Some Photography Thoughts...

2 classes down, 1 to go.

My doco was presented on Tuesday. It went well, and the class and prof were very receptive of the work. It was rewarding, to put so much effort into it and be recognized for the commitment. Unfortunately the printer queue was backed up so I only got my prints today, and just finished putting my portfolio together.

My photo history and crit paper was turned in today (well, yesterday at this point). I sort of wrote it in a very very short period of time, but I'm confident I'll pass and I guess that's all that matters. We had a short quiz in class for m&ms, and I realized just how little of the material I retained. I'm definitely not a history and theory student...

I spent about 4 hours in the lightroom today working on my final image for photo tech. It's going alright, I guess. I've got a lot more work to do, though. Good thing I have tomorrow off...

On a bit different note... when I walk down the halls of Massey, I look at the images other students have done and I am blown away by them. Some of the underlying ideas of these photos, combined with the seemingly perfect stylistic execution amazes me. I find myself wondering if I am indeed in the right field of study. I look at some of the projects and think to myself "wow, that's so unique, I could never come up with something like that!" It's a bit tough coming from a University where the photography program is very minimal and being one of the best students (no, I'm not being an egoist) to a university where there are many talented photographers who seem to not work very hard and still pump out awe-inspiring images. I'm finding that I'm questioning my own photographic ability much more.

Part of me wonders though, if this is just because the style of these photographs that capture is so different from my own. Everyone of course says "you are your own harshest critic," but I like my work. I just like other peoples' more. I see peers' images and think, "man, wish I had thought of that and was turning in their project." But maybe people think the same thing about my work, and are dissatisfied with their own, and it's just human nature. Or maybe this is just my mind telling me that I really have to start exploring different photographic styles and technologies, since almost everyone in photo tech is doing something different, and most of them are really interesting.

Well, it's almost 1AM and I have swim instructions tomorrow AM, so it's time to hit the sack. If you made it through all my ramblings, good for you, and here's a cookie.

In the past 3 days I saw the sun once for 5 minutes. That's the entire story.

Random thought for 25 May:

Why can I leave my heater on for hours upon hours to warm my room up, but then when I leave the door open the slightest bit my room gets as cold as the rest of the apartment within five minutes?

What ever happens to you, we'll see
But it's not gonna happen with me

I guess
That this is where we've come to
If you don't want to
Then you don't have to believe me
But I won't be there when you go down
Just so you know now
You're on your own now, believe me



Ugh, crunch time. The last two weeks have involved both a lot of stress and a lot of photo sessions. And it's not even close to over. Here's an outlook on what my schedule looks like for next week.

Monday - Turn in final portfolio and final essay for Photo Practices B
Tuesday - Turn in final essay for Photo History and Crit
Friday - Turn in final prints for Photo Tech.

So now let's look at how much work I have left to do in these three papers...



Photo Practices - Staying with my subject tomorrow night (Friday) to photograph him and his kids who are visiting for his birthday. Then photograph him in the studio Sunday afternoon. Proceed to edit about 130 usable photos down to ~10, finalize color correction and print, then start and finish final essay.

Photo History and Crit - Start and finish essay. Yeah, that's right, I haven't done anything at all. In the words of Brian Regan, "Oh no! That's due today! I had nine months to work on it and I did nothing." And my essay indeed may not be much better than a cup of dirt. "It's a cup...with dirt in it. I call it cup of dirt. You should move on now."

Photo Tech - Photograph the final photo in a set of three on Sunday afternoon, then spend 8+ hours editing and manipulating in Photoshop. THEN print all three after color correcting, and find out how in God's name I'm going to present them...

I can tell you exactly what my parents are thinking as they are reading this post. "If you have so much work why are you sitting there writing instead of working?" I have no answer for you two, besides the fact I am a procrastinator. But I suppose at this point that sentence has the same effect as informing them the sky is blue... If all of a sudden it changed, they may think the world was ending.

Awesome Commercial + Bird

You need to watch this ad. It's a commercial for Genesis Energy (who really cares who it's for?) that features the Pukeko, a New Zealand native bird. Absolutely hilarious, especially the chicks when they're climbing into the doorway. Their feet are almost bigger than their bodies!

Orcas!

Sunday, when I was at the duathlon, John got a text from one of his swimming buddies that read "orcas in oriental bay!" For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Wellington area (which is probably about 95% of the people who read this blog) Oriental Bay is about a 15 minute walk from me, and is where my swimming pool is located. Apparently there was a family of 3 orcas, swimming around within 50m of shore. Quite strange to hear of them so close to the beach and wellington, but very cool nonetheless.

In lieu of my triathlon training program, I decided it was *probably* a good time to learn how to swim. So today I went swimming with my sister and Malcolm at the Kilbirnie pool, and Kelsi did her very best to teach me to correct (read: learn) my stroke.

I think the only way to describe my swimming is with one word - atrocious. I attribute this partially to the fact that last time I went into a pool with the intention of swimming laps was well...never, and the last time I got into water with the intention of improving my swimming technique was more than 13 years ago, learning how to swim for the first time at my local lake. Most of the time I would end up on the shore playing in the sand within a few short minutes.


This is certainly going to be an experience.

no more cast! Apparently it turns out the fracture I had was in a part of the scaphoid that they generally don't worry about. Basically I didn't even need to have a plaster on in the first place. So right now I just have my wrist wrapped in an Ace bandage for good measure, and they didn't feel it was necessary to put me in another plaster.

The cast comes off tomorrow morning!