A sort of retrospective as of 2007

A Sort of Retrospective: Read this post to get a good basic idea of what I do. When I started posting here, I introduced myself, but I didn't introduce my creative work. Right now I mostly post things I'd consider as play or experimentation and it's interesting to see how I sometimes get responses along the lines of "oh, this is wrong" about some seemingly technical aspect (exposure, focus, etc) instead of someone saying that something displeases them personally. I understand if someone would like to see something different, and I'd like to hear that feedback, but to just say something is wrong in art is a little weird. I understand where they are coming from. I came from a technical background myself, actually got into art through programing, somehow slipping into flash and 3D studio, then falling into the depths of graphic design, before landing comfortable on real dirt with a real camera in hand. This was rather late compared to many people out there who seemed to be photographing from birth. I'm sure I'm not the only one who came from such a background. After four short years of aggressively photographing, though, I've found myself now believing that there ARE NO technical rights, everything is an aesthetic choice. This includes both happy accidents that an artist embraces as well as going against "rules" with full knowledge of them for either the purpose of a statement, to simulate a style of photography, (snapshot aesthetic, vintage photograph, etc). Thinking about this got me thinking about my own development in photography, where I started out and the directions I'm currently going in. I started putting together a small retrospective, which I would save as a memory and update whenever I started something new. I think a couple years ago I would be horrified to show people my first rolls of film, but now I think it's good to look back. I hope this is interesting for some of you, and maybe even helpful for those of you currently trying to decide if you want to go to art school, and what kind of art school. When I was little I was pretty creative. Rather than boring you with the details of my childhood, here is a picture of me and my dad in costumes we made. You can look at more pictures of me as a kid if you really want to, but let's skip ahead a bit. I started seriously thinking about photography in my senior year of high school, when I finally got into a darkroom class (in my public school it was really hard to get into any art class, and I put more effort in getting the liberal arts electives I wanted, which I think was a good choice). This is a picture from my first roll of film. I enjoy that the most recent pictures I posted also included my father. This phase is pretty simple, mainly just trying to get a proper exposure. I had my fair share of very boring work, technical assignments. I still enjoy a series of portraits of my friend Rin, which had a hazy look to them. My teacher didn't like them because they were soft, but I thought the soft look added something to it. I didn't end up turning them in, feeling my teacher must be right. I also did my first set up shot, which is.. well, sort of the thing one would do in high school, I think. More high school work can be seen here. Shortly after that, I deferred from my liberal arts school (I was going to go to Hampshire College) and used up a good amount of loan, scholarship money, and almost all of my savings on one year technical school, Hallmark Institute of Photography, convincing myself (and possibly my parents) that I would be able to work as a photographer during college so it would be worth it, and that it was all the knowledge I would need. I'm not sure if I was totally naive or just a good salesman. I did want to go, and I'm glad I did. What hallmark was good at was technical knowledge. The best parts were that they had amazing equipment available for every student (from macro lenses to 30,000 dollar digital backs available for check out once we knew how to use em) and that class was every day from 9-5pm, plus homework assignments. It was like breathing photography, and like anything, the more you do it, the more comfortable you are with it. My work here started along a pretty standard path, with medium format black and white in natural light. I chose to focus mainly on portraiture, which has almost always been the case with me. We learned about all the standards, shutter speed, aperture, rule of thirds, reflectors, fill flash, etc. Pictures during these months were almost all outdoors, although this one was in a parking garage. You can see more B+W work from Hallmark here. We also shot some color film in this time, although it was all slide. Slide film (if not doing any alternative processes) is a great way to learn exposure, because if you are off even a bit it's a lot harder to save and we were graded on direct slides, not prints. It's also expensive, another reason to really try not to make mistakes. Now I sort of feel that this also discourages experimentation, but maybe it just makes experimentation more expensive.. I have put in a deal of time (and money) with alternative processes using slide, but more on that later. It wasn't quite in this chronological order, but the next thing on the list was studio. We did tons of technical assignments, learning lighting patterns (like Rembrandt and split lighting) and getting comfortable with the equipment. I fell in love with studio lighting. I still like some of the portraits from this period, even though they were just technical assignments. They don't have the emotion of a really great portrait, well, not all of them, but there is something about a classic lighting set up. Eventually we moved on to digital, including learning compositing, etc, and for the rest of the year we had a lot of assignments and commercial type portfolio reviews. My work from this period is really diverse, which is good, but suffers from the fact that I still had no idea how to make a group of images feel like a real body of work, in any way. I still knew nothing about art. Anything that shone through was instinct or due to the subject, because for the most part I was an artisan and a technician. This work did result in my first magazine cover on a nationwide (international?) publication, CMYK Magazine, which was pretty exciting. Here are some more pictures from Hallmark. As you should be able to see, this was height of my technical phase in my education. I would spend hours moving lights and getting things just right. You can see more color pictures from Hallmark here. At my final Hallmark portfolio review, I was told that I had an excellent portfolio and "what was I doing there, I should be out there working." It was tempting, but I really felt like something was missing. I didn't know anything about art. I had assisted for some photographers who make pretty good money, and could have gone down the commercial road, but I felt really unsatisfied with it. Without telling my parents, I pulled out of hampshire college (hampshire college did not get pregnant) and applied to art school. I chose SCAD. There were plenty of reasons. It was as far away from my parents as I could get without going all the way across the country (still east coast), they were offering me a hefty scholarship, and I genuinely liked the work coming out of a few people I knew down there. I also kept seeing scad pop up in contests and publications, it seemed that some photographers there were doing good work. I knew already that school was what you put into it, and I figured SCAD was as good a place as any for me to.. well, put it in. During the summer and my first year at scad, I did a little bit of lit stuff.. But what I was really into was experimenting. I did everything that would have failed me on a hallmark assignment, from messing with cross processing to pushing digital exposures till they were red and yellow and pixelated and crazy. I'm not sure how successful it all was, but it was liberating. . I even experimented with claymation and video editing during this time for a color theory project. I also started learning how to work on a series of pictures instead of just thinking of one photo as the final product. The series that I still enjoy the most is called Details, and also resulted in my first solo show. They were full frame darkroom prints from medium format negatives shot with a macro lens. Each piece is one portrait, and they were 40"x40" when put together. I started doing a lot of freelance work during this time, including headshots, magazine work, etc. I also shot many many events for the school paper, but I don't think those are as exciting, so if you want to see them or any other freshman year work, just click here. Overall, I think I improved a lot that year. My teachers gave me tough love but let me experiment. Oh.. I spent most of the year drawing. I got good grades in foundations, but none of my drawings will ever be aesthetically satisfying. The only kind of drawing I've really enjoyed at scad was gesture: If a drawing took more than 5 minutes I lost interest. At the start of sophomore year I continued to have fun with series work. I think I was done experimenting (at least radically) but I wasn't in a mood to be very serious about much. About halfway through the year I was heavy into photo classes though and was just doing tons of work. A lot of it was lit, and a lot of it was digitally manipulated for class. The work I was doing for money during sophomore year was mostly portfolio work, for advertising design, fashion, fibers students, etc. For class I started one project that I am currently still doing. It's a large scale installation project, but photography is central to it. You can read more about it here. My personal work was going in another direction altogether. While most of my classwork and paid work was digital or film with digital manipulation (such as bad news), my personal work was mostly film. I inherited a 1954 Rolleicord V and had been shooting from my daily life for some time. As I'm heading into my junior year of college these photos are becoming a book project along with snippets of writing. I already posted about Gray Days recently. It leads me to where I really think I'm headed with my work, though. I've fallen in love with inaccurate color, ambiguous focus, and a (slowly) shoot from the hip style. My digital work has gotten softer and lighter and my film work has gotten darker (well, visually if not conceptually.) I'm starting to shy away from the technical worrying of almost all of my past work. I think it's sort of interesting to see how I've gotten to this point, and it's odd to me that I still shoot in so many different ways, but most people never know the other side of it. My commercial clients see my commercial work, a digital retouching class will see all studio shots from my 20D and livejournal ends up with my journal type posts and experimental personal work. I'm really intrigued by how some people (or magazines, or clients) feel that to convey meaning a photo needs to be sharp and as "perfect" as possible and other people feel the most emotion from a blurry snapshot. I suppose it's something I'll always be battling with, to find the right balance. Anyway, I've skipped over a lot, and it's hard to organize thoughts on this in the first place. You can see most of my past work here, and I've done my best to sort it out in a way that makes sense, and feel free to add me if you're interested in seeing more of my work in the future. I'm still very young, so I don't doubt that I have a lot to learn.