June 1 - the B sides

Several factors cause my hours project to be very lightly edited. I don't have a lot of time on a daily basis (or ever - I am sure everyone understands how that works) and I don't actually have any photoshop on the computer I have the easiest access to. But unlike in previous versions of this project I have been doing some editing.

I had some technological difficulties that resulted in two slightly different versions of yesterday's post. The biggest difference is of course the cropping, but hopefully you can enjoy these as well ... don't worry June 2 will be posted later.

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A month of hours

A few years ago I whimsically decided to take a photo for every hour that I was awake for a week, not only did I enjoy the project and the images I have from it  but I feel like learned and grew a lot. As a result it has become an exercise I return to, and now is the time to return to it again.

I am in a new and vaguely uncomfortable place, as I try to do what I never planned to - turn my degree and passion into something like a career. Thus it seems to be the perfect time to do something that is both comfortable and challenging.

It is comfortable in the ways a sketchbook is, I don't have to worry about external expectations - I just have to be creating, everyday, all day.

It is challenging because all day, every day I have to be thinking about how to frame a moment or object in a way that is at least new to me. I have to open my eyes and see new aspects of the same things I do all the time (in truth my life tends toward monotony). I also have to pull out my camera in places and around people where the little bits of shyness and insecurity I have likes to pop up.

So for the next 30ish days you are free to expect a post of hours. Every day,  accounting for every hour that I am awake (and not at the other job), I will take at least one photo. Then I will share.

Some days will probably be mediocre - I am ok with that. Working through mediocre ideas is often a necessary step before getting to the really good stuff. This is why artists keep sketchbook and do thumbnails in the first place.

I will warn you, I am never good with time so some days may have more than others (even if they are supposedly accounting for the same number of hours) but at the end of the day this is an art project - not a science experiment.

I hope you enjoy coming along with me!

Please pardon my monotony

I feel like my life is so mundane that these most be getting boring - and yet that is the challenge. To see, to find, to look for and seek out the beauty in what passes through my the monotony of my life.

It is nothing to take impressive photos of impressive subject matter, with endless budgets and uninterrupted time. As one of my professors was fond of reminding us, the great photographers are the ones who make something great out of nothing, with no money, and no time. That is where genius is required.

Not that I am yet great or genius, but if that is what I want to be (and it sometimes is) then what I must learn is how to take my life (which is most often a blur of working, reading, eating, and being with people who hate to be photographed) and make interesting photos throughout it.

Then if anyone ever gives me awesome subject matter or endless monies - I can seize the opportunity most fully.

Celebrating by sharing

The 22nd of each month is a day I write on my calender as a celebration of life. I never really know how to celebrate it, but now I have decided I will celebrate it by letting it be the one time a month that I post the entirety of my hourly photos.

It seems fitting that I arrive at this decision on the anniversary of why the 22nd is a day to celebrate life. But that is a story for another day - just know that in a couple of days you shall see this month's celebration as it were.

Reflections on my Week of Hours

And thus ends my week of hours. After Saturday’s absentmindedness I didn’t touch the little camera again (which is ironic since the desire to use that camera was the impetus for the project) and I also stopped doing photos at work.

Doing this has been an awesome exercise for me. It forces me to be constantly on the look out for things to photograph and it forces me to take such photographs in public place (which is a good thing to have to do if you still struggle with the whole title of being a photographer). It reminded me how beautiful everything can be to those who take the time to look. I really love having my first morning activity being trying to find an image while I blearily stumble through the process of waking up and getting ready.

It has been so awesome that I have decided to keep it up (at least for the month of march but really I hope for it to be longer) with some slight modifications: hours that I am on the clock at work or volunteering do not count as ‘awake’ for the purposes of shooting; I am only going to post 3-5 images of the day.

I am excited to be shooting more and I am curious to know what you think of the project. Please post a comment and/or just tell me in person if you know me in ‘real life’. I am always needing feedback and it is harder to come by now that I am no longer in class so much.

A Week Of Hours

For Christmas a good friend from my hometown gave me a little keychain camera. At first I was kind of at a loss as to how I should go about making good use of such a thing being that I have several lovely cameras that have much higher capabilities (photo majors do such things). Then I conceived this project which is uniquely suited to a camera that is super tiny, and unlike the camera on my cell phone can be uploaded directly to my computers.

For roughly a week I will take one photo every hour I am awake. It is not my intention that these be informative, or any sort of summary of what that hour of my life consisted of (although to a certain extent that will be inevitable) merely that I photograph something I have seen within those sixty minuets of my life.

I started yesterday, and I can assure the project will not be flawless - the viewfinder is more a guessitmate than anything else and the camera itself is a little finiky (it lacks any way for me to verify that the photos have in fact been taken so I just have to trust its little plastic self) - but here it goes.

(Note: I will be temporarily changing the rss settings so that only a short version is exported - I don't want to overwhelm your reader)

maybe this dare is working after all?

Slowly but surely I am remembering that my camera is gift and not a burden. Today has been shot in many ways ... I will try to post some of the non-phone photos later. But even if that doesn't happen, it feels like I am becoming me again.

creation dare ...

As I alluded to in my last post, I have felt like I have been in a dry place ever since returning from New York. It is as if I have fallen out of love with photography.

Since I think love is more about a choice and less about an emotion I have decided to do something about that - a creation dare if you will.

It is my goal for the next 40 days to post something here of a photographic nature. In an effort to strip away my excuses I will be using my camera phone, because really a true photographic artist shouldn't have to have a beautiful piece of equipment ...

So here goes nothing ... (although I must confess I hope that what goes here is a might more than nothing)

reflections on a plane

From where I look, these rivers and lakes - they shine
pure gold
bouncing back the sun's radiant light

Does even Murry's murky brown show such pure radiance
restored lives through the dry
dull landscape
connected
giving life

mundane from below, brilliant as it reflects
vibrant gold shine predictably
inconstant
a life's illuminate, struck differently in time and
perspective

molten gold specks pepper the generally
murky landscapes
some give mere sparks lighting across their surface

even building tops have splendor when
properly illuminated

3 possibilities for the challenge

A friend and I are doing this weekly project to try and help keep our creative juices pumping when we don't have classes or professors to keep up on target. Basically we make up assignments to do during the week and it is due on Friday (cause creative kids need deadlines in order for things to leave our heads and sketchbooks and actually become anything truly tangible). This is our first go at it and the challenge (or whatever you want to call it) was rain. Since writing helps me get to the point of shooting I tend to do poem type things (especially lately) sometimes I think the writings are actually better than the images themselves - but perhaps that has more to do with my ignorance of what makes a good poem than anything else.

Regardless. What follows are excerpts from my journal as I have contemplated rain this week ....

cleansing and exposing
pounding away at the earth,
revealing the hidden things

the lost things encased by years of sediment
millennium of sand weighing in on
the priceless articles of our past

surrounding

safe in this embrace from
the tell-tell signs of progress
safe from the landfills and housing developments

safe in the sediment
held close
close in the Earth’s bosom until

its age is come
we are ready to care about it

freedom rain bounds
it breaks up the suffocating embrace

brings light to the hidden thing, kept safe
from disregard while it was common, age has made it precious

gentle scraping of excavation
finishing what the onslaught of water began

back and forth, back and forth the brush
tenderly methodical
releasing the hidden thing

once overlooked
disregarded, now precious

tools created just for its preservation, elated
we gaze upon it
ponder the way it was before
the earth encased it
clasped in protective sediment

then it was glorious
but common,
unappericated

now degraded,
but elated

freed by the rain to
shine in aged deterioration

adored in decay

08 May 13

***

What hidden things am I beginning to be ready to appreciate? Maybe the rain has not yet revealed the hidden thing, I am not yet ready to appreciate.

***

I sit on the porch that isn’t mine, and I
contemplate this bottle

already removed, the small plastic seal
clear fades to rich translucent brown
punctuated by letters proclaiming DARK CHOCOLATE MOCHA

it sits on the couch, my bed
while I in the rocking chair

writing
my dark chocolate mocha in my lap

writing and postponing

the leaves rustle
a motor hums
metal clacks
an indistinct mummer ebbs and flows from neighboring yards
and the birds carry on with their singing

all are unaware of
This moment

the sacredness of this bottle I hold
in my laps as I sit
in the rocking chair on the pouch not belonging to me

this precious mocha
this last of twelve

This was mean for a time where I could feel
closure

as if I could somehow “deal with it”
and then celebrate with a sip of this deliciousness

the ‘best by’ stamp stares up at me
giving me two months

two months

yet I know to wait is not what is needed
to wait is
to make this harder

the lid pops and slowly I unscrew it
setting it down on the adjacent page

I hold my lips to the bottle and

breath it in rather than drink it
I tip it into my parched mouth and savor
the tiniest of sips only to
let it lower

and my hand write some more

Another sip, one with gusto
the threshold is passed and the
power of the bottle is broken

I am no further from my
precious Mary Alice than I ever was
she is not in the physical things she
touched or
gave to me

She is most completely hidden in Christ and That
is her true legacy

the love that holds her and
is wrapped around us both

That is where I need to cling – not on
the artifacts of this life
imperfect
inconstant

this is my hidden thing of great value

so obvious yet so hidden until
the flood of my eyes and
this delightful coffee made me stumble
in the hidden secret

common
discarded
revealed
revered

08 May 14

plane ticket: check

So the last step to official (prior to me physically breathing in the New York air) has been taken - I brought my ticket and in 20 days I will be flying to New York to embark on the sometimes scary but always exciting and growth producing business of Summer Project!

Woot - if you will.

Whats in a name?

Voigt behind the lens ...

When I am making photographs I can only see a little piece of what is really going on around me. The three dimensional world we inhabit becomes a little flatter and what is preserved is just a hint of that.

In one sense it is frustrating because their are so many great and wonderful things in the world that just don't translate into the flat picture plane recorded by silver particles on a plastic negative (or 0s and 1s on a disk). Yet in another sense it is an awesome opportunity because those limitations mean that by moving the tiniest fraction in one direction the entire image. Life is like that sometimes.

We can only see a tiny little piece, it is like we are looking through a small window. We can't see the big picture right now. And yet our perspective dramatically impacts how what sort of impression we leave this world with.

Will we see the rottenness and evil that abounds or will we choose to let our perspective shift and see how in spite of it all love still exists and perhaps its very presence proves its triumph?