Pride in What You Do

since there are so many photographers in the world, it can occasionally be very hard to be proud of your work. there are so many people - people who started earlier, have more/better resources, more well known, getting jobs...it's hard to maintain your confidence.
I was feeling a little down about my skills, since my most recent shoot was macros of flowers

I was dying for something with a little more edge, a little more OOMPH so to speak.


well...Gay Pride Chicago was the weekend. I'm feeling a little more...proud i guess you could say.

some shots from this weekend that I'm even shocked I did.

Looking at Things in Different Ways

In my course reader for Documentary Photography this past semester, i came across a quote that i really identified with. It was about how an artist might be able to draw a hand perfectly from 12 different perspectives, but with a camera there are infinite ways to view something. You can take a shot of a hand, and have it be an anatomically correct hand, from any perspective you can think of.

Today we went to the botanic gardens - an entirely created 300+ acres of garden. and while i love pretty macro (extreme close ups...remember?) shots of flowers, they can get really boring to take. I mean, how many pretty flower pictures can a person have? (don't answer that :-p)

so i challenged myself...If i took macros of flowers, i would try and have to make them differently than i normally would. and i tried - it was hard, but i think i took some things differently. i played with my aperture (remember that?) to try and get even shorter depth of field than a normal macro shot.

Earlier today, on the train ride to the gardens, I feel into a discussion about judging past time's opinions with current standards. I have a very clear opinion on this, in that i believe that it is impossible to judge someone from the sixteenth century correctly by 21st. century standards. My opinion is that you can only judge someone from the perspective of what was appropriate in their times. however, my roommate (one of the folks i was conversing with) said something interesting, "while we can't judge their actions outside of their time, we can still say that it wasn't a good idea."

her argument makes sense to me.

in any case, i feel like living in a city for the first time is making me view things in ways that i never normally would have. I never thought i was so capable. or that i could cook for myself and actually really begin to enjoy it. I wonder how Aix will change things.

one of the scholars going to france offered to help me with my visa application. thank god.

ps: this is the first update in a while because of wonky internets. sorry!!

Paparazzi

The paparazzi - so infamous yet what would we do without them? these clever little stalker-creepers sneak in EVERYWHERE just to get a shot - not even "the" shot, but "a" shot. It doesn't have to be well lit, composed, exposed, or anything. anything and everything goes. for this reason, i don't think they're photographers - they're simply thieves.


welllll i was a thief today. I snuck peeks of Obama. that's right - Barack Obama.

at my work today there was a big conference of governors + Obama. After the conference (which i watched online at my desk through a live feed off of Obama's website - ah, technology) Obama climbed a back staircase to the third floor, center conference room for lunch, among other things. Lots of secret service around, but they were sweet.

The center conference room on the 3rd floor is about 20 or so ft. from my desk. Between me and the room are a few walls, a pair of wooden doors, and a pair of glass doors. The glass doors, which grant access to the inner sanctum of administration-hood, were locked, signs on them declared "DO NOT ENTER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES" it was through these doors, that i saw the back of Obama's head, his profile, and then eventually him getting up and leaving, facing me.

while this does not seem impressive, i was excited and fan-girly (think: giggles mc. giggly) throughout the morning. I was like paparazzi...sure, it was the back of his head, but IT WAS OBAMA'S HEAD. word. I was a little embarrassed to gawk at first, but then my boss told me not to be embarrassed and gawk away. so i did.

so...yea. that was exciting.

in other news, i met the photo head for the museum. and i got invited to come and chill and discuss digital vs. film whenever i want. my job keeps getting better and better.

Commissions

Ah...the art of doing what pleases someone else, sometimes more than it pleases yourself. this can be hard to do...

you still have to keep some of yourself in your work because that's what attracted the client in the first place, but you also have to inject something of your client in it so they too will connect deeply and strongly with the image you create.

note (in general): this applies to art in general, not just photography.

At work, sometimes I get really really bored. I'll be doing the same thing for hours and hours, important work, but very tedious and time consuming. like verifying names, sites, addresses, and phone numbers for a HUGE list of other history museums in the area. I know it's important, but at the same time I want to be doing more than sitting at my computer. The internship is working well for the museum (i hope/assume), but a little boring for me. So I decided to try and get to do other things to make the internship work for me too. Today I found out that someone at the Joffrey Ballet wants the museum to do an exhibit on them, and tomorrow head people are gonna hunt through their storage for potential finds (I gather - not 100% on this though).

so I thought that this sounded like a really cool opportunity. Thinking this I emailed my boss asking whether he was going, and if he was if i could go with him. he emailed me back saying he wasn't going, but that i was free to go. I think, starting tomorrow, my internship is going to be working more for me, too.

notes on dane's commission: today's photograph is my favorite from the shoot i did for my sister's book of poems that she'll be passing out at slams (or so i believe from what she's told me they're used for...)

Also today I had lunch with E.B. Smith - one of the heads of the foundation. It was a really nice lunch (fruit/chicken/pasta/spinich salad with honey-ish dressing...YUM) and we talked about everything from how to get rid of deer in the garden to what i'm thinking about for my internship next summer (Harley Davidson? Add Agency?) it was a really good lunch.

after work and the usual tuesday kemper meeting, my roommate and I did a lil' clothes shopping - the first i've done here. I got two really cute shirts on sale (50% off!!!) and also my first girl wallet, retiring the one i bought when i was like...10. word.

Photographer Profile: Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus' work (see left) is well known for a few reasons...the first one being her choice of subjects. She enjoyed trying to find "freaks" (her own word) to photograph...an albino sword swallower, a cross-dresser in NY, creepy twins side by side, Jayne Mansfield Cimber-Ottaviano with her daughter, a black midget in bed with a fedora, a young white supremacist, the list goes on.

some people have a really difficult time looking at her photography, citing that it makes them feel uncomfortable, or that they would prefer to leave these subjects to the unseen part of their life, not really acknowledge them in anyway. Her work is a blunt fixation on what you don't want to see. However, it's my personal belief that it's not so much that that she wanted to photograph what she wanted to photograph...she thought that she could learner intention was to make people very uncomfortable with her work...I think something from the people she shot about how to be strong and live in a society where stick figures and beauty queens pervade every aspect of life (she used to be a fashion photographer). She became interested in other, more interesting and "freakish" parts of life. It wasn't about shooting for an audience as much as it was about shooting for herself. She took risks. And in a world where everyone is a photographer, it's hard to do that.

Lately in the group, although i know i'm not an outsider, i'm beginning to feel the first peer pressure i've ever felt in my life. people get together, drink, and then things happen that they joke about for hours, but never feel a need to tell anyone else about. I just want to be accepted by the group...and i know that i am, but at the same time i'm missing out on so much because i don't want to drink. I'll hang out with them when they are, but it's just really boring. Plus I don't really like being around people when they're drunk...it's upsetting because it's like they become someone completely different, and the person that I liked initially is just gone almost completely.

last night i decided that i didn't want to stay home, even if it meant going somewhere that i wouldn't be comfortable right away, or didn't necessarily want to go. I just wanted to be part of the group. So, the plan that evening was to go to a hookah bar. apparently there were belly dancers there, so i thought i might enjoy that as well as hanging out with everyone, even if it meant sitting in smokey air for a while.

there were probably about 11 of us in total, me, my roommate, my roommate's friend who was visitng, some non-kemper folks and some kemper folks.

when we got there, even though we had called the place, it looked completely closed down. finished. not open again forever. it was kinda sketchy, so we reverted to plan B, which was to go to this bar near our house where someone knew someone and we could all get in. so off we went.

when we got there, even though a lot of people had drunk before we even left the apartments, the main issue seemed to be ensuring that enough alcohol was in their separate systems. We divided into two groups... the one at the bar drinking, and the one at some little tables 2 feet away, drinking. I wasn't drinking, and neither was this non-kemper guy that i had met that night, but i think most other people were. there was some dancing initially, but not much else.

I felt so out of place. But by being there, i knew that i was doing something to make myself fit in better. I knew that in an ideal world, i wouldn't have to take these risks to try and feel "cool" or "accepted," and that people would just enjoy my company because they might enjoy my company. But i don't think that's the case when alcohol is a primary thought.

anyway

later on there got to be a lot more dancing, and i had fun with my roommate, her friend, and the non-drunk non-kemper, and everyone seemed friendly (obviously....but nicer and more inclusive than usual) , we walked back around 1:3o, talked and ate some icecream, and went to bed.

I guess going to the bar was important because i got to a) get out of the house b) meet someone new, c) take a risk, and d) learn that some people drink to be completely different, others because they just have a good time sipping drinks. This last lesson i think is particularly important because the whole changing personality thing doesn't happen when people are sipping a drink, rather than guzzling a few down to be drunk.

I wish I could be as confident as Diane Arbus was in doing her work for herself and just not caring, but I don't think i'm like that anymore, if I ever was. I really hope that I start to grow out of this lack of confidence i seem to be harboring...I don't really know. Feeling accepted is important to me, but also is staying true to the person who i've grown to be. I think this experience taught me that i can do that, but also that I need to take more risks if i'm going to be accepted and included.

almost the opposite of arbus...but i guess i'm looking to her as a role model. how can i express myself without caring so much about whether i'm accepted? is it important at all to be accepted? and i think most importantly, what are the things that make me happy? inclusion, acceptance, being myself? can i have all of these things?

That Shot you get by Accident

Very often when photographing, you get shots by accident, or details in photographs that you love but didn't know you were taking when you took the photograph. this is one of the fun things about photography...you're taking a picture of a tree by the lake, and fail to notice the awesome reflection until later. it shows you new things about your life that you might not have seen otherwise. (in the photo below: when taking this, i had completely forgotten that she was holding a dandelion puff!)

A few days ago, at work, one of the people in the office asked me to help them out with the monthly lincoln newsletter that comes out from the president to doners. she needed help laying the format and finding a good cover picture. the subject of the newsletter was trains and railroads, so one of my jobs was to scour the ready-print archives for a photo of lincoln with a train, mississippi railroad, or the lincoln IL train station. I couldn't find any of those things, and in the end settled on a train that was from around 1865. i told my boss what to expect, and he said "that's fine if that's what you can find." I was a little sad when he said this cause it took me an afternoon to find this print, but he seemed fine with it, so i didn't dive back into the archives.

it's a good thing i didn't!

at the end of the day yesterday, after all the interns but me had left, my boss came into the "intern pit" to find me sending off an email to one of my friends about photos of natives that i had been looking at in the archives. It was kinda a bad moment, not because i was emailing, but because the moment had been an emotional one. but whatever - that's a story for a different entry.

he asked me if i had done a lot of walking around the in the museum. I answered no, to which he said "whenever you're bored, you have a whole museum you know!" this made me happy :-)

so all the exhibits were closed at this point, and some of the lights were off, and walking around when the lights are off with the president of the museum who wants to show you something is kinda cool.

then all of a sudden, i saw it.

the museums most famous artifact - a train engine, the exact same one that i had found a print of. I couldn't have done a better job choosing.

in other news, my roommate probably has the flu, and saturday i'm doing a beauty day with the girls...haircuts, makeovers at macy's (which has like tiffanni stained glass windows and other seriously beautiful things), and shopping. yum! also last night i made peanut chicken, but one thing i didn't count on was the marinade burning in the pan...making lots of smoke...no smoke alarms went off, but i was panicking a little. till i tried some and realized that the chicken now has a smokey peanut flavor! delicious!

Missing from the Photograph

A lot of people will tell you, that when one person in a group likes photography and designates themselves "party paparazzi," that they're often missing from the group, even though they're still there. It's as if they become part of the background noise, not really present in the situation, but instead the documenters. Overcoming the desire to photograph groups of friends 100% of the time can be a challenging thing to overcome for a photographer...you just see shot after shot after shot.

well, today i did some of that, but i got a good balance there. I was present, but i also took a decent amount of frames...around 127 frames I think. We all went to the beach to hang out, then out to this 50's style diner with really funky wait staff called "Ed Debevicks." It was a good time - lots of fun had by all.

today also started out with an architecture tour, but this was of modernist architecture. I hate modernists, so this wasn't quite as interesting, but some of the stuff we saw, even i will admit, was very attractive. overall i just don't get minimalism...sometimes i do, but the concept is just weird overall in my opinion. i didn't even bring my camera (but that was due more to the threat of rain)

afterwards, some lunch, and then to the beach, to which i brought my camera despite the rain threat. it didn't get wet, or too sandy (maybe a few grains) so that was ideal. the beach was very nice indeed. there wasn't much swimming had, but there was some burying of fellow scholars. lots of photos taken. I wore my new swimsuit (which is so uber cute)

my boss thinks i'm doing well at work, just got some new projects, having dinner with hillary and her dad next week when they're college touring, annnnd yea. stuff is going well :-)

also doing a photo commission for my sis...took some preliminary pics of that, some of which you can see on my deviantart website.

this picture of me was taken by my friend, timila :-)

Ethics of Photography

Ethics of photography is an extremely complicated and fluid subject. Because it's such a new medium (only came out mid-late 1800s!) and is used for so many things (advertising, art, evidence etc) it's hard to classify when something is ethical, when something isn't ethical, what makes a photograph true and objective, what makes it subjective, what makes it okay to photograph one thing, but not another thing, etc etc. the list goes on for a very very long time, and even includes: what makes a photograph art, and is a photograph art?

but what i really want to focus on right now is how can one person accurately photograph someone who is completely different from them. How can a person understand another person, so different from them, in order to accurately portray them?

As many of you know, when I was younger I tried to get people to call me a variety of different things - ranging from fiddlesticks, to felix, to i don't even remember, I was never really satisfied with "Lori" as a name. When I became a bat mitzvah, I hit upon Liora, which I had always known was in some way my name through my "jewish name" (whatever that means), but i had never considered it as a potential name. When I finally, at my bat mitzvah ceremony, asked people to call me Liora, I never had a desire to get people to call me something different ever again. After my Bat Mitzvah my life and outlook on life also changed very dramatically...I changed from a shy little girl into an outgoing one. This changed my life, and I was very happy for it.

However, Liora is not my legal name, and at work everyone calls me Lori. Even though people still occasionally call me Lori, it doesn't really affect me in any way. However, when it's all the time by people that i've only recently met (people who I would probably have otherwise introduced myself as liora) I find myself trying on Lori's skin again. It's weird - i'm a lot quieter at work, want to be patted on the head more, i feel like i act more like Lori - the girl i grew out of - and less like Liora, the girl i want to be. I'm not really sure how I feel about this...sure, some of it is probably due to nerves, but it's a little like living a double life.

Lori is so different from Liora...maybe not phonetically, but emotionally she feels different. How can I accurately portray myself through Lori, with the confidence i've built through Liora? How do I show myself so that the true me comes through? Is the true me roots of Lori and branches of Liora? Is it necessary to even reflect on this? Is the reflection itself making the transition harder? is a name just a name, or a state of being? Which name is the objective truth? How can I make sure that my matured, grown through experience self comes through, when I feel like someone without those experiences? How can I relate to someone I haven't been for about eight years?

dinner menu tonight: existential eggplant crying bitter tears, sauteed mushrooms, apple, spinich, mozzerella, left-over-garlic potatoe salad, and a side of Indiana Jones. Yumm.

Learning Cues

In portrait and spontaneous photography, it's important to understand cues from people. In portrait photography, it's important to read into the cues that the subject is giving you so that you know what kind of mood there in, what might make them relax a little more if they're tense, what to say to give them confidence, etc. In a spontaneous photograph, people and wildlife alike, it's important to read cues from your surroundings in order to truly capture the moment that the subject is living. It takes time and practice to learn these cues, and they differ from situation to situation.

tonight, after a long days work and a superfast dinner, my roommate and I boarded the brown line and headed for the southport stop. from there we walked into a residential area, and into someone's house, where there happened to be a small, informal dance studio. well, not happened. we knew there would be a studio, we just didn't know it would be residential.

in this dance studio, we took a belly dance class, American tribal style. it was so awesome. even though my body is SO going to hate me in probably an hour or two (i'm already feeling it) I also feel amazing right now. I haven't danced in a really long time, and my body is telling me that i need to do more of it. so i bought i five class pass.

in American tribal style belly dance, i knew already that much of it was improvisation, set off by a leader giving the other dancers physical cues as to what she (or he - but way more often than not she) was going to do next. We learned a few, and just danced and danced and danced for an hour.

my body says: "this is good!" by aching in muscles i haven't used in a few years. my teacher says: "shimmy your shoulders!" by shaking her hips.