Tag: photography

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I wish they made maps for life.

scenic route

Saying I’ve been in a rut would be putting what I’ve been in, lightly. Whatever it is that I’ve been in, it hasn’t been fun and I’m not quite sure where I’m going now or how I’ll get there- I’m lost. I’m learning very quickly that I’m just not good at some things. School. Balancing life/work/health/education all at once, while retaining my sanity. Definitely not good at coping with extreme stress. I’m not great at being consistent.

The only things I’ve ever been good at are photography, and getting back up after being knocked down. I guess you could say that though I lack focus at times and change my mind often, I am persistent about rebounding from my failures, and oh boy have I failed lately. I’m finding myself basically back at square one in almost every aspect of my life and its really hard to be back here. Its kind of like being a drug addict returning to AA/NA after relapsing, relapsing so hard you can barely lift your head to speak of your struggle.

That is where I am right now. I’m trying to get back up and keep fighting for what I want out of life, although right now I’m not quite sure what that means for me. I guess right now it means focusing on surviving, maybe even thriving at work and picking up the camera again and remembering what I love about life, and being here in the moment. Sorry this post is so vague I just don’t really want to bore anyone with my whiney problems, trust me- my fb & twitter pals hear me bitch enough about my shitty situations lately. I just wanted to post and say although I don’t really feel like getting back up and trudging along, I am going to- because I have to, for my own sanity I have to.

<3

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Portfolio Development: The Final Ten

Well its about that time. My Portfolio Development class has now officially ended, today we had our final class and got to see what everyone has been working on. I somehow managed to finish despite a couple setbacks and laziness (and I got an A if anyones keeping track). Now that the class is done for this semester (going back for round 2 in fall), I wanted to start sharing my final 10 with you guys.

160, this one was not part of the final 10 but I shot it a few feet away from a really sad roadside memorial for a family.

But first, a little background about this project.

I originally came up with this idea when I was around 19 or so and started taking a lot of local road trips. I had discovered how much I liked going for drives and loved exploring rural areas like the Delta or the country in areas like Wilton or Jackson, and even wine country. One thing I happened to always notice was the alarmingly high amount of roadside memorials I would see along the way. I distinctly remember one trip through the wine country and counting the amount of roadside markers I saw. It was chilling. But it sparked a curiosity in me. Why do families do these? I wonder how they get it there? How long have some of these been around? Why did that person die? These are questions I’m still asking and trying to find answers to with this project. Back then I decided that I would like to someday create a book with all these roadside markers telling their story.

Well this phase of my project is just scratching the surface of that curiosity and story. For this Portfolio Development class I decided to shoot 10 photos from these roadside memorials, along one of my favorite places to drive, Highway 160 along the Sacramento River, known also as River Road. Obtaining the information behind each memorial has proven to be more difficult than I had originally thought but this summer I’m dedicating myself to investigating these thoroughly, I feel like I owe it to these people to tell their story and hopefully make people painfully aware about being safer on these dangerous rural roads.

I’ll be posting each roadside memorial in a 5 part series for the next few Wednesdays and sharing some of the information I’ve learned along the way. I definitely hope you can take something away from it as I have.

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Its so hard out there for a pimp…

image
happy breast cancer awareness month! Some lovely soul left some BC awareness bracelets on the mailbox today in my building and I wanted to hug them, seriously. (taken with the Droid 2 Global)

Sorry, that kind of ran through my mind as I remembered how much I miss blogging. I’m still without internet unfortunately, technically I’m paying for it (or will be once I get the bill), but my signal sucks so bad I have to buy a signal booster…blah blah blah long story short, I should have my precious internet connection back within the next 2 weeks. Sigh, its times like this I wish I had bought a laptop instead of a desktop.

Its also times like this that I am extremely grateful for an unlimited data plan. Since I have no internet and my external hard drive with the majority of my entertainment is packed away in a box in my moms garage for temporary storage until I finish unpacking what’s here (holy run on sentence), my mobile netflix has been saving me from many nights of boredom.

But anyway! Enough about boring crap! Istillshootfilm posted a review of the toy TLR camera I’ve been drooling over today. If anything her review only makes me want it that much more. And if you want to learn more about the TLR Blackbird Blackbird Fly you can read all about it on her tumblr…seriously I’m going to have dreams about this tonight probably. I promised myself though that I’m not buying anything photo related until I buy that film scanner I’ve been meaning to get. If things go according to plan I should be able to get it as a christmas gift to myself. :) I love playing santa.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I swear to god if it kills me, I will have internet by next payday. If its the last thing I do.

UPDATE: When I awoke from my slumber this morning…guess who had full on internet? My friend Biz had been on the phone with comcast all morning to set up the internet for her apartment and somehow my signal went from “poor” to “excellent” and voila! No booster needed! FINALLY.

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Reason Why I love Film #53798

Delayed Gratification.

Yes it sounds sick, almost pornographic, but this is something I actually kind of like about it, love about it. I’m a very impatient person, waiting patiently is not my strongest skill. Film forces me to take it slow, at a minimum I have to wait an hour after shooting to see what I got. To see if my eye matches my skill, to see if the mood I was feeling at the time translated the right way onto those tiny silver crystals.

(via Rick Yribe)

You wait to develop. You wait to print. You wait while you expose your paper in the darkroom, you sit patiently and count the seconds while its in the developer, forming an image before your very eyes, the stop, the fix, while it washes. Its a giant waiting game. But the results are so fantastic it makes all the waiting TOTALLY worth it. I love the feeling I get when I realize I captured EXACTLY what I set out to capture, its one of those gut feelings you can’t really explain, but you just know it when you have it.

I don’t wait for many things, but I will wait ever so patiently when it comes to film. :)

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thinking out loud

So I need to start prepping for this girl scout thing I’ll be doing for my moms co-workers troupe at the beginning of June. I’ll be helping them earn their photography badges.  They’re my nieces age (10-13) so I think something hands on would be cool for them but since we won’t have access to a photo darkroom I’m going to have to get creative. I was thinking I could bring a variety of cameras for them to see and handle and have my instant cameras loaded so they could have something in their hands that day and maybe shoot some digital too and show them how you can manipulate things on photoshop… but I’m not quite sure. I’m excited to teach them but I’m not the greatest teacher so this is going to be a challenge for me. If you were a kid learning about photography for the first time, what are some questions you would have?