Jes

For those of you who have been around me for awhile, you know that I don’t necessarily like having people in my photographs. I don’t know why, it is just a thing.

Slowly, very very slowly, that has been changing. I have been doing more portrait work in the form of sweet little kid photos, and assissting my friends with weddings. The workshop I took with Wing Young Huie helped me see that people can add a new dimesion to a piece. When John and I were in Japan, it was pretty difficult to take photographs without people in them. Things are changing.

Over the weekend I created a few more compilation pieces, all including a Polaroid image somewhere in the compilation.

One I feel is truly a portrait piece. It is the first one I have created that felt like a portrait. With a few tweaks, I’m pretty sure this one will make it into my show at Bloomington in September, 2010.

Currently untitled. Contains two Polaroids, and one Black and White film image.

Here are a few others I have been working with. Most of these will be framed and up for sale at Dabble very soon!

Currently untitled. Contains one Polaroid and two Black and White film images.

Currently untitled. Contains two Black and White film images and one Polaroid image.

Title: City Music Contains one Polaroid image and two Black and White film images.

More to come soon!

~Peace~

New mediums can do a lot for your creativity. They give you new ideas, new ways of looking at things, new thoughts.

For my Birthday I received from my parents and my sweet hubby a Polaroid back for my beloved Hasselblad camera and a stash of Polaroid film from PolaPremium. It has been so much fun to play with!

Anyway, this is the first image I created for my Digital Dreams of Life series that contains one of my Polaroid images. I’m not positive that it is finished, but it is a start, and it is exciting for me.

So far untitled. Contains 4 images. 3 black and white images and one color Polaroid image. All taken with my Hasselblad 501c.

There are times when your head is clear enough that you can look back and see what people have worked so hard to teach you over the years, and realize that maybe you have learned a thing or two…

1. Don’t give up on an art medium just because it hasn’t been easy the last few time you tried it.

2. Don’t give up.

3. Be patient

4. It doesn’t matter how tidy your workspace is, as long as the immediate space you need is accessable.

5. Sometimes you need a break from what you are trying to create to just create something you aren’t trying to.

Things I have learned from my mom:

1. Try it.

2. You are loved even when you don’t feel like you are.

3. Don’t listen to others.

4. Do it.

Thanks. I needed all of that!

~Peace~

Today was definitely a working day.

One of those days where you get caught up on quite a few things and actually surprise yourself at how much you have gotten done.

I love those kind of days!

It seems right now I’m working on my portrait photography skills. It’s a good thing to practice! After taking pregnancy photos of my friend last weekend (they had a baby boy today!), and photos of my friend’s sweet two year old daughter today, I’m getting the hang of it again. I always feel like I’m a little rusty after a winter of not assisting with wedding photo shoots and other photo sessions. There will be plenty of other opportunities to practice in the upcoming weeks too!

Yameena and Abuzar’s hands.

Amelia at her 1st Birthday party.

I also managed to work on a bit of artwork today as well. I have been working on artwork for my project over the past few weeks, but I haven’t liked anything enough to post it. That is a big part of the process. You create something, then you edit it, and often let it sit for awhile before you begin to like what you have done. Today, I finally created something that I kind-of like. I’m not sure that it is finished yet, but I like it enough to post it.

Tomorrow: more film to develop and more pictures to take. Until then, relaxing.

Cheers!

It is Monday.

The first day in what I hope will be a productive creative week.

Goals for today:

1. Finish this blog post (check!)

2. Narrow down photos from my two photo shoots yesterday (edit 2:27pm: Check!)

3. Finish scanning in new negatives and Polaroids (edit 5:07pm: Check on the Polaroid scans! I kind-of underestimated just how many negatives I had to scan in…)

4. New artwork (edit 5:07pm: I’m not sure I like it, but I did work on a new artwork piece today, so check!)

Last week was full, but really helped renew my spirits in the creativity department.

It started by 3 full days with Wing Young Huie in a Split Rock Arts workshop. The focus was on documentary photography, having the courage to ask people if you can photograph them, and capturing an area in images. Many of the students shot digital, while a couple of us (myself included) decided to stick with film. It has been a long time since I was plunked down at a location, told to photograph for a couple of hours, then sent home to develop and scan that film and have something prepared to show in critique the next day and start all over. I didn’t go the route of talking to everyone on the street and asking to take their photograph, (portraits still really aren’t my thing) I did get into exploring an area of the city and allowing people to be in my photographs. I was totally exhausted by the end, but it was exhilerating not only to realize that I can still do that and be that intensive about my work, but also to go back to the idea of picking a place and photographing it. That is something that is easier to do when you are on vacation and allow yourself days in a smaller area and lots of film, but it is harder to convince yourself to do when you are only a few miles away from home. I did get some great images from the workshop, and I’ll post them very very soon.

Thursday was my Birthday! My mom took the day off of work, I took the day off from volunteering at Banfill, and we had a great time hanging out. First stop after breakfast was to the Walker Art Center to see The Quick and the Dead exhibit. I really recommend going to see it! It is a mind boggling, different sort of exhibit. (There is a certain installation piece there that I really would like installed in our next house) Next we stopped at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts which is always good. Then, on to hot stone massages at The Refinery and off to dinner with my hubby and my dad. It was a great way to wind down after the intenstive photo workshop, and after a long weekend, I’m feeling ready to work again.

Hey World! Here I come!

I am stretching.

I’m working, reading, and stretching. New things are working their way into the old, and old things are stretching into the new.

I have a new polaroid back for one of my favorite cameras. The results are truly unique, and so much fun! It makes everything seem different and new again.

I am reading more photography books. Currently I’m reading The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer. It has been a good read so far. I’ll post more insight on it when I finish.

In the mean time, here are a few more photos…a couple of new favorites of mine from our trip to Japan.

Both of these were taken with my Mamiya C330 camera, shot on 120 Fuji Velvia slide film. <3

Japan train station at night

a festival celebrating the blooming of the cherry blossoms in Shukugawa

I have a confession to make.

I am a terrible procrastinator.

There. I said it.

So many beautiful pictures from our trip have ben sitting on my desktop, not getting the attention they deserve, nor getting worked into new artwork like they should be.

No more.

I promise.

You have it in writing.

That said, here is a few pictures from film scanned in from our trip. All taken with my lovely Mamiya C330.

Enjoy.

Out our hotel window in Narita, Japan just before leaving to come home.

Narita, Japan out our hotel window, just before we came home.

Osaka, Japan, during one of our crazy day trips with my friend :)

Not really a let down so much really. The first art festival of the season is over. In two days we talked to many people, sold a lot of artwork, and generally had a great time despite the indecisive weather.  Now that all of the festival preperations are over, it is time to get back to work.

Monday I spent the day happily sorting through the thousands of pictures I took on our trip to Japan…until Adobe Bridge crashed on me…3 times. Ugh! It was then that I decided to heed the advice of one of my fellow Twitter-ers and try out Adobe Lightroom.  So far, I am impressed. It hasn’t crashed on me yet. I might be converted on that fact alone (it really doesn’t take that much!). I really appreciate the ability to tag photos and the zillions of ways to sort them. I’m hoping that the ‘Collection’ feature will help me sort through photos for more ‘Digital Dreams of Life‘ work. If there is anyone reading this who uses Lightroom on a regular basis and has any awesome tips, please send them my way! I’m still a rookie at this!

Besides playing around with Lightroom and sorting through lots of photos, I have been working hard on some new images that will end up as layers in the Digital Dreams project. I’ve been thinking lately while looking through previous work I have made in this series, that there is a lack of humanity in them. Meaning: I don’t take pictures of people if I can help it. This was a challenge when I was photographing our Japan trip, but I was relatively successful. So, my new challenge – take more pictures of people, including some portraits, and most likely a series of self portraits. I have studied Diane Arbus‘ work for years, and am looking through some of Ruth Bernhard‘s currently as well for starters. Any others I should check out?

I’ve been brainstorming a lot lately about work to add to my project for BAC. There are many things swimming through my head right now for me to sort out.

For you, anyone who happens to be reading this can help me out by replying and answering this question:

When you hear someone talking about ‘The Wired’ or ‘The Web (or interwebs)’ or ‘Being plugged in’ what do you think of visually?

Really, this isn’t as complicated as I suppose it can sound. Perhaps you think of an outlet with a cord plugged in. Perhaps you think of power lines stretching through a city. There are no wrong answers. I’m just curious.

Thank you in advance!

For your troubles, here is a peek at a work in progress I started the last week of April. This is still odd for me; I don’t usually show things until I know they are done. But, this could be a fun habit.

I have a goal of making a new blog post each week. Keep checking back!

~Me

I’m back!

We had a wonderful time on our travels through Japan. There were so many wonderful things to see, eat, and do. It is so hard to describe how amazing it was.

I took so many pictures! Now comes the fun part of sorting through them, tweeking colors, and creating new artwork with them. I can’t wait!

Look for some new pictures up here soon, and perhaps a few works-in-progress.

More soon!