Caught In Action

I am very self-conscious about others seeing me in my creative process. When I set up my camera to take self-portraits, I try to wait for a space and time where streets are empty, and no one will see me in front of my camera. The whole process is very personal to me, even if the final photographs are pieces I am inclined to show to an audience.

Of course, my desire to shoot privately is sometimes difficult, and during those times I have to suck it up and tell myself that it doesn't matter that other people see me in front of my camera. Today while I was taking a self-portrait, I noticed a woman and her fluffy dog staring at me intently. I turned off my camera, and approached her because she was standing in a spot very close to the next photograph I wanted to capture. Well, it turned out that I had nothing to be self-conscious about because this woman was so fascinated by what I was doing, and she wanted to know all about it.

Her name was Diane. We talked and talked about photography, and she told me that she loved black and white photographs. I asked if I could take her photo--I loved what her face looked like, and I felt like we had created enough of a bond that she would accept. Diane was so appreciative that I saw her beauty, and she kept insisting that "she didn't take good photographs," but I totally disagreed, and I told her so. She got all misty eyed, and so did I because I realized that I was able to make her feel beautiful when she usually doesn't.

Here is a photograph of Diane in black and white:

A few minutes later, Diane's neighbor, Brenda, strolled up in her wheelchair. Diane really wanted me to take a photograph of her, but Brenda was hesitant because of her cigarette smoke--she said she loved Diane and she didn't want to bother us with her smoke. However, after enough insisting from Diane, Brenda said, "ok, take a picture of me," and I captured these two:

Shortly afterwards, we all went our separate ways, and it was one of those partings where everyone just met (or at least I just met Brenda and Diane), but I felt like I was saying goodbye to old friends. 

Here are some of the self-portraits I was trying to keep private:

 Extra, Extra Long Legs

Alice

And here are a couple of bathroom selfies:

Extra Reading:

Sixteen children and their bedrooms: Photographer James Mollison took photographs of sixteen different children from around the world along with photographing their bedrooms, their spaces. It's so fascinating how much some of the children resemble their rooms--the shape of their faces, their clothing, their expressions. When I was in middle school, I had a writing assignment where I had to describe someone by illustrating what their room looked like. Mollison's photography project reminds me of my middle school writing assignment. 

Go check out Mollison's photos! They are very interesting. 

Thanks for keepin' up, everyone!

Mooned

Recently I had surgery on my gums, and therefore I am unable to chew food for two weeks straight. Eating is one of my all time favorite things to do. If I played a sport, eating would be it. The past week has tested my patience and made me realize how much I took chewing for granted! I've tried to mash things up, like the salmon I ate last night, and that makes eating go incredibly slowly. Mash, mash, mash. Tiny bite. It's absolutely infuriating... and I have never longed to eat a vegetable so much in my life!!

After work today, I went out to dinner with some old friends. I could not eat the delicious bread that all my friends devoured in front of my eyes, but when the waiter brought out salads, I tried my hand in eating a tomato. I kept cutting up the tomato into very small pieces, and I noticed the waiter watching me do this. Complete silliness, cutting up a tomato into tiny, swallowable bites!

After dinner, I dropped two friends off in a quiet little neighborhood, then parked, and began searching for this evening's photo subjects. I ended up walking only about three blocks or so, but I found and photographed multiple perspectives of tonight's gorgeous, full moon. While my camera was on its tripod, I met a woman named Amy, who told me that tomorrow evening/early morning on Tuesday, there will be a lunar eclipse! (Find the eclipse's schedule here.) Amy and I had a great conversation, and I ended up being really glad that I parked to take photographs. You never know who you'll meet or what you'll find or what kind of ideas you'll create while walking around. 

Here are the many faces of the moon: 

Extra Reading:

Susannah Benjamin: For Christmas one year, Benjamin's mom gave her a Kodak point and shoot, and though she let it collect dust for awhile, she picked it up later when she began attending an all-girls' school. Benjamin saw her friends struggle with what many people grapple with--body issues, peer pressure, and bullying--and she decided to document that reality. Later she ended up being hired by Beyonce to shoot part of her 2011 world tour! Go check out her Flickr feed. I love young people who do amazing things because they inspire me to be better at what I do! 

Goodnight, everyone, and thanks for reading!

Strangosities

At the place I work, we light candles to get some good smells going. As I was lighting the candles today, I noticed that the little yellow BIC lighter I was using had something etched into it.

Cunt. I don't know how I didn't notice it before.
People make me laugh. Who was so bored, or feeling so angsty, that they felt the need to etch the word, "cunt" into some plastic?

After work, I took a drive, and as I pulled onto a particular side street, I noticed a green house with two green-outfitted mannequins staring at me from the top window.

Someone's always home. No one's gonna rob that house. Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Mannequin!

Once you start noticing something, patterns will begin to emerge, and you'll likely notice similar things again and again. My day was a stream of strangosities, and so now I will share them with you,

in photographs.

Light My Cunt

Mr. and Mrs. M

Yesterday You Were Alive

Decided to Quit

Holy Shit

Extra Reading:

Since I have been playing around with double exposures lately (in a non-cheesy way, hopefully), I did a little research on other photographers who have made successful double exposure photographs. Here are two artists whose work I admire:

Sara K Byrne: beautiful and delicate floral portraits. Byrne is also based in Portland, hey neighbor.

Matt Wisniewski: I love so many of Wisniewski's manipulated photographs. He makes people look like they have a head of waves, or a beard of rubble. Definitely inspiring and worth checking out. Also, he's just four years older than myself. Right on. 

New Feature!

Guys! New feature!
(I feel like an infomercial.)

I've decided that at the end of my blog posts, I will put links to extra reading. Most of it will be photography based, and sometimes I might post a link to something related to a different artistic medium. These links will be to other blogs, artists' websites, or news stories that I find interesting. I hope this part of my blog enhances your experience, and I hope you ponder the links and look at more art than just mine. After all, the way to learn about art and get inspired is to look at a lot of different art! :)

Today I have two links to share:

Jamie Diamond: I found this woman on LENSCRATCH. Diamond uses actors and poses them to create scenes from her childhood, as well as other scenes she finds interesting. She also has a project where she instructs actors to pose for a "family portrait." The actors don't know each other, but they know how to act as a family to have their portrait taken. I think it's brilliant. And quite funny.

Suzanne Heintz: After multiple people asked her too many times about why she was still single, Heintz decided to make an art project out of her frustration. To stuff the obnoxious "why aren't you married yet?" question up people's asses, Heintz bought two mannequins (one grown man and one little girl), and traveled around the world to take "family portraits" with them. Her project is hilarious, and weird, and everything good.

Enjoy, guys! Thanks for reading. :)

Zoo Me

Today I went for a really long walk with one of my favorite people. We walked up the road from my house, thinking we were going one place, only to pass an unfamiliar trail. Deciding to be major explorers, we took the unknown route instead. The mystery trail brought us close to the zoo, and so we decided to go see the Rainforests of Africa, the Pacific Shores, and the Cascade Crest. Here's a moment from the African Rainforest.

When we got to the zoo, we only had an hour and fifteen minutes to explore; I thought that would be plenty of time, but I was very wrong!

We saw fish with big, gooey eyes,

sea anemone that we couldn't touch (sadly--I like how they pinch your fingers),

reptiles with sticky feet,

flamingos (which are super cool because they are PINK, which is obviously one of my FAVORITE COLORS. My other favorite color is green, in case you were wondering.),

and giraffes (which happened to be my nickname when I was little. I was tall, so I got called "giraffe," and a lot of people asked me if I was on the basketball team, which I obviously wasn't).

On a side note, I like tall girls who wear heels. I like tall girls who wear heels because, like a stranger once said to me, "tall girls in flats are just...tall girls in flats." 

A giraffe in heels would be quite a sight, too. ;)

We were also flashed by a monkey (because monkeys don't wear undies), but I don't have a photo of that one!

Seeing Double

There is a fine line between double exposures that are interesting and double exposures that are cheesy. I made some today that I thought were interesting, and I hope you think so, too:

Vertebrae:

Nature's Kiss:

Barking Man:

Spitting Flowers:

Laying in the Grass:

I love pairing images of naked skin with images of plants because they are similar in many ways. Naked skin is the only clothing we are born with, while the plants that surround us in nature are what our world was born with--no infrastructure, just the Earth, the soil, the plants. This might sound hippy-dippy, but I think there is such an extraordinary beauty in exploring the shapes and forms of what we were naturally given. These double exposure photographs allow human skin and living Earth to be synonymous; for a moment, they can take you away from today's distracting world.

Vortex

There was once a girl who ran away from her home on the hill

she ran and ran until she was deep in the forest

once she was there, things started to change
her legs moved strange
and they took her to stranger places

when she came to the end of the trail, she found a great big room

and each wall had a mirror,

that grew more and more distorted

her vision of herself changing, changed

she got up close to a mirror and tugged on the edge

behind the glass, a window

she couldn't quite see through it

she only felt dizzy

and fell right on through

she fell into a vortex 

and the world tumbled over and over

it spun

and she could walk on the sky,

the bushes,

the houses

suddenly

she began to fall again

she fell onto her feet

back in the forest

she was in the middle of nowhere nothing

she did not know what had happened to her

not of running away

not of the walks through the forest

not of the mirrors

not of the vortex

not of walking on the sky, the bushes, the houses

she only had one memory

of her old home

and the old floral dress she used to wear around the house

she'd close her eyes and forget the world.