The show is finally up and installed (thank goodness) and the grand opening will be September 5th, from 6-8 pm! If you're in Milwaukee, please come to MIAD and look at the work. 

I don't know that I'm completely happy with the print quality, but I learned a lot. A lot a lot. Last semester was my first semester ever being in the darkroom, and we moved from silver gelatin photograms to Van Dyke and Salted pretty quickly. I've never really used film seriously until this project, and it was very self-guided. If I didn't learn it at MIAD, I taught myself, and a whole lot of this project was me just figuring things out. I was once told by a friend that in order to learn to drive stick-shift, you just have to get out in a field with the car and go at it. That's what this process was for me: taking things I had learned and trying to apply the

I'm back in the states and ready to get a move on with my projects (my study abroad was worth 3 writing credits and 3 studio credits), but I'll be going home next week, so I'm just going to leave all of these here. I promise that they will one day form some sort of cohesive body of work that will end up on my photos page of thise

Summary: I'm in Ireland, I've been super busy, this is just a dump of the project I'm working on, and I promise to update more regularly when I get regular internet. 

It's the last three weeks of finals month, and spirit is running thin at my apartment. After I apologize for posting a day late (no, two days late, I am so sorry), I'll leave ya'll with a bunch of visuals. 

As you may know, I'm pursuing a writing minor to compliment my photography BA; writing is always something I have loved and seemed to have an aptitude for, so it only seemed logical. That, and it seemed like something that could possibly give me more career opportunities. Anyway, I am working on my writing minor, but I am also deeply involved in MIAD's writing club, ThirdWord. For this semester, our club thought up an imaginary town to develop through writing and visual artwork: Anondale, IL, population 52,000, possible alien invasions in the 50's, carries all the quirks of a 'small town' (I use the term loosely. Milwaukee seems like a small town to Chicago, but few people I've run into can fathom that a town of 1500 people, like Tarkio, can exist). 

After brainstorming up the basics, we offered our creation up to the world and have been accepting submissions in order to create a publication. We picked our winners, so to speak, and are in-process of composing a zine-ish book to go along with a reading party. One, and possibly a second, of my stories was accepted, and I was asked to include some filler artwork to break up all of the texts. The photos above are filler, and some were also used to make posters earlier in the semester. 

Hopefully, I'll eventually figure out how to upload samples of my writing or fu

Where does aesthetically wonderful and conceptually rich meet? Is there a place?  How does one go about making work that is so visually engaging that the audience feels compelled to spend a considerable amount of time in front of it, but still reaches really important issues or creates good discussion? 

I just paid my last installation for my Ireland Study Abroad trip.


I'm gonna photograph the bejezus out of Ireland. 

It's been a long week, especially weekend, so I'm just going to throw up some photos and thoughts. The vomit begins
now.

I think I would be considerably less stressed if I worked in the darkroom every single day. Everything is slowed down and feels so simplified when I'm in there, and I love the magic of chemistry. I don't have to battle technology, and I can experiment and move around as much as I like. 

Some people think in color, some people think in grayscale, some images are about color, some images are held back by color. I think I think in one or the other depending on what camera I'm using. If I'm shooting in digital, it's usually color. If I'm shooting with black and white film, I tend to look for black and white images in the world. 

I recently started developing my own roll film, and it is crazy exciting. Nothing absolutely spectacular has come out of my camera yet, but I'm happy to be making work, learning new things, and thinking new thoughts. 

I'm still not entirely sure what my work is about, and that absolutely terrifies me. I'm starting to wonder if everything I thought it was about is wrong, and it's actually just about the quiet, contemplative moments and sights in life that are important in an unarticulatable way. 

There are occasions when I think I'm majoring in photography only because I can't major in book arts. 

It seems that I'm subconsciously trying to complete a major and three minors; I'm taking an art history course for fun next semester and a geology class even though I've completed all of my MIAD science credits. 

I'm really interested in photographing on the bus. Not necessarily people (see Walker Evans), but the scenes outside the window and compositions that are created by objects and graffiti left behind by riders. I expressed my concerns of getting in trouble for photographing the wrong things or people in a public space to Larry, and he gave me his usual words of wisdom. "Shoot first and apologize later, or run like hell."

I want to work with my Polaroid Land camera more. 

Crits can be scary. Crits can be inspiring. Crits can make you want to cry. No matter how your crit plays out, the only thing that matters is if it is helpful.

For anyone unfamiliar, crit is short for critique. In classes and when submitting work to exhibitions, everyone has to hang their work up or hand it to someone else and say, "Here is what I did, here is what I tried to accomplish, tell me what you think." Sometimes entire groups of people critique your work, sometimes one person. Sometimes you're present, sometimes you aren't. The ultimate goal is to hear what people think of your execution, both technical and conceptual, and find out what is great and what you can improve on. 

Even though crits can be nerve-wracking and scary, they're really important, and you should have them as often as possible. Talk to everyone about your work that is willing to have a conversation, and if possible, talk to established artists. Talk to your professors. I know I've had a great day when I have a one-on-one talk with Jon or Larry, and even better if I make it through without crying or making excuses. 

If you have a visiting artist at your school or studio and you're graciously given the opportunity to have them look at work, take it. Always take it. I was lucky enough to be recommended to have a talk with Dan Torop (the only sophomore invited; a couple of juniors were asked, and the rest were seniors). I didn't know anything about Dan, but I said I would love the opportunity, and then I spent the next 24 hours freaking out about what I was going to show him. I was freaking out up until he walked in and we started talking, and then I was too busy having a conversation about art and learning about Dan and myself to be freaking out. 

Always take good opportunities that will further your knowledge, no matter how scary and no matter how unprepared you think you are. 

If you can't make it good, make it big. 

Panoramas have always had a place in the history of photography, but the technology to produce large-scale prints, by which I mean good quality and fairly inexpensive large scale prints, is still pretty new. Let's face it- digital photography is still pretty new when looking at the history of photography and the history of mankind. What is it about the gigantic prints that increases the value and interest of the work?

First and foremost, it's the fact that it takes more materials, be that paper, ink, developer, trays, etc, to make the print. For the most part, as surface size increases, so does the cost to produce. That cost increases as the creator chooses to employ printing or processing services, and the photographer could, at minimum, end up paying $6 a square foot. 

Aside from the material aspect, larger prints are considerably more tedious to create. When you blow an image up to three or four times its original size, minor imperfections are more noticeable, and if the image involves a lot of retouching or stitching together, the possible problems increase exponentially. My recent panorama, for example, took me at least 24 hours, if not more, of work to process. The nine-foot scene is made up of five different images, manually merged and corrected. All seams had to be erased, every piece lined up correctly, and any verticals or horizontals corrected. Exposures needed to match, and colors needed to be right. Unfortunately, even with all the work put in, this photo is still not what it could be. Which brings us to 

equipment. 

To make great-big photos, you need a camera and lens that can take in great-big amounts of info.  Lots of pixels and good quality construction. You know, expensive things. Things like $7,000 cameras and $1,000 lenses. Or, large format cameras. Many professionals shoot with 8x10 film cameras to achieve highest possible quality, but everything comes at an opportunity cost. Everything's expensive and the processes are different, but in the end its all about the print and working how you want to work. 

I was, and still am, pretty proud of my own print, considering my time restraints, equipment limitations, and current school standing. When my parents came to visit, I eagerly took them down to the school, where it current hangs, and showed it off. I think they were proud of the scale and my abilities, while being mortified that "our house looks like that". I sent them back with a 24"x6" version. 

Something I have never been interested in, even though that is what most people associate photographic careers with, is studio portraiture. You don't get to be outside, you have to work with people, it's very difficult to get exactly what you want, and it makes me feel like I'm giving in to consumerism and the corporate man. 

That being said, I know that using lighting is a valuable skill, and it's important for me to be able to work in a studio environment and understand what I'm doing. Sometimes, one must support their photographic habit with, gasp, a job. 

Currently, I'm in a lighting class taught by the bubbly and talented Jessica Kaminski, known well in MKE for her work with the Milwaukee Ballet Company. While the work is not my forte', Jessica is a great teacher and makes things fun. If not for this class, I don't think I ever would have realized how much cooperation, teamwork, and time goes into pulling off a studio shoot. You have to coordinate with your team or assistants to find a time to use a studio, unless you are lucky enough to have your own. You have to find talent, or agree the team members will shoot each other. And then, there is set-up: backdrops, props, lights, what color is the talent wearing, what color should you use, what kind of lighting is appropriate for the subject matter, what are you trying to evoke with your work? Even after all that, there is a lot of communication an dependence between people. The photographer must know how to direct her helpers as well as the model to get the effect she wants at proper exposures and with good techniques. It's difficult, it's time consuming, and it takes a lot of practice to get familiar, and even more so to become skilled. 

Even though studio work isn't what I picture myself (ahaha, bad photo joke) doing in the future, I'm definitely learning a lot and getting some good experience.