Project365, #80: Time Travel #20 (Self Portrait 3)

Project365, #79: Time Travel #19 (Self Portrait 2)

"Food Drunk"

Project365, #78: Time Travel #18 (Self Portrait 1)

Self-portrait for photography class. First of three. Irony. Get it? GET IT?!

Project365, #76: Time Travel #17 (The Human Landscape 3)

Both models now!

Project365, #75: Time Travel #16 (The Human Landscape 2)

Male nude. So much hair. "Interesting" guy.

Project365, #74: Time Travel #15 (The Human Landscape)

Broken Hand. Not easy to type. Apologize for curtness, Anyhow...

Nudes! Using the body as "landscape" was my aim. First up, our nude female model:

Project365, #72: Time Travel #13 (Photography Class 5)

Depth! (that's what she said). Finally we have moved on to aperture/f-stop/depth/z-plane! Simple assignment here: get a clear fore-, mid-, and background with distinctions between each. Voila!

Project365, #71: Time Travel #12 (The Gates of Hell)

How bad is GPC? Just past this wall in their parking garage is the river Styx. And the band Styx is there too. The horror...

Project365, #70: Time Travel #11 (Two Tickets)

I can't help but create stories for just about every thing I find. Inanimate objects, especially. While on campus I spotted a small raffle ticket. Instantly I decided it was lost. If it's owner had kept it perhaps that could have won that big price and their life would have been that much better. CLICK. Then the sun came out, elevating this sad tale to "Holy Fuck I Found A Winning Ticket!" Below is my attempt to capture to opposing stories with the same item.

Project365, #68: Time Travel #10 (Photography Class 4)

More light-doodles!

Project365, #67: Time Travel #9 (Photography Class 3)

It's almost July and I'm backing posts to early May. So far behind. Thank goodness for my time machine...

....zzzzrk...

SHUTTER SPEED! Finally out of Auto-mode I was able to play with the white balance and shutter speed, but that's it thus far. Can't touch any other settings per prof's suggestion.

Initially we took some photos around campus, working in dark, shaded, and sunny areas. Some of those may show up in another post. However, one day, we got to spend hours in a dark room drawing with penlights. Aside from the "ooh let's spell the alphabet!" I ended up with some very interesting "accidents."

Part one:

Project365, #66: Time Travel #8 (Photography Class 2)

Bzzzzt....flux capacitor allows us to travel to...

Third photography class brought yet another challenge. First we had to chose the item we had with us that meant the most. For me it was my old beaten composition notebook I use to draft scenes and jot down ideas. From there we had a limited area (again) in which we had to take photos of the object fitting four different themes: it weighs 10,000 lbs, light as a feather, isolation, and "creeper." It was far more difficult than I expected, as my object was not ideal. Thankfully we only had to choose two themes, a photo each, to present. Here is "isolation" and "creeper."

Project365, #63: Time Travel #7 (Photography Class)

Time Machine on...sending photos back from June...hating that I'm this far behind.

As I've mentioned before I'm taking post-baccalaureate classes at GPC to boost my undergrad GPA in hopes of actually getting accepted by the Masters program I want. Last semester I took Education, Art, and Film courses, all things I was familiar with and knew I could ace (which I did). So the brief summer semester, I took the same strategy by taking Music and Photography. Music class is a joke, which I may get in to with a later post, but the photography class is small, intimate, and full of some rad folks. For our first day with cameras, he gave a seemingly simple task: find two subjects and take photos. There were restrictions however: we only had 10 minutes; the subject had to be in the small courtyard just outside our building; must be presented as is (no cropping, color correction, anything); worst of all, the camera must be in the "auto" setting. The idea was to keep it simple and basic, allowing us to exercise our eye and understand framing. Like I said, very basic.

Anyhow, I took about 50-60 photos of a half dozen objects. Tomorrow I take three prints to show the class and we'll discuss. Interesting realization, all but one of them fall in with a them of "being discarded." Seems appropriate for GPC. Here is what I came up with within all those restrictions:

Project365, #62: Sheep. Head. Tacos.

Today my friend Jorge introduced me to sheep's head tacos. Allow me to take you on a journey:

Upon arrival to their house, I was immediately ushered to the oven by the young, electric Boots, where I was introduced to my meal. He tried to hide in his ramshackle house of tortillas:

After a few minutes of judging an impromptu gymnastics exhibition I was told it was time to eat. Inside I came, LITERALLY, face to face with it:

Jorge began carving, a difficult task.

First to come out was the eye. I was assured this was the tastiest part. I admit I was skeptical at first, but let me tell, no joke, one of the tastiest things I've ever had:

Further dismantling (read tearing the bottom jaw off) revealed more to eat. You'd be amazed how much meat you can get off of this thing.

Next up: brain meat. After many frustrating attempts to scratch the meat out a less grace method was used: a hammer.

In short, looks gross, taste delicious. Now to cross-breed a spider and a sheep so I can eat all the more eyes.

R.I.P. you delicious bastard

Project365, #61: Time Travel #6 (Washington Memorial Gardens pt 3)

Last cemetery update...

As I alluded to in the previous post, while I was just using the cemetery as an opportunity for photos, I ended up having some odd feelings come to the surface. I disgust at Western/Christian funeral rites was further confirmed by what I saw as posthumous pride via oversized statues and obelisks. As a gut reaction to that initial impression, I decide to wander through and look at the simpler, less imposing graves.

A common theme throughout were large family or couple grave stones with multiple names, where often one would have a death date and the other a blank. Married couples where one spouse had already died and the other secured a spot next to them. This is when it became a somber walk rather than the planned relaxed stroll. My mind began to create stories for each name I saw. I started calculating the age at which each one had died.

Here are some memorable stories I found:

Mr. Ivery intrigued me. As you can see, there is no date of death, yet he is by himself in his plot. No-one seems to be waiting for him. I wonder if he, in his elder years, has become so preoccupied with death that he went ahead and reserved himself a seat.

 Christian was only a year old. Possibly less, as no month and day are given. The area immediately around the stone made it clear no-one visited often or, at the very least, never tried to clean it up. In this story, I imagine the parents found it too difficult to come by and stopped altogether. Soon after Christian's death they had another child who knows nothing of his or her brother.

(Sorry, I know. Things got dark towards the end of this morning's walk)

 I have no idea. I imagine the family couldn't afford a gravestone and the caretaker of the grounds allow the family to make one our of plaster or by crudely carving into rock. I can barely make sense of most of what's written here.

 Nothing to say, really. Just different than all the others.

Okay, bummer time over. Last bit. This outdated crypt sat in the back corner of the cemetery. I'm curious as the the sporadic placement of placards though. Were people concerned about their remains being left so close to someone else?

Street art Jesus watches over these folks.