Blog moving...

New posts will be at this address! http://thoughtsofashapiro.tumblr.com/

A blog entry in three parts...

Part One:

I've been inspired recently. Not making work or anything, but simply absorbing inspiring materials. Recently went and saw "It Might Get Loud,"

Even if you don't play guitar, or if the fact they included the Edge in the movie offends you because you only listen to skinny jean hipster music, the movie itself speaks a lot about being inspired, and where the "greats" seek their inspiration. I'd highly recommend it.

Part Two:

I recently finished a series of work for my applied lighting class that I thought I'd give you a chance to look at, it's based around my parents neighborhood in Franklin, TN. You can find it here

I have an opportunity this coming thursday to photograph Paul Overstreet, and I am pretty excited about that to say the least. For those of you who, like myself have never heard of Paul... he's a Grammy winning country music artist, as well as a songwriter for various artists that we probably have heard of. You can check him out here. So we'll see how that goes

Lastly, Part Three:

I recently had a revelation at school... Something that built a degree of humility in me. I was printing work for the Westhaven series and another photo student was working on some darkroom prints. I come to find out that they're in the photo 1 class being offered this semester, and because I'm interested in what the students around school are doing I start wandering and looking over the work... Well she asks my opinion, and I start to give her some feedback and she cuts me off telling me that she already knows this, and that... (mainly to do with prints drying down). And I realized something in the way I was reacting, every time I have tried to impress upon someone how much I happen to know about photography I've alienated and irritated them. From here on out, when I am given an opportunity to talk and ask advice from a knowledgeable photographer, I'm not gonna waste my energy to impress upon them the extent of my knowledge... It's not important, for them to know what I know... It's important to sit under their tutelage and absorb whatever they're willing to share with me. To be clear, I'm not trying to say that I am some great photographer and this person should have listened to me, but I wish it hadn't felt like they wanted me to know, that they know something... Does that make sense?

Anyway,

C'ya.

Flickr again...

So I joined flickr again... if you're on there add me

Concept of Time

I think I have a vastly skewed sense of time, sometimes I leave myself way to much time to accomplish a certain something. For example, I think that writing a blog entry takes 30+ minutes... and truth be told it can, or even more... But as a rule if my blog's purpose is to share my thoughts as I sojourn on this journey of being an art student, it shouldn't take more time than I can spare. So... here's to new content.

-a

What I've Been Doing.

So, it's been a while. School started... umm work... etc. I've been thinking about maybe writing a book, or at least a quality short story. I'm into this "post-apocalyptic" thing... Here's some stuff I'm looking at:

"The Colony"

A Discovery Channel "experiment" reality TV deal, where a number of volunteers are put into a post WW3, or a post-global pandemic environment. Wherein they need to live, create, co-habitate.

"The Road"

A Cormac McCarthy book. First off, I LOOOOVE Cormac, but regardless, this is a story of a father and son who trek through a burned America in search of the coast and hopefully a functioning civilization.

"Fallout 3"

A video game, roughly a First Person Shooter RPG, wherein your created character awakes in a fallout shelter and ventures out into the world to find a (once again) burned and desolate wasteland full of mutants, backwater civilizations, and conflict.

So... I dunno... if you have any other resources send them my way, if anything, I think my little story could be a good "have faith while questioning how God can let something terrible happen" kinda thing. Or not, or maybe my whim will pass. We shall see...

Peace,

-a

Quote

"I think photography was inside me. Once I found it, it became stronger than me and I took refuge in it."

- Raymond Depardon

Alec Soth: Black Line of Woods

If you know me, you know that my favorite living working artist is Alec Soth. I have his books, I obsess over his work, I even had the opportunity to meet him after one of his lectures (I was shaking, and found it hard to talk). I just found out that Soth has a new body of work, commissioned by the High Museum in Atlanta called Black Line of Woods his only criteria for this work was that he must photograph in the south. You can read a lot more about this work here, but his general concept was that of runaways, hermits, specifically mentioning Huck Finn or Robinson Crusoe.

But something really cool about this exhibit is the five question interview with the artist attached. I want to share two specific questions with my friends one regarding medium and the debate about film or digital and another regarding being a photographer:

You work primarily with an 8 x 10 view camera. Can you describe the technical advantages and challenges of working in this format? Do you anticipate moving to a digital format in the future?

I work with lots of different cameras. One of my books was done with medium format and I've done a couple of smaller bodies of work digitally. I want to be like a filmmaker and work on a project-by-project basis. I admire the way someone like Steven Soderberg can do a high-budget Hollywood movie and then a small, like black-and-white experimental film. I want the same kind of freedom. The project comes first, then the technology.

What inspired you to become a photographer? Do you have any advice for up-and-coming photographers?

It took me awhile to find photography. I used to do temporary sculptures outdoors in the style of people like Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. I would document these photographically. Eventually I just gave up the sculptures but continued with the photography.

My advice for up-and-coming photographers is to try lots of different kinds of photography. Along with personal projects, try doing assignment-driven work. Try sports photography. Or nudes. Try it all. Then be honest with yourself. If you really want to take pictures of your cat, then so be it. . . take pictures of your cat.

-as

(Q&A from High Museum of Art's site)