new painting

find overlap. ash. 2007.

for some reason, blogger messed up the colors a bit, and it looks a little muddy on here. the red is a bright, vibrant fire engine red. either way, it's the first painting I've done in years. it evolved so much this afternoon and I think it came out alright. layers of old journals are built into it, some showing, most not.. and a print of a cyanotype I did over the summer. hopefully more will come out, but as I'm about to start fall semester, we'll see... 

new camera, new attitude

finally got a new d-slr today, and became comfortable in the fact that I don't need fancy equipment to be a good photographer. picked up a canon digital rebel xti. it's small and weighty little body is sitting next to me. I like that it's a bit smaller, faster, sleeker than my old digital rebel that I've had for the last 5 years. I think cameras are the only piece of technology I can last long with. I'm in love with it, and celebrated that love with some casual shots of the family dinner.

jet setting off to colorado bright and early sunday morning with the mom. I think I messed up my knee just in time for it too. having some pretty sharp pains underneath my knee cap. I'll grab a brace and take it easy on hikes, but there's no way I'll forfeit them totally. In may I carved some very important symbols into a tree. These symbols represent something special in this life, and I want to document their evolution, how the trees wrap their bark around the engravings people leave... how they mark that place so well. big sky, big trees.

the top photo was taken by macie. they are fascinated by cameras, and that excites me. I'm going to start posting more often. at least once a week, that's my plan. you'll see more as I'm in the mountains, as I start to draw more, etc.

there's a good chance I'll be in the next art walk here in jacksonville. we'll see how it goes.

shiny toy guns

I can barely pull myself away from your fire

sunday road trip.

collapse into me tired with joy

a few from the early morning photo shoot we did today.
got to st. augustine around 6:45ish, walked around shooting until 10:30ish.
good times.

just give me something to hold onto

finally some recent work again. i'm really loving this stuff, and i want to continue working on it past this point. i want to keep taking memories and experiences and analyze them within myself.

critique went pretty well with them too. but i always wish there was more actual critique going on instead of the mild 'i like it' or 'it's neat' comments. I got so used to critiques at scad that I expected the same sort of analyzing and such from these. But sadly, they're lacking severely.

so yeah... here they are. I want feedback! lots of glorious feedback.

in other news...

i'm getting up at 5am tomorrow to go shoot in saint augustine. i'm incredibly excited about this. we're getting up early enough to catch the sunrise down there, and i'm probably taking more than enough film and cameras.

definitely my holga, possibly the digital rebel, and maybe my trusty canon ae-1. i love the manual everything and raw appeal of it.


another exciting thing...

i'm excited about a book. Ruth Reichl's "Garlic and Sapphires", which is a memoir of her time as the New York Times food critic. She's witty, funny, sarcastic at times, and addicting.

I'm the kind of reader who has to be hooked on a book, addicted from the first paragraph to read. I have to be excited about a book to want to read it... and this happens very rarely.
but I'm excited about a book.

new digital work

with inspiration from kelli connell and sarah gibbons, and the fact that it's a project for class...
I have some new work I've been doing.
here's one of the images I'll be turning in this week.
more later, when they're done and I don't hate them.
I'm taking memories, experiences, events from my past and sort of replaying them with different identities of myself, different personalities, etc.
I'm also thoroughly enjoying this stuff, and think I'll be doing much more of this, experimenting with it and i don't know what...

[lazy morning breakfast. 2007]

people are traded crime for crime

I finally got the time and energy to scan the film from colorado. I'm not terribly excited about how things turned out. it was a new holga, and I wasn't sure what it would look like. I need to find where the light leak came from, since I taped up the back and sides before shooting. never the less.. here are some of the shots.
they were all taken in Avon, most while snowshoeing up a mountain. the first one is the backyard panorama style. the one above are some markings we found in the aspens. it was pretty common to see marks people left in the tree trunks, some from the 60's and 70's. other marks were from the deer rubbing their antlers against the trunks of the trees.

you don't have to play along

what have I been doing for the last month?
going crazy with school.
the photo class this semester is digital imaging, which is pretty painless and allows me to spend copious amounts of time staring at my laptop screen, altering, patching, and otherwise messing around in photoshop.

I also went to colorado for a weekend, so I'll be scanning those negatives this weekend, and seeing what good came of my holga in 10 degree weather and fresh snow.

for now, I'll leave you with the two appropriation pieces I turned in last night.
they're big files, so click to the full version.

This first one was the favorite of my professors. Before I added the text (definitions of transition, transformation, and transgender) my mother loved it.

I like this second one better, but only because I think the first can be choppy and I don't know... I like how I composed the second one a little better, the two people interact with each other instead of just being placed in different positions, it works better, I think.

I created a third, but it didn't go along with the theme as well, so I'm leaving it out.

I'll try to update more frequently from now on, I need to get back into the swing of things and doing more photography and getting inspired, but I feel such a large lack of it right now.

open your eyes

I've had a lot of time to think about life. Whether it's the antibiotics, the sick day I had to take, the emotional week I've had.. I've been thinking.

this is all we have. I never really think about the future. I think about the immediate future, yes, but hardly about 5, 10, 20 years down this road. but this is all we have. We have these moments in our lives that affect us. we have the people in our lives that affect us. and we hardly take advantage of those things.
the choices we make in life affect us more than we allow ourselves to acknowledge. but this is all we have. we have one chance to make the most of this life. we don't get another after this, we can't go back and redo things. this is it.

I can't sit back anymore. I can't let people, things, experiences pass me by in hopes that it'll come again. I can't continue to have this lack of courage or lack of confidence. I'm awesome in my own right, and I'll survive any minor road bumps along the way.

I owe it to myself to take chances. I do it so half assed. I take a chance every now and then, and pass up others. I know that I'm not in the position to take some of these job offers I'm getting at this moment. I know I owe it to myself to make waves, take action, be brave and courageous all the time instead of when I'm sure I won't fail.

I had a quote on the cap of my tea today and it read, "the things we do for ourselves die with us, the things we do for others last forever." It's kind of true. We have this one chance (i keep going back to it, i know) to make this impact, make this life everything we can, and we do have the world in the palm of our hands. Anything is possible. It's true. It's not just some optimistic thing.

"Every minute from this minute now
We can do what we like anywhere"