Grasping for words

Even at the brink of losing everything, she is a fighter to the core.

Her grip is stronger these days, more desperate. Sometimes she doesn't even need to hold on to some thing. She would just continue to reach out, sometimes finding our hands, clasping tightly. Sometimes more restless, grasping at seemingly empty air. Her arms stretch out, high above her head. What are you volunteering for? Why are you raising your hand?

What do you see in your mind, Grandma? You have been sleeping for a while now. Do you have visions of the past, of your childhood dreams? Regrets have abandoned your bedside. What could have been, had been so you do not have to worry.

Last Sunday might have been my last visit. You opened your eyes at the sound of my voice and I think you might have recognized me, but I cannot be sure. I will believe that you did, though. I will miss you.

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Signs that we Exist

Today, I tested out the 100mm, 2.8 Macro lens that I borrowed from school. I found this shriveled up plant half buried in the snow. Using the macro lens, I've made it appear larger and more significant than it actually is.

We try to make our mark. And somehow every day we do, in however small a scale. We survive the usual struggles even if it means facing our fears once in a while, even if it means standing alone. The grass is nowhere to be seen this morning. The snowstorm is over and the cold hasn't gotten to this plant yet. Somehow I feel cruel taking pleasure in these little half-deaths buried in snow and ice. But you see, we aren't any different. Each day it only continues to get colder.

Ah, 'tis the season to survive.


"Cold"

This photo I took reminded me of his work: "Signs that we exist" Nadav Kander

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Snowstorm

We're expecting several feet of snow tonight. I happened to glance out the window and the red sky drew me to take a few shots. The sky's giving more than it should tonight, preparing for the morning's loss of color.

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Inspiration: Strange and Oddly Beautiful Photography 2

Hugh Kretschmer Photography

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Inspiration: Strange and Oddly Beautiful Photography 1

Incredible gesture, emotion, and depth. I was blown away.

 

Tomohide Ikeya Photography 

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Home Depot Lighting Kit

Another fun-filled day with Greg Hiesler. Lights were all from home depot and were under $100.

I wanted to make him look otherworld-ly by creating a yellowish, animal-like glow in his eyes.

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Peter Chilton's "Your Day is 140 seconds or less"

Here's a video of my classmates that one of my instructors made for a Nikon contest. Isn't it so simple and yet so awesome?

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If I weren't afraid of....butterflies.

Sometimes I prefer an alternate reality. It's easier to bear. Wishes are whisked away with the wind, carried by powdery wings of silent hope. These are for you. We hope against all odds and that is the power of living. Well, surviving. No, actually, so much more than surviving.

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Frozen light

Ice looks beautiful when it's backlit by the sun. The air is cool enough today and it won't melt, not yet anyway. How do I keep it from disappearing? Such deceptive beauty allures those who attempt to document what is fleeting. I should know better but I don't. I'm still drawn to it. And it's only because I know this moment will leave me.

Right now, gathering light is somehow not enough. Preservation seems like a lost cause. And yet, the desire is there. Why do you look more valuable than you're worth?

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Pet Project

I had a Career Dev class today with John Nordell and his lecture touched me and inspired an idea of another personal project. Lately, I've been bombarded with ideas that I want to do while I have all these resources at my fingertips. Despite the lack of confidence at times, I know that by doing, my technique can only continue to get better.

Today he talked about the idea of seeing, that we don't always have to see only through our eyes. Being in the moment and truly seeing is by using all of one's senses. He featured a book of images created by blind student photographers which literally and figuratively illustrated this reality. As an observer of the world, the photographer should use her senses to her advantage in order to visually translate whatever she wants to say successfully. He showed us this video of a woman who lost her sight because of a disease and yet continued to pursue photography with a passion. She talked about how she continues to function through memory and imagination in order to do her work (with the help of her husband, of course). I enjoyed looking at her photographs which were surreal images of her dog posing beside miniature models of famous buildings. What was interesting to me was her process. She would place her ear near the viewfinder and listen to the camera focusing. Instead of using her eyes to guide her to scenes that are visually interesting, she'd use her hearing instead. It's amazing how people can develop new ways of being perceptive when they need to.

I want to photograph blind photographers around the U.S. seeing the world. I want to focus on the process, not so much the images that they produce but more of the way to find things that catch their attention. I might be an interesting journey for me and I'm sure to learn a lot from them. Another idea that might be cool is to take portraits of these people... telling their personal stories of seeing with everything BUT the eyes.

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This is for you mom and dad!

I absolutely love my parents. Today I found out that I'll be part of my school's exhibit "My Sight" this weekend.

"My Sight" Gallery

This is really exciting news for me...only because it's something "legit" that I could share with my folks. I'm very lucky to be part of such a supportive family, especially since I'm probably the kid who's changed her mind a lot. To me, chances for recognition give me a sense of pride that I can share with them, the people who made me, me.

On that note, my dad's really sweet. He's been replying to my posts each time I publish something in this blog and it gives me a kind of strength to suck it up and just work hard. My mom continues to pray for me and I seriously believe that it's because of her that I am so protected and blessed. I can't ask for more. A few more days to go... and I'll be home. Yesss.

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Commercial Studio

I don't really feel like posting these because I don't think they have anything about me in them. This is probably why I'm not too happy shooting in the commercial studio. I don't feel like there is enough time or room for me to really find things that I want to shoot. (Plus, I really don't like driving to places that I'm unfamiliar with. It doesn't mean I don't like exploring though! I just try to escape the dirty work as much as I possibly can.) I'm looking forward to going home. Sometimes I really envy some of my friends who can just go home and pick up an interesting thing to shoot without spending any money. Hopefully during the Christmas break I'll be able to gather some personal objects that would give my products more character.

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Portrait Studio

This class was the day after I spoke to Tony D. Talking to him helped me change my whole attitude towards my current work. I AM here to learn after all and failing or mediocrity isn't as bad as it seems at this point. But this doesn't mean that I don't mind being mediocre or making mistakes, because I do. And it also doesn't mean that I don't still struggle with my self-confidence, because I do, do, do = constantly. But even if I do, the difference now is, I know that I should just keep on taking pictures anyway. It's the only way to get better, right?

Chris

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On Location

These were taken yesterday and it was my 3rd attempt to practice Hiesler's and DT's last class. I think I'm improving but I'm not quite there. I'm still happy though. It's better than being unproductive and because of it, my friends and I have explored 3 very different locations in the past two days.

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Three Trees

It's winter now and their leaves have fallen. Adorned with only drops of water catching what was left of the sun, their frailty catches my attention. It makes me wonder how this building would look in the summer, to have living trees surviving the decrepitude of man-made walls and towering lumber. How did their seeds find themselves beneath wooden floors, just in time for a ruined building to give away in order for them to take root? How interesting to find these three brothers planted in such a straight line, almost like a death sentence. These trees aren't tall and somehow I suspect they are older than they seem. It would be interesting to come back and see how they are in the spring and how they flourish in the summer. The light would be different then. Not so lonely. But right now, in this cold dark afternoon, their naked resilience is strangely beautiful.

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Abandoned.

Like any normal student, we found ourselves "seeking shelter" in an abandoned building. Many of my shots were meant to emphasize the snow. It was pitch black in there except for the areas where the roof gave away. I only took a few pictures of Claudia in one of the areas there before my bravery faltered and forced me to hurry back to the car.





An S.



Plant Surviving Weight

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First Snow2

Trees through the Car Window

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First Snow

Photo by Claudia Ruff

I haven't been writing lately. In the past two weeks, somehow it felt like I didn't deserve to say anything. I am ashamed to say that I have been embarrassed about my work and I've been questioning my personal perspective. It isn't because I think I'm doing something incredibly different but somehow what I do does not translate well enough for people to respond to. I saw my first snowfall today and although it was cold, it somehow warmed this creeping numbness in my mind. It was one of those rare moments where I wasn't challenging myself to see something in a new way but I was actually seeing something that I've never seen before. Sometimes this is all it takes to be invigorated again. Incredibly I couldn't stop shooting. I took pictures that might have been ordinary to someone who's seen snow all his life, but to me, everything was a wow moment. It wasn't a matter of searching for special things to shoot because snow was everywhere--on the ground, on the leaves, on the roofs...everywhere. It was glorious to add another facet to my experience of water: to be lightness and weight at the same time with no struggle between the two. Snowflakes. I didn't know it could fall so softly. It's form lends itself to falling. I could barely feel it on my face when this picture was taken.

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On Location Shoot

Watching Hiesler and DT teach was a real treat. We were challenged to create alternate realities by using 1 strobe to allow us to expose for the subject and to be able to stop down and underexpose the background. Shaun, Dakota and I teamed up and headed for the corn fields.



The sky was so bright that it made Dakota cry. I caught a tear falling but it's only really visible when you zoom in.

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Defying gravity for a moment

December 2, 2009

It was thrilling to fly today and see things from that perspective where everything transformed itself into shapes. Buildings surrendered their scale to me, although I didn't feel much taller than I actually was. I was just farther from the world. But from up there, it gave me a sense of things, how minuscule my problems were and how ordinary. In those 15 minutes, worrying was farthest from my mind while it was being muffled by the whirring of an engine suspended in air.

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from Enough by Eric Gamalinda

Someday I will send everyone a card
with nothing on it, only
the calligraphy
of a river, and in the back
with invisible ink I will say:
Forgive my happiness
I have betrayed you all.

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And when at last I find you, your song would fill the air

Blackbird I Will - The Swingle Singers

(song courtesy of J.H.! Thanks man)

Chatted with you yesterday... wedding march?? nudge nudge. hahahaha!!!

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Thanksgiving

I usually catch myself apologizing for things that aren't 'wrong.' Sometimes it's a lack of gumption, a missing thread of empowerment. Sometimes it's simply what it is, a terrible habit.

"I'm sorry for living."
"I'm sorry for being unclear."
"I'm sorry for not saying."
"I'm sorry for not being brave."
"I'm sorry for being un-able to [insert word]."

Whatever it is, my apologies for not being fair to You.

Today IS thanksgiving, however. And the only apology I can think of is...I'm sorry for not being able to appreciate these things all the time.

Thank you for those who know when to continue hoping and for those who know when it's time to give up. It's still a continuous struggle for me to decide when enough is enough.

Thank you for those who remember the past so clearly and for the few who can forget. Fiction and history are not too different, I think. Memory gaps make stories more interesting. What happened again? You tell me. I am grateful to have the strength to change and re-member myself...if only to survive and live with the person I've become.

Thank you for those who are brave, I want to be like you. Thank you for the things that I fear, for allowing me the strength to surpass the odds when I need to. It always surprises me, to rediscover these hidden forces of pure will.

I am grateful for my family who have shown me how it is to love with no limits. But also for strangers who have been kind to me for no reason. I hope to figure out how I can give back in my own way to anyone who needs me. There's a place for every sort of kindness and for every talent, I suppose.

Thank you for the stars, for slowly passing clouds, and for the darkest of nights.
Thoughts are clearest to me then. Although I would appreciate it if I could get more sleep.

Thank you for the rain, for the sea, and for every wave that carries me back home. We witness destruction and rebirth over and over again. And yet we return to what draws us: gravity.

Most especially, I am grateful for the little things, the little things that redeem their scale in the long run.

All of this, for your greater glory. [Amen.]

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Final Promo Piece

Part of the reason why I chose Hallmark was because of it's business track. Right now, we've just finished submitting a pseudo-draft of a self-promotion card that we can hand out to potential clients. I ended up using an old image prior to Hallmark, only because it showed the kind of work that I want to do in the future. That seems kind of sad in a way--What am I waiting for? Sometimes it's so frustrating to deal with myself and these doubts that continue to poison my mind.

Art is by Sasha Descartes

Here it is:

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Stars.

New Warpaint Video - "Stars" - Video - Stereogum

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Photorealistic Sculptures

This would be sooo awesome for a photoshoot!

WHOA.
Check this out.

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The key to happiness is to eliminate [insert word]

Sometimes I wonder what the past meant for us to be reincarnated like this--traveling in parallel paths, hoping for intersection. There is no need for fences or walls now that we exist on the same plane. I suppose we were destined to seek comfort in the periphery. Did it take centuries to learn how to live apart, disciplined and unable to remember what it is to curve, to lean over--to touch the small of someone's back? This constant attempt to search for you is like an old habit of loss. I probably lost you so many times: to someone, to something somewhere. So many times, that sometimes, I don't even remember what it was like to find you.

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Lights will guide you home

This is the perfect fog-blinking-lights-song. "You could be happy" by Snow Patrol.



November 16, 2009: On the way home from school it was so foggy. All I could see were colorful lights glowing from a distance. Here's the street where I live, viewed from the parking lot.

<

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The Beauty of Sorrow by Eric Gamalinda

The Beauty of Sorrow, after Pauline Oliveros

The best time to look at sorrow
is a quarter before midnight.

It looks dead from the ground up,
a single withered stick.
Then opens gently,
like the luna flower.

It bursts with all the radiant loneliness
of the desert,
a shock of moonlight that pulses
only once a year,

when you least expect it,
when you've forgotten
the intoxication,
the pungent scent of grief.

.......

Reina de la noche
covers the arid valley
from here to the moon.

They open their mouths
like fish in water,
sucking in the dry air.
Their small tongues
are smeared with silver.

Such beauty can never last.

.......

The best time to listen to sorrow
is anytime if you are
in the desert.

You can listen to it
in the just intonation
of summer, when everything
is one music, seamless and slow.

I like to place my ear against
your sternum, I like to hear life
being pumped all over you.

I like the way the sage
is always silent
and full of healing,
if we only knew.

It's not like here,
in this shitty apartment,
where sorrow yells in your ear
and all you hear
is your heart opening and closing,

and only because
it's supposed to.

.......

I can live with sorrow
all day without you.
I've gotten good
at making it feel at home.
I think I will get even better
tomorrow, and the day
after tomorrow.

I will be so good I will have
rivals, I will evoke such envy.

I will wear it around my neck,
the way those pimps
wear a viper sometimes,
just to show they're somebody,
just to show they're special and mean.

I can live without you
sometimes, I can feel your name
scratched into my heart
like graffiti.

Someone must have left it there
in the dead of night,
when no one was looking.

I swear it wasn't me.

.......

If there's a best time to eat sorrow
it must be now,
when your hunger gnaws so deep
it feels like having a soul.

You can let it take over you
like the spirit
the shaman wakes
with a single drum.

You can turn it into poetry
or religion, whatever
is easier to swallow.

Either way it remains
what it is,
a slow, elusive bloom
that opens your body up,

and you can't help staring
at the dead light streaming
towards you,

the dead waking the living
with these small revelations.

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Gamalinda

 La Ruinas del Corazon

(Continue...)
But before she did, she asked the poets to record these moments
in song, and the architects to carve the song in marble,

and the marble to be extracted from the most secret veins
of the earth and placed where no man could see it,

because that is the nature of love, because one walks alone
through the ruins of the heart, because the young must sleep

with their eyes open, because the angels tremble
from so much beauty, because memory moves in orbits

of absence, because she holds her hands out in the rain,
and rain remembers nothing, not even how it became itself.

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Thanks Cams and Mikael.

Subterranean by Eric Gamalinda

Let me be the first to say
that I know the name for everything
and if I don't I'll make them up:
dukkha, naufragio, talinhaga.
Just like the young
whose hearts give no shame,
I love the excesses of beauty,
there is never enough sunlight
in the world I will live in,
never enough room for love.

I fear none of us will last long enough
to prove what I've always suspected,
that the sky is a membrane
in an angel's skull,
trees talk to each other at night,
ice is water in a state of silence,
the embryo listens to everything we say.

I am afraid for the child skipping rope
on the corner of my street,
the girl on the train with flowers in her hair,
the man whose memory is entirely
in Spanish. I am more afraid of losing consciousness
when I go to sleep, or that in my sleep
I will grow old and forget how desire
once drove me mad with wakefulness.

Just like the perfect seasons
they will die
and I will die
and you will die also;
no one knows who will go first,
and this is the source
of all my grief.

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Save the pandas!

Reading J's blog and found this. THIS IS AWESOME!

Save the Pandas!

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Posture

I think being required to pose for my classmates has ingrained a completely different sense of myself--a posture, an awareness of what people are seeing when they look at me. It's awkward being watched, especially if you are anything like me. But then again, being surrounded by such talented people, after everything, I do enjoy seeing what they did see. It's not about feeling beautiful but more about learning how to work with gesture, emotion, and revealing a sense of myself to someone in a natural and ordinary way. This is what I want to attain whenever I photograph someone--to be able to discover qualities of them, a quietness and a touch of honesty that's theirs alone.

The best part of it is, I'm learning this valuable quality of seeing/being seen in a fun way because I'm with such dedicated friends. It's taught me how to step away from myself and think as an observer, see myself apart from the 'me' in front of the camera. Although sometimes I wonder how much a photographer should do to cause a reaction. I suppose it is a balance of things--of watching as closely as possible but at the same time not showing it and allowing the subject to feel comfortably "unwatched."

It was a Friday night and of course my friends and I decided to head back to school. It's week 9 and we have free use of the portrait and commercial (product/table top) studios. This is a photo that my good friend, Shaun took last night that I absolutely love.

We are taught to start with darkness and bring something to light. This is the joy of seeing.

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I miss youuu.

“I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can be together all the time.” ~ Calvin & Hobbes

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(wooo...craaazy night.)

What can I say? The night was action-packed.

Oh, I am a fool.

Is foolish.
Is fooling.

Is falling down a rabbit hole.

The past is done and over.
Is over again and again.

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Phase 1 is OVER. :) The review went pretty well. My pictures (stopping motion and backlighting with flash) were called the best ones in class during the three times that our stuff were up there. :) Now it's phase 2. And seriously time to clean my apartment.

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Phase 1 Final

For our Phase 1 final, we had to produce 10 images: stopping motion, showing motion, an outdoor portrait, warm on cool colors, cool on cool colors, backlighting with flash, indoor flash, product shot, breaking lines and a self portrait.

These are what I came up with. :)

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