Photography

This past semester I took a photography class.  We shot exclusively with black and white film and did all of the developing and printing ourselves.  The class was literally one of the best I've ever taken.  I learned a ton.

I meant to have this blog set up a while back and so then I could make postings of each assignment, but seeing as I didn't get around to getting the blog up until like a week ago, you are now just going to get blasted with all my pics.  Here are just some of the highlights.  Click on any of the pictures to get to my flickr page where you can see pretty much all of the pictures I took this semester.

These first couple photos are from the very beginning of the semester.  I like these pictures a lot, but in comparison to my later pictures, you can tell that I still was really finding my feet.  I was shooting a lot of what my teacher would call "found objects."

Barbed wire.  Not very exciting, but I thought it was a really well-developed shot.

Heather's majestic Golf

Roque (my roommate) and Oliver.  We were out on a bike ride.

One of the highlights of this class for me was the legendary "Jim's woods" (pronounced jee-im's wuuds) shoot.  I had to shoot people that I knew, and so some friends and I went out to Dieter's neighbor's land to shoot some photos.  This is the result:

Me in a field.  This shot makes me think of Sigur Ròs.

Dieter with a feather.

Mopsie!

Rocks make good chairs.

Our final project was to intentionally communicate something with ten top-quality prints.  This was hard for me because pretty much all of my photography up to that point had been shot very organically without much intent to communicate any particular idea.  The following is the artist's statement that I had to compose as part of the project:

In Friday, I attempt to depict the anticipation that one has towards the end of completing a long period of work and the subsequent feelings of liberation and fun.  It includes two narratives of young people working, having a moment of epiphany, and finally doing things that they love.

This project evolved quite a bit as I was conceptualizing and shooting it.  Initially, I was going to depict how people grow up, focusing on how even when we are old and doing “adult” things, we still have a desire to return to the ways of our youth.  To have fun.  I still think that Friday depicts this feeling.

De-molding.

Beanie in his element.  Reminds me of when they find Karl in LOST...

The All-Trac.

Now that the class is over, I miss it terribly.  Maybe this blog can be a good reason for me to get out there and shoot some more projects.

This post wouldn't be complete without a mention of my beloved A-Team.  You guys are awesome.  Photogs forever.