my senior show…

this decemeber i’m going to be having my senior show.  i’m excited and nervous about it, which i guess everyone is when it comes down to their show.  i have 2 ideas for my show.  last fall in my color photo class we experimented with slide film, but developed it like regular color film.  i took this one, really cool photo during the day, and after developing it and whatnot, it came out really cool, it looked like it was taken at night.

i have no idea how i did this.  i’ve tried in the past trying to figure it out, but it’s been hard.  i have 2 rolls of slide film that i’ve experimented during different weather and time of day.  i’m going to develop them and i hope it comes out cool like this photo.  i’ve never seen or heard anyone do this before and if i can figure that out, that would be sooooo cool!

however, i can’t spend too much time on this idea if it’s not going to work, especially if the clock’s already counting down to december.  so, if this idea doesn’t work, then i’d like my senior show to be of night photography.  i love taking photos at night, the experience, the outcome, everything.  it’s fun and exciting going out in the middle of the night when everyone’s going to bed but i’m just getting out to take photos, places where no one might not have seen at night before.  and when the photo’s developed and everything, it looks soo cool and magical almost even.  especially taking photos after it rained, the streets are shining so bright, reflecting what little light there is.  i would do night photos in black and white and color photography, and maybe even some alt process night photos.

todd hido

i found a contemporary artist that his work is really cool, reminds me of some of my work or work i would like to do.  a lot of his photographs are taken at night using whatever light is available and keeping the shutter open for long periods of time to create long exposures.  his photos have a unique, almost a dream-like world, kind of reminds me a bit of tim burton’s work.  in his work, there’s a feeling of being alone and isolation.  i know i have fun going out in the middle of the night just when people are going to sleep but i’m out, alone, taking photos of places at night that most people never even seen.

my final alt process proj.

wow, i haven’t been on here in months!  ok, so for my final alt process project, i wanted to play with cyanotypes, figure out the right timing, play with toning, and just play with it.  i used the same negatives for each process.  they are pictures, mostly self portraits, with song lyrics around them.  i try to be a happy, funny, sarcastic person a lot of the time because why be depressed, when you can be happy and enjoy life and why not try to spread that happiness with the rest of the world (wow, that sounded extremely hallmarky).  but as everyone knows, you can’t judge a book by its cover.  i’m happy only to cover up my saddness and my past.  no one really knows the real me or what i’ve been through, nor would they even take a second thought that i’ve been through a lot of pain and, well, just crap, in my past just by looking at me.  i try not to give it all away about my past to people, but kind of hint it out here and there to see if anyone would piece part of my past together, like a puzzle.  that’s why i took these photos and put song lyrics around them, to kind of see if anyone can put the puzzle pieces together, slightly.  it’s kind of my way of reaching out for a helping hand, but not asking for charity.  i feel that the song lyrics go with the photos because that’s what i see when i hear the songs or that’s the song that’s in my head when those pictures are taken or when i see them (like the photo of my mom reminds me of american pie because that was her favorite song).

then why change the colors?  why go with this process?  honestly, i just wanted to do this one because blue’s my favorite color and i thought it would be cool to just see what other colors i could turn it into.  though, as i find i do in many of my other artworks, i sometimes find the meaning to my projects during class critiques or even when i’m in the middle of working on them, and even sometimes weeks later after i have already finished my work.  as i work on them i keep thinking of them and look to see what the deeper meanings are, and i myself, try to put the pieces of the puzzle together, without even realize that i set myself up with pieces of my life.  i think that the different toning of the cyanotypes shows the different pieces, the different moods, thoughts, ways, to view my life and how i feel.

a lot of the processes didn’t come out the way the book said it would (the book did say that it might not always come out) which made me think of how that’s just like my life, or anyone’s for that matter: life never turns out the way you think it will.  for fun, however, i wanted to experiment with other things, besides the chemicals the book told me to use.  i wanted to try different kinds of tea bags to see if the tea-toning would be different.  however, walmart or wegmans did not sell the tea bags separatley, you needed to buy the whole box.  however i did find kool-aid and lemonade, and i tried that.  even though the kool-aid did not have much effect on it (it just turned all the white spots to the color of the kool-aid) it was still fun to try.  i used the lemonade in my final because i liked the effect of that – it looked like the cyanotype was washed out a bit.  i then tried to see what would happen if i took a tea-toned print and put it in the lemonade.  it looked like a washed out tea-toned print (i think that was one of my favorite tonings).

i have learned a lot from alt process this year.  about the process and i learned a lot about myself (blah, blah, blah, the same old stuff, i’m starting to sound halmarky again…oy!).  this is an interesting subject that i would be very happy to do next semester, which i am.  i forgot to mention before that while i was putting this up it reminded me of a quilt, which i, to myself, thought it was funny because my mom was obsessed with quilts.  so i think i might try to do more of these kind of prints, and then sew them up in the end.  or , i was even thinking, of putting these in window frames.  i’d find old windows, cut out the cyanotype-toned prints of myself (with or without the words, i d0n’t know…) in the shape of the window (it would be cool if i could find a window with pane designs on it so it would be interesting shapes of the prints cut out to form a window) because i feel a lot of the time that peope look right through me (like a window) and not even know i’m there, or see me but not entirely see me, ya’know?  does that make sense?

anyway, i should go before i type even more words and make this even longer and more boring to read, haha!  but seriously, i really enjoyed this class.

-meghan samantha

twister cyanotype sheet

i wanted to try a cyanotype bedsheet, and after looking at some examples of them, it made me think of the game twister, so i wanted to try to play on that.  i spray-painted the twister dots on it, then i put the chemicals on it, let it dry over night, had my friends lay down on it for half an hour, then washed it in the washing machine.  my professor told me that i had to wash it several times.  after the first 2 times, it was perfect!  it was blue and the spots that they laid on were white, but i thought that i should wash it a few more times.  apparently i washed it one time too many ’cause it turned green instead of being blue – but hey!  it still looks pretty cool!

cyanotype tea bag toning

these are some old cyanotypes i had and i gave it a tea-toning:

my little broken house

self portrait

van dyke browns

so these are some of my van dyke brown prints i did for class.  i think they came out pretty cool:

broken flowerpot

my little broken house

cyanotypes

these are some of my cyanotypes that i made in my alt process class.  first i scanned some old negatives i took and printed them out on transparencies.  then i coated watercolor paper with the chemical, and once it was dry, exposed the transparency negatives on it, i experimented using the sunlight and uv light, but those transparency negatives weren’t contrasty enough, so i made them have more contrast in photoshop printed them out again, exposed them to the paper, and they came out ok.  i find that the sun light works better than the uv light, not just because it’s faster, but i find that it has a stronger outcome.  and here are my cyanotype prints!:

a night at the tracks

american pie bench (with a fisheye lens)

broken flowerpot

my broken little house

my old converses

self portrait

Jesus up a British Butt

I choose to critique Lennie Lee.  I don’t know what the correct title for this picture is, but i call it, “Jesus up a British Butt.”  I find it quite funny actually.  It’s very taboo, which is what he’s about, doing taboo things.  To me, I think he’s British, which is why the butt’s British, but I don’t think he’s religious, or at least does not believe in Jesus.  Because I believe that his photo’s like the saying, “If you don’t like it, you can shove it up my butt!”  Which the actuall act of shoving Jesus Christ up his butt shows that he doesn’t care too much for Jesus, as if he doesn’t think he was all that great.