Photographic Diptych

Well, my upcoming photography assignment was stressing me out this morning. (Technically I guess it still is morning. Not quite noon yet.) But anyways. I had to do some type of narrative with some sort of issue behind it. I don't really do "issues." I feel like if I were to take photographs that commented on war or poverty or animal cruelty, it would come off as insincere and fake. Forced. And while some people can get away with creating art with intense and sometimes controversial subject matter, I simply can't bring myself to do it.

So, I looked at the book industry. And the recent popularity of the Kobo reader, iPad, and things like that. E-books. The downloading of literature and the very gradual shrinking of people who buy actual books. Well, I personally like actual books. I'd rather hold a book in my hand than some sort of electronic device. I can't exactly go over a text on costume history in a Kobo reader. And certainly not a book on photography. And how exactly does a parent plan to read Love You Forever on an iPad? Part of the fun for kids is turning the actual pages of a story. Holding the actual book in their hands and looking at the pictures.

With all that in mind I shifted about some of the books on my shelf and snapped a few pictures. And within an hour my project is all done. Just needs to be printed. Now my only concern is if I want matte, glossy, or metalic paper. Oh, decisions...

And as for the narrative aspect of the photographs, it's basically someone picking and actual book off an actual shelf and reading it. None of this e-shelf business. Real books. Ironically I went with Jane Austen's Emma. Which is, of course, usually free in the e-bookstores.

Photo Session

Took some photos for my Time Based Media blog this morning. All inspired by the amazing Mika Ninagawa. I love her photographs. They're pretty much what I inspire to take. I only wish I could get in somewhere that had a ton of goldfish. Her goldfish photos are some of my favourite.

So here are some photographs. All flowers. I figure they'd be more fun to look at than my research paper for History.

I'll have to take a few more in the morning, because all my favourites came out portrait, and I really need them in landscape. Silly me.

Average?

It seems like I'll be sticking somewhere in the 70s while at school. I've received marks from 70 - 75% so far. Nothing above. Nothing below. A little strange, but consistency is nice I suppose. Though something in the 80s or, God willing, the 90s would make me a little happier.

I'm told it's because teachers want to push us to create bigger and better things. So, what am I doing? Creating a giant photo collage of a chaotic and tackily coloured city scape. It'll be 36x36. Which may not sound overly huge, but is quite big for me, as I like and tend to work small.

That is what I am currently working on. I've chosen all my photographs of buildings from around the world. (Mostly NYC, Paris, Tokyo, and Florence. And a few other places as well.) And now I am photoshopping each and everyone to look different; different colour schemes and whatnot. All highly saturated and very bright. Planning to get this printed on fabric which I will stretch over a canvas. Hopefully it'll turn out alright. We'll see...

Textures.

Almost finished my texture drawing for, of course, drawing class.

The basis of the idea was to draw a tree, but leave the leaves as negative spaces and colour in the background (the gaps where we could see sky) with different textures.

An interesting project. Though my OCD need for super well rendered detail came back to bite me in the ass. I've spent hours on this thing...

So, my work so far. Corn, leopard print, a metal flower on a bracelet, and in the top corner there, some paper stars. You know, the fold-y kind.

My work space. A messy pile. Three cheers for messy piles! Wooo... Note the picture of the adorable maiko, Fukusato. I have pictures of my trip to Japan scattered everywhere.

And the aforementioned paper stars. I have a big jar of over 2000. Never try to realistically draw these. It is a huge pain.