tactical retreat

I am definitely not giving up on my hopes of my own hand-created, top-of-the line blog and website.

However, for now I'm making a tactical retreat. I'll go with a website form I'm more familiar with, so that this isn't such a problem.

original Covenant - Skyshaper album art

my lame ripoff.

blog/website mockup?

I want my webpage to be a portfolio of more than just completed work - it'll also hopefully host tons of tutorials about Photoshop and any other programs I get into. Here's a mockup of how it'll work - I'm spending the next week doing the coding, hopefully, unless the Almighty Peter vetoes the idea.

tempe at night

you may never find me in my room on a friday night in Tempe again

you are beautiful

I need to find a better version of this song. I loathe Jesse McCartney and his fake looks and voice. Quick, Pomplamoose! make a cover.

#1

MY PET PEEVE.

What's up with kids not being able to install plugins for the software we're using? I understand not wanting to hand every idiot with an access code the sysadmin's password, but not allowing students to download and install plugins is just keeping us from reaping the full benefit of the class.

The most common form of manipulation for videos - and the most effective, with a deadline of 11/2 for a final project and 10/28 for the preview - is USING PLUGINS to alter broad sections of a film. They simplify the editing process WHICH IS GOOD WHEN YOU AREN'T FAMILIAR WITH SOFTWARE AND ARE WORKING ON A DEADLINE.

This was NOT the morning for me to run into this wall.

rainbow connection

photo manip

Maybe I don't want to survive the apocalypse...

I was bored. This was a quick (15 minutes?) photo manipulation, using 3 of my photos and a couple stock images. It doesn't have a title, but it's about loneliness.

And, stock manipulation:

I sing the body electric

i wish i were these people

This project makes me really wish that I had any sort of a decent voice. Looking around at alternative and acoustic covers, I came across this remake of Beyonce's "Single Ladies." I will be honest: until I heard the cover, I did not know this song existed, and hadn't heard the original. That said, upon listening to the original, I find this cover to be 100x better. It is a snappy tune, so I thought I'd share.

joy in life

One day Ananda, who had been thinking deeply about things for a while, turned to the Buddha and exclaimed: "Lord, I've been thinking- spiritual friendship is at least half of the spiritual life!"

The Buddha replied: "Say not so, Ananda, say not so. Spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual life!"

-- Samyutta Nikaya, Verse 2

photos from germany

A short but grievously action-packed 2 months after my return from Germany, I am proud to present the completed collection of almost 200 edited and refined photos from my tour of South and South-Central Germany. To commemorate this timeless accomplishment, I've decided to indulge in a bit of shameless self-promotion.

Check out my Germany photos. They're cool. And feel free to look through other albums while you're there.

i'll lie still and breathe in you

So the infamous Facebook has an application called 'Graffiti,' where one takes a circular brush of varying size, opacity, and color, and makes little doodles with it.
That used to be what kept me occupied when I was up at ungodly hours of the night. I can't do it anymore, for some weird reason. I try, and it sucks.

As to why this song was included:
It's beautiful. It's one of the 65% of Regina Spektor songs that I absolutely love (the other 35% I can't stand at all....) and I adore it.
From my interpretation, this is sung by Samson (of Biblical fame) 's first lover - before Delilah and all the problems that camer with that.
She idealizes their relationship, talks about how Samson was willing to be entirely vulnerable and natural for her, how at peace he was with her.

I loved you first.

I think that we can love people before we know them. Once we find 'the one,' we look back at our life and past relationships and realise that most everything we loved in someone else was really just a kind of precursor, a foreshadowing at this amazing person we're now sharing forever with.
I have loved you since our essence was first conscious of itself, and through all the echoing ages of time since then, and will continue to do so until time itself runs out.
No matter what the history books say.

when you really love someone, it's not a sacrifice at all

vector project

So, 2 of the 3 images were changed. I still luff all the quotes to death, these three just worked out best.
I think I've already pretty much contextualized the pieces, talking about my obsession with insanity. I kept with my intention of using greyscale, but in each piece I decided to allow a little bit of grey, mostly for design's sake.
I chose to spread these three relatively small quotes out onto separate pieces because isolation is a key part of madness. 'Crazy' people, those labeled deranged, insane, or unfit for society, are marked by a profound isolation, either in their mind or in their treatment.
If your screen is properly adjusted and you've got good eyes, you'll see that I combined two quotes into the middle piece: the main quote is "We are sane only as long as we hear voices when there are none" and in the background is, repeated quite a bit, "We are insane when we hear nothing and worse we are deaf." It seemed apropos.
Also in the middle quote: I deliberately and individually kerned each line so that very few of the letters would line up vertically. At first glance, the right side of the image is a bit hopelessly jumbled and confused.

project prototypes which i despise

I dislike all of these immensely. Likely, none of them will be included in what gets turned in on Wednesday.

I want to keep these simple - I really like unadorned type - but I mean that in terms of not including images. I definitely intend to re-edit these to embellish on the fonts. I also want to keep to a black-and-white scheme because it is, to me, visually stimulating, and it relates to the theme. I heard once that 'madness is the inability to see shades of grey.' That thought struck me, and I want it to factor into this project.

i told you, i knew

(yes, I like the neon/fluorescent colour scheme. leave me be.)

I got a call today from someone that I count as a very good friend. She's one of the kindest and warmest people I know. For two semesters, she was also my Spanish teacher. I've fed her and other people very close to me a string of pretty blatant lies recently, lies that have been coming back to bite me. She called me today, to tell me that she still loved me - that everyone involved still loved me - and that what had happened hadn't changed how she (or anybody) thought about me or about anyone else concerned.

It really lifted my spirits.

quotes [project]

I think - think, mind you - that I have found my quotes for the Vector project.

By way of introduction, let me state that I am slightly obsessed (just slightly) with the idea of madness, of mental disorders. There's a long and doubtlessly uninteresting backstory to that, but the intent of sharing that is to give you a bit of background for the project. Insanity fascinates me.

[ The photos above (which obviously won't be used in the project...because they're photos...) are from a shoot I did a year or so ago, focusing on the concept of madness and institutions. ]

Anyway! The quotes are:

"It is strange how often times the air speaks." - Calvin Miller

"Madness carves its own reality." - Kay Jamison

"We are sane as long as we hear voices when there are none." - Calvin Miller

These two images are examples of manual typography that really 'speaks' to me...and the style I might be trying to go for with this project.

Anyway, two other possibilities for quotes, in place of the last one -
"We are insane when we hear nothing and worse we are deaf."
"Come play along the precipice-
Don't worry that the cliff is steep-
The little flowers on the brink
Are daisies, but their roots grow deep."

we'll see.

i wouldn't ever want to

I will not take my love away
When praises cease and seasons change
while the whole world turns the other way
I will not take my love away
I will not leave you all alone
When striving leads you far from home
And there's no yield for what you've sown
I will not leave you all alone
I will give you what you need
In plenty or in poverty
Forever, always, look to me
And I will give you what you need
I will not take my love away

-Matt Wertz, I Will Not Take My Love Away

hey i love your soul [vector exercise 1]

I've never actually made anything with Illustrator before. I've opened up the program a few times, ogled the pretty tools, and I definitely appreciate a lot of vector art, but I've never used it for creation before.

That said, I worked on a little project to get comfortable with the layers and editing options before launching into the class. I picked a phrase to repeat and play with.

This is obviously not all that eye-catching. I'll probably play with the idea some more in some spare time, using the repetition of a phrase....more attractively.

I love typography. Check below for the ACTUAL exercise.

Alright. So, the assigned exercise was to look at the aesthetic of letters themselves. I picked "j" and "w" in a handwritten lowercase. They're two of the letters that are most closely related to other (non-Roman) alphabets, which means that if you tweak 'em around a bit, they get harder to recognise immediately. I might re-do the exercise before next class, but for now, I'm happy.

I dunno. I know this seems really simplistic, which is why I might re-do this. But, I find that most letters and fonts are pretty elegant - that's what typography's all about, after all. I rotated the 'w' so that it more closely aligned with the angle of the staff of the 'j,' and then rotated the whole canvas in hopes of abstracting the letters, so the viewer could just focus on their shape.

lovesong

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again

However far away I will always love you
However long I stay I will always love you
Whatever words I say I will always love you
I will always love you

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am free again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am clean again

However far away I will always love you
However long I stay I will always love you
Whatever words I say I will always love you
I will always love you
-Lovesong, the Cure

extra credit book cover

I had a lot of fun making the 'book cover' for our extra credit raster assignment. It took a lot of false starts, but I like the final effect. As a photographer and a lover of beauty, I kind of have an obsession with light, so I knew all along that the light bulb would be in there somewhere, but I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Eventually I ended up pulling in some long-exposure pictures I made last night. I had, on a lark, used my cell phone to make little light-tracings, and those photos ended up getting used in this project.
The light and the colors were pretty much drawn from my obsession with raves and neon lights, etc. They have kind of a futuristic feel, in my opinion. The title, "Transcend," is all about the kind of metaphysical idea of moving yourself out of your situation, using your mind and your heart to escape your body. I'd imagine that it'd be a cyberpunk-inspired tale of a girl who turns it around from a down-and-out life in the rave basements of San Francisco.
<3

ideas

So I'm embarking on a kind of private art project. In the last 2 years, I've kept what are referred to as RWBs - Research Work-Books - for my photo classes. I think I want to continue on with the tradition, sort of. RWBs were always really public and...while they weren't dry, they were almost entirely, well, research-based. I think the one I'm starting now will be more in the way of a journal. It's not a diary, and it's not a work-book, but it's a happy amalgamate of the two. A project that only my self will see - a letter to myself, if you will.
Anyway, a slightly more public aspect of that is that I am thinking of incoporating the livestream webcasting sight. I tend to put a fair amount of design effort into individual pages, so I'm thinking of recording and/or streaming the creation of (some, not all) pages. The cool thing about livestream is people don't need an account to watch, so it could be a cool almost performance-art type thing.
Just ideas.

You may ask: what the heck does that have to do with the photo at the top of the page? Well, the photo at the top of my page is one of the many rubbish offspring of my plan to really make Art a part of my every day (literally - EVERY DAY) life. I'm now resolving to take pictures every day. Most of them assuredly suck, but at least it's keeping the creative juices flowing, right? And, this personal/private applications of thew new RWB 2.0 is much along the same lines. Making art a standard part of my life.

peace.

snippet

Turned on the radio today to hear this playing:

It's alright, it's alright, it's alright,
She moves in mysterious ways
It's alright, it's alright, alright
She moves in mysterious ways
It's alright, it's alright, alright
Lift my days, light up my nights...

I have always interpreted the 'she' in that song to be 'the universe.'
It's alright. The world moves in mysterious ways.
But we'll come out alright.
-U2 Mysterious Ways

quote 002

By my side,
you’ll never be.
By my side,
you’ll. never. be.

You tell me that you love me but you never want to see me again.


-Unkle Bob Swans

project 1, i think

"The college town area is the most critical piece of real estate in the community...."

I think this is the final version of Project 1. I'm not sure.
Originally, I had plans to do a panorama looking down the Mill Avenue Bridge, shot to perfectly match up one shot to the next, but shot at different times of the day. The plan was to have the exposures get progressively longer, so that from having very crisply-frozen cars in the first half-or-so of the panorama, the later (night-fall)half would show only the light trails left by passing cars.
I still might do that.
But that seemed WAY too linear for me, when I got down to thinking about it.
To begin with, I don't agree with the Western / linear concept of time, anyway.
More specifically... I see the Mill Avenue Bridge as pretty symbolic of Tempe. Any dissenters? Didn't think so. You think of ASU, you think of Tempe. You think of Tempe, you think of the Mill Avenue Bridge. Simple. So, this seems to kind of bundle up the image of our little college town.
And when you think about it, college towns have a long, rich history. Even just in the US! But if you go back, farther through history, you could arguably trace college towns all the way back as far as Athenian society in the Golden Age of Greece. And, to me, a simple linear connotation of time (I'd have the first 1/3 look sketched, the middle 1/3 look like an older, grainier photo, and the last 1/3 look super-sleek) just didn't work.
So I went out and snapped some not-quite-on-line photos. They look like they kind of match up, but they're very obviously cobbled together. Their colours don't match - part of the composite is in sepia-tone, some of it is black-and-white, some of it is fully colour. Some has more grain than other areas. I used 2 appropriated photos for in the background / reflection area of the photo, to give it more diversity and depth. I re-visited this area 3 times, but ended up using photos from a single session because they "felt" better. So this is about the bridge representing all the diversity of the campus.

by the light i have

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have..."

-Abraham Lincoln

This is actually the end of the hall-way that I live on, with a total stranger walking down. Every day around the 5 to 6 pm range, I think that I should be taking pictures, because the golden light is just exquisite as it's streaming in through the windows. Light is such an incredible, essential element.

something in the way

Got so worked up about something today that I gave myself a nosebleed. These have obviously been 'shopped to make them much more dramatic than it really was. There was a lot of blood, though - none of that was added.

anything, anything (i'll give you)

The doodle above is what I was kind of working on but I think I'm going to bed. It's not anywhere near done, but I figured it might as well get flung up here because the process is interesting and if I didn't save this as a work-in-progress, I'd probably never realise how much I change an image in the process of getting it to a "finished" stage. Of course, not that anything - especially PS creations - is ever "done." It just reaches a good resting point. It started out with some weird Pink Floyd influence but I think I'm gonna do away with or drastically alter the triangle. Then I was listening to a bit of hard techno and the splatters came into creation. Moved onto a gentler side of the music spectrum, and I'm thinking this'll turn into some funky Creation scene.
Or I might just abandon it.

Pretty severely depressed tonight. I'm not used to feeling this out of control.

Some lyrics on the mind:

It's 4:03 and I can't sleep
Without you next to me I
Toss and turn like the sea
-Shinedown "If You Only Knew"

I should have known it from the start
I should have known that it was
Just another...
-Goo Goo Dolls "Extra Pale"

You know I'm lost
Hiding in your bed
No I don't think it's wrong
It's just gone to my head
-Goo Goo Dolls "Hate This Place"

But when the sun
Hits your eyes
Through your window
There'll be nothing you can do
-Joshua Radin "What If You"

currently playing: Iron and Wine "Naked As We Came"

"what is art?"

[ Please forgive me if I approach this using "photography" in the place of all art. I do not claim to be an expert in the practice or philosophy of photography, but it's really my only window into the realm of art and art criticism. ]

Ralph Gibson, Sonambulist

"Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation, and execution." - Ansel Adams

Photography - and all of art - is most important as a tool of communication. Aesthetic beauty is all well and good, but it means very little if there is no content behind it. A simple snapshot or a quick, pretty painting can hang on the wall and look beautiful for a while, but there is nothing commanding or absorptive about them until they have something to say.

Art offers a new means of communication that is vastly more varied, complex, and universal than written or spoken language. Every shade, colour, and tone within an image can be used to convey the artist's intent.

Minor White, Barn and Clouds

If we accept the idea that art is a force of communication - but what do I mean by force? I mean it in the same way as one would use the phrase "force of nature," or anything like it. Art demands itself to be made. Look at cave paintings - the earliest found record created by our ancestors. Look at the hieroglyphics created in ancient civilizations as a communication system. Look at the Grecian culture, with its art and communication combined in the form of murals and mosaics and the famous pottery-paintings. Look at the exquisite architecture that mankind has always been striving to create and embellish and perfect. Art is necessary for our development. It is a force.

A L Coburn, Broadway

So, if we accept the idea that art is a force of communication, then how do we classify art as either "good" or "bad?"

I do not think that such a thing exists as universally bad art. The purpose of art is communication, and the likelihood of a piece of art saying absolutely nothing to absolutely anybody seems low, yes? The closest to "bad" art, I would suggest, would be art made merely for the sake of beauty - but beauty isn't a low or base thing, and rarely contains itself to muteness.

What then, would we call "good" art, or "high" art, if anything can be not-bad-art, so long as it is emotive (at least) for its creator?

Anything which is recognised as being communicative to others - which invokes a reaction or a feeling in the majority of those who properly approach it - should be called good art. Almost paradoxically, anything which shows a mastery of it's art form is also classified as "high" or "good" art. (Although, you'll notice that very few Masters of any art focus on making their print perfect to the exclusion of meaning...)

As an example, Da Vinci's work is famous simply because it was the most perfect work of his time. We still call Fox Talbot's early prints "art" because they were revolutionary - the most perfect of their time. Jackson Pollock's seemingly-random splatter prints are acclaimed for their emotion. But we call Ansel Adams' work high art because it is both highly technically perfect and highly communicative.

raster project completed

Freedom.
This was taken with the new digital camera which I received as a graduation present. Graduation is a pretty momentous occasion, if you believe all the cliches about 'spreading your wings' and 'going out into the real world.' "Leaving the nest" of home, here I am. Again, making the flying imagery seem appropriate.
Those're my favourite boots, in the picture. There are not many of them out there - special edition UK Doc Martens - so I see them as pretty significant of 'me.'
This photo was edited to look something like a holgaroid / lomographic picture. (Google it.) That's because I have a deep fascination with alternative processes and alternative photography.

I'll be posting pretty soon with a step-through of how I made this.

"superman"

Anybody know the Kinks' song "Superman"? It's about this weakling kid who wants to be Superman.

"Superman, Superman wish I could fly like superman

Superman, Superman I want to be like superman

I want to be like superman

Superman, Superman wish I could fly like superman"

I think that deep down, everybody kind of wants to be a hero. I know I do, at least! I want to be impervious to all harm and capable of pressing on no matter what. I want to be the tough guy.

I guess, like the song says, flying is kind of the ultimate symbol of a superhero. Forget the cape - any fool can wear a cape. But flying? That's angelic. That's godly.

So I think for the self-portrait project, I want to do something to do with that. Obviously, I can't actually fly. But with magical cameras, anyone can be suspended permanently in the air!

Recently, I was in Germany and ended up spending half an hour throwing myself off a small wall near the Palace at Linderhof.

Flying represents freedom, which is a big concept right about now. Personally, as a student coming from a pretty Puritanical high school district and living with her family into a big ol' university campus like ASU, "freedom" is a pretty important concept.

So, that's what I think I'll be focusing on with this self-portrait (uncreated as of yet...the images above are just examples of "flying"): the dream of freedom.