Kelli Connell and now making contact sheets for her has been more than beneficial. To see work like hers once every week that only select eyes get to see is profoundly helpful to me. Her work blows my mind; there is something on every contact sheet that I like. I'm pretty sure that the closest I will come to be a successful photographer of her stature is when someone mistakes her contact sheets for images taken by myself. And what a great person on top of it! I heart Kelli Connell. If you are not familiar with her, get familiar.






Vist more of her work here.


Also another new favorite female photographer is Alison Brady:





Another honorable mention, Lisa Kerszi:

The Polok Myth

is it devendra banhart? is it jesus? it's YATZIK! he may not be a myth but he certainly is legend. and a legend that has now said goodbye to his jesus locks and traded them in for nothing less than a wharhol-worthy do.

Flikah

Check out my Flickr for kinda new photos

Nice Try

So I tried to update this last week, but blogger did not want to upload pictures. But for all you loyal readers, i.e. mom, i will have something to show for my six week break in a few days. In other news, the semester has started off pretty great and I'm getting my Canon 5D tomorrow! woohoo!

peace,
elise

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: