Strange delights.
June 20th, 2005,It's been an odd, glorious weekend. The exhibition opening was a grand success, thank you so much to all who attended! Maybe it's just the thrill of the evening still lingering in my veins, but it's really encouraged me to start taking a more conscious approach to my night photography.
I'm taking a few classes at Columbia College, figuring it would help me fill in all the cracks in my informal training. Today, we critiqued everyone's conceptual sketch rolls. A problem at the lab left me without any film from my shoot with <lj user="deladejavoo">, so I brought in a broad sampling of my recent work - stuff with Dela, Sophie, Cersei and the night stuff I took with <lj user="arkyrader"> (Lj name probably misspelled, sorry Cassie!).
There's nothing quite as cool as telling people what I was trying to achieve and hearing, "…..yes, you certainly accomplished that." The critique:
Cersei stuff : that's really well done, precisely the narrative style you were trying for. The clothing color is distracting, though. Why not shoot her nude?
Sophie projection work: This is amazing stuff. Keep at it.
Dela/macro projections (prints from my digital camera): Need to make it more recognizably human, right now you're too abstract. (This is particularly cool because I'd been worrying I wasn't abstract enough)
Night Photos: And I quote the professor, "This is the kind of subject matter I love to do, and am very critical of. These are perfect."
We've got a "portrait" assignment for the next one — laughably easy to me since I've studied so many books on the subject already. This is the problem with a formal education after you've consumed a subject voraciously and haphazardly. On the other hand, it gives me room for experimentation, since I've got no clients and they won't be reviewed by the Ed Fox guys. I wonder how they'll react when I bring in photos of dirty pagans fresh out of a sweat lodge?
*sigh* Okay, yes. Sometimes I have ideas that I love just for the shock value. But I do think they'll make good color photos.