So I changed the name of these posts from i heart photography to i heart art. Think it just makes more sense to have it more open.
Anyways, my developed film I’ve been sitting on for a while did not turn out as exciting as I hoped. I had a lot of usable one-offs, and some decent starting points for bigger things, but nothing concrete. Nothing to make me feel accomplished. The biggest downer was all my photos based on gravestone textures. It was out of focus, or just very boring. I needed to get back out there and shoot more. One nasty habit of mine is that I shoot a bunch, then just work on those shots. I STOP SHOOTING. What a nasty habit. I’ve learned I need to be constantly shoot . Having a stream of negatives to work from constantly just sounds like a better idea and not as bad as I initially thought.
Art, or I should say life itself, is about making mistakes, taking chances, so you can figure stuff out. Won’t learn a thing if you are too scared to fail.
After talking with my partner in crime at my ceramics job, we went over a bulk of stuff, more importantly what I should work on next. Now with some motivation, last weekend I went out a shot at this burnt down house seconds away from me. I nabbed some texture shots of the building, worked on my doors and found objects a bit more as well. The following day I developed the rolls
Man they are looking so much better! There is almost more usable photos in two rolls then there was in the seven rolls I developed previously. Hopefully Wednesday I’ll scan them all in, I intend on going to the digital lab in the morning to get it all done, hopefully two hours is enough time to do so.
So I show up to my photography class for once, and talked a ton to my professor. After he looked at some of the stuff I’m currently trying to do, he recommended that I look into a photographer named Aaron Siskind. I looked at some of his works, and intrigued by it, picked up a few books from the big-ol library about 30 mins out via bus.
Active during the late 1920s onwards, this english teacher had many friends in the art field, and after acquiring a camera as a wedding gift, started to dabble in the wonderful field of photography. His works feel flat, but work well without that depth. I’m still reading away at his stuff currently, but what I find most interesting about him is that he shifted from more documentary work to what one could consider abstract expressionism. Which I find amusing, since I’m messing with both currently it seems.
So I’m going to research more about this man, abstract expressionism, and hell, art in general. I think I want to be a Art Jock, I just want to know about the art, so maybe I can understand where I want to go myself. I have a general idea, but I’m still experimenting with all sorts of ideas. Think really I want to know how artist think and feel as they work. To me now, sometimes it isn’t about just winging it. There is an underlying thought process to it all. And I wanna know what it is.
Michael's Great College Adventure 