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Spring 2008 Photography, Pt. 2 | 5:36 p.m. - 2008-06-28
As you'll remember from the last entry, I took two photography classes in the spring that had me come up with my own projects and work on them throughout the semester.
For Color Photo Communication II, I did a project involving self-portraits that deal with personal fears. I wanted to do this project because I thought it would be a stretch. Previously I'd never (really) worked on self-portraits, and I wanted to get better at it. Although these all have a central theme, they are pretty vague and it may be hard to determine what I had in mind when I was taking them. The secret is that even I didn't know what I had in mind when I was taking them. Well, I did sometimes, but it was usually very, very vague.
For my portfolio I made twelve prints (I wanted to do thirteen, seeing as it's kind of a spooky number and all, but I didn't have that many good images), and I included quotes to accompany each photograph. Through the quotes you can get an idea of the (vague) things I had in mind.
I readily believe that there are more invisible beings in the universe than visible. But who will declare to us the nature of all these, the rank, relationships, distinguishing characteristics and qualities of each? What is it they do? Where is it they dwell?
- Thomas Burnet, Archaeologicae Philosophicae
love everywhere exploding maims and blinds
(but surely does not forget, perish, sleep
cannot be photographed, measured, disdains
the trivial labelling of punctual brains...
- e.e. cummings, "but if a living dance upon dead minds"
it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are
- e.e. cummings
"But indeed it isn't what you fancy; it is not so bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, I will tell you one thing: the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde."
- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
"The time is now..." the sign across the river began, but with history stomping upon me with hobnailed boots, I thought with a laugh, why worry about time?
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images...
- T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land," l.19
It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me.
- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you're never quite on the beat. Sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around.
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
A thousand thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I.
- Samuel T. Coleridge, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Datta (GIVE) Dayadvham (SYMPATHIZE) Damyata (CONTROL)
- from "The Waste Land"
Then all at once it was night. "Ransom...Ransom...Ransom...Ransom..." went on the voice. And suddenly it crossed his mind that though he would some time require sleep, the Un-Man might not.
- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
--But who is that on the other side of you?
- T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land," l.362
Spring 2008 Photography Projects | 10:05 p.m. - 2008-06-25
Before I went crazy and changed my major, I was taking two upper-division photography courses in the spring--a color class and a black and white class. We do our own processing in black and white, and make our own color enlargements. So I was doing a lot of photo-taking, developing and printing this spring. We were also required to come up with our own projects and work on them throughout the semester.
For Intermediate II (black and white), I did a project on my friends' dorm suite at their university.
Here are the prints from my final portfolio.
Thank you guys for letting me annoy you and take your pictures all semester long (I was basically in residence at their school; I spent a lot of nights there).
For that project I used Ilford HP5 film, shooting at 1600 speed, and developed the film with Microphen, in order to take fast exposures in a low-light setting. This is called "pushing the film." It gives quite contrasty negatives, but it allowed me to take exposures without a tripod indoors, sometimes with very low light. If the flourescent lights were on I could get exposures at 1/250 or maybe even higher sometimes.
I didn't get as far as I would have liked with the project, but I was able to turn out a few prints that I really liked. The portrait of Emily (second-to-the-last up there) reminds me of those old-timey paintings of Jesus with the halo around his head, or the icons of the Virgin Mary. Haha. :)
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