Yikes!! It's been almost a year since I've blogged!! There are two things that can be discerned from my lack of attention here: one, I've started school - I never write for enjoyment when I'm in school (even my journal has been cast aside and neglected for months on end - and it, quite literally, takes me HOURS to write one post) - and two, I clearly do not blog for a living. Okay, now that my excuses to the blog-gods have dutifully been given, I present to you ... a new post!! Yes, thank you, thank you (I'm clearly imagining claps, cheers and tears on your part here)! I'm glad to be back and regale you with my stories of triumph, woe and ordinariness to perhaps - just perhaps - make you feel a little better about yourself when mine is held up as a mirror. Let's begin.
I am a very ... ... opinionated individual. I like to think I'm right most of the time and can be stubbornly married to my versions of "right" and "wrong." It's a characteristic that I freely admit and share with my siblings. My mother often wonders - aloud, mind you - where we all got it, and then proceeds to lament for our respective partners. In the best of times, this manifests itself fierce devotion (to myself, family and friends, the whole of humanity), and at the worst of times it means some pretty loud arguments with my brother. (**I would like to temper the pervious statements with this: I am also a very nice person and do not like to get into arguments. The end). This characteristic has caused me a bit of trouble, however. Case in point: my senior art show in college. I'm not going to get into the gory details here, but suffice it to say that I went to a small, conservative, religious college and my art show had nudity. While I knew this might be a problem, I also VERY much believed in the message of the show. In the end the show was cancelled. If you want more details, google my name; go ahead, I'll wait ... ... ... see that? In between learning every town I have lived in (creepy!!) and getting my race times (also creepy), you will find the newspaper articles (which, sadly, don't come with the picture that accompanied them: it was me, in a pink sweater, looking super cute but utterly distraught, holding a camera in front of one of my images ... very effective!!) The ensuing battle resulted in three things: one, I sold three pieces when I finally DID have my show at a local business (yay); two, I completely lost any connection to my mentors, friends and community of artists; and three, I stopped doing photography. This was the uncategorically the worst experience of my life; it shuck the very foundation of who I was as an artists, which was the main descriptor I gave to myself at the time. I didn't even want to pick up a camera for years, and when I finally did, I was stuck - no inspiration, no creativity, nothing ... good ... flowed from my soul. Okay, stop laughing, I know it sounds really clique and dorky, but that is where "good" used to come from - I always thought that you could see more of who I was in my photography than you could see anything about the subjects I was shooting, and if not, what was the point?
Okay, fast forward 6 years: summer 2011. For the first time since the black-death of my senior show I have both wanted to do photography AND have been relatively happy with the results! This is a huge break through for me, and very exciting (hence the breaking of my year-long silence in the blog-o-world). I have had several mini-sessions with myself ... but that gets boring pretty quickly, so I finally decided to bring someone else into the mix, and asked a good friend to be my model. I'm fairly certain that she had no idea how truly important this experience was for me, and how many times I almost canceled on her, but in the end it happened - a day long photo shoot. I loved it. It felt good. I'm excited to do more.
And now I will share some of my favorites from this summer with you here! Yay!! Aren't you thrilled?! Jubilent?! Blown away with enthusiasm and glee?! I figured as much! A couple of things to remember when viewing the photos below: 1) I apparently live in the stone-age and still shoot with film, so 2) all of these photos where taken with a little point-and-shoot digital where I have no control over aperture or shutter speed.
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I went to the Antique Faire in town the other day and wore this great straw hat I have, so I took some pictures in that. I also found this crazy cool mirror which I've used a lot already. It has old, discolored glass and is really fun to shoot with!
My very beautiful and talented model, Misty Freeman. Many, many thanks to her!!
