This week was one of those weeks that everybody has had. It started of very nicely with a great meeting with Betsy my mentor, like the snow falling gently to the ground but the same day work took over and one bit collided with another and grew into a landslide at the bottom of my week.
I am so happy its Friday.
Betsy and I looked through my best images of the term and started playing with them, rearranging them, and looking at the work to see what it would say. It seemed as if I had two bodies of work emerging from the heap, there were portraits of my family and friends, the second became a series a little less clear, more abstract, creating a window into my life. I also found images that started playing with juxtaposition, some that compositionally worked with and off the edges of the frame, and as I continue to play some the series we were making began to tell a story of an event or way of life. Betsy also suggested that I create a top ten set, and everyday look at it and see if I need to shift and rearrange them, watch them evolve.
Betsy also introduced my to Colin Blakely, I added his blog to mine. I love his images, especially “Somewhere in Middle America” on his website so look if you have a few minutes.
On the technical side I am also dealing with more images that I have ever organized or juggled before, almost 3000 in a little over 2 months. Last week thought that I might have accidentally deleted some of my raw files. Panic tried to creep in but I remembered to breathe and heard my voice telling me what I say to my students, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I searched and reorganized this week and found them. I realized that I should have saved the files for flicker and my blog by the same number that the camera names it. I also should have saved as .jpg instead of for web in Photoshop so that when compressing the images the files would show the metadata.
I worked on my paper, academically I am struggling in this area, but I will persevere. A very odd thought went through my head today, like a little light bulb, I want to become a good writer. Where does that thought come from? I know part of my struggle has been the mental block in my head and some resistance to conform and write in an “academic” way. But if I want to communicate and have my voice heard I should become more comfortable with all forms of writing in order to be clear. In art school we learn the elements and principles of design and after learning this foundation we learn to break the rules. I need to become more competent in the foundation of writing just I as I did with art. I know with this the program at AIB I will have plenty of practice in small bite sized chunks.