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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!

I wrote this as we were working on getting everything ready for our trip. By the time you read this, I’ll already be in Japan :)  See you in a couple weeks!

Getting ready for a trip has the ability to make you go temporarily crazy. Maybe this is just a ploy to make the plane trip seem not so bad. By the time you are on the plane in that tiny seat cramped next to the person next to you, you are so greatful that you have to shut off your technology and for the next however many hours, there is really nothing you can do about a lot of things and you cherish that peace. It has been a roller coaster this past week. I feel like every morning I wake up in a panic that I have forgotten something else needed for our trip. I’m sure there are many many people in this world for whom traveling to the other side of the earth is nothing. For whom getting to their destination is nothing more than a long road trip. I am not one of those people.
I love to travel! I love the excitement of being someplace new and having new things to eat, and new things to take pictures of. Where around every corner is something you have never seen before. For however many days I am in a new place I do my best to soak everything in, capture as much as humanly possible with my camera, and try not to forget anything. When I come home I feel renewed, and I feel like I am able to look at my surroundings in a new way. They feel fresh again.
That said, I am also a home-body. I love being where I know everything and everyone. Where I am comfortable, and have a routine. Where I can talk to my friends and family about anything at anytime.
That said, I’m on my way! A pretty great adventure awaits me! Check my Flickr page for picture updates! My plan is to upload all the digital pictures I take every night and post them there. The images I take with my film camera will have to wait a bit ;)

~Peace~

When I pledged to post in honor of Ada Lovelace DayAdaLovelaceDay09 I never realized it would be the day I was leaving on a two week long trip to Japan or that things could possibly get so crazy before leaving on a trip.  So sadly, this post will be much more general and short than I originally wanted it to be, but, I have a feeling that this will not be my only post on this topic…
My Ada Lovelace post goes out to a few of my favorite women artists, and a few that I have met briefly along the way.
To Julia Margaret Cameron who focused herself towards learning the technology of photography – learning the workings of the camera, learning the technology of the developing chemicals, and printing her images. She never gave up perfecting her techniques of coating glass for negatives, working on exposure settings, or creating her art. I give her so many props! With as much of a clutz as I feel I am sometimes, I can’t ever imagine using glass negatives!
To Diane Arbus – at times my muse. Another who perfected the technology of capturing her world with her camera, capturing the faces of the people she related to, and those of the people who fascinated her. She always brought her camera with her. I try to do the same.
To Georgia O’Keeffe who studied the technologies of painting and drawing and capturing her world with her favorite mediums. She has shown me that no project is too big.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Tomorrow evening is the reception for the Anoka Ramsey Community College Photo Alumni show.  I have four pieces in the show.  Two are pieces I have shown before.  Two are pieces I worked my butt off to finish in time to be displayed.  All four mean a lot to me and have many bits of my memories and my heart in them.  I know it sounds sappy, but it is true.  This is why I make art.  The reality is that I don’t sell much of it, and instead use my skills to do other work for people to make enough money to buy the supplies I need to make more art.  I make it because I have to.  There is something inside that calls on me to create and keep creating.  When I think I have flushed out one idea completely and can’t make anything more around it, a new idea comes and I keep going, making new things.  It is a circular process.  A long process.  A process that takes so much of my energy, my brain space, and my time.  And I love being a part of it!

So, for any of you who are familiar with Neil Gaiman, and are familiar with his wonderful online journal and read it on at least a semi-regular basis, you understand the idea of his ‘closing the tabs’ posts.  If not, here is a short explination:

As the week goes on and people send cool links to him, or he finds cool sites on the interwebs, he keeps each site open in it’s own tab.  Eventually, when he has time, the posts links to all of the sites on his blog, and closes each one after posting.  Each tab has been passed to him, reflected upon, blogged, and there-by passed on.

I do the same sort of things with tabs.  As I come across cool things that inspire me or make me think in a different way, I keep the tabs open until I completely finish reading them, or I have figured out an appropriate tag to give them so I can bookmark them.

I have decided that there are many tabs that might be of great interest to someone reading this, and decided that every-once-in-awhile I should do a ‘closing the tabs’ post, though I much prefer to call it ‘my inspiration for the week’.

So here you go:

My Inspiration for the week:

A Survey of London’s Remaining Professional Darkrooms is a great photo essay about, well, London’s remaining professional darkrooms.  I found this thanks to Polaroidgirl on Twitter.  (I follow many awesome photographers and artists on Twitter!)

I think these are awesome and I almost want one of my camera cards to die so I can make one!  (Also sent to me on twitter from someone cool though I can’t remember who now)

I really like the idea of this sketchbook especially since the pages are meant to be screen-sized…but I always feel like I can make notebooks myself.  Having the grid would definitely be nice though!  (Also from Twitter)

I <3 these Kodak films about Mr. Pixel and Mrs. Grain!  They make me smile :)  (Found on Twitter from Kodak’s Chief Blogger)

Films like these of the awesome stop action type make me secretly wish I was a video artist…(Yup, it’s from Twitter!)

Enough links for now.

‘Til next time…

Today, for whatever reason, was one of those hard days that you feel like will never end. 

There were a couple of blog posts that I read today that did help a bit – at least from a “creative-photographer-not-a-waitress” point of view:

First there was this post at Smashing Magazine about 10 ways to make your photography skills better.  I’m not trying to brag at all, but I have noticed that I am doing (or at least try to do) many of them on a regular basis. 

Then, there was this blog on HDR photography which intrigued me.  This is the first I have really read about the subject, so I’m still a little uncertain about it.  Perhaps more of a discussion on that will be in a later blog.  Anyway, there are some great pictures in that posting.

And of course – Fashion!  (“Fierce!!!”)  The Daily Beast’s posts on Fashion Week made me smile :)  Lots of great pictures to look at!

This day has been long enough for me.  Signing off for the night.

New pictures to come soon!

~Jes