Observation: Place 2

The small little walkway passes between two neighborhoods. It's called the "Plum Patch". Although i don't see any plums. Just rows and rows of houses that all look the same. Brown and big. They all have the same blueprints and it seems to normal to be normal. The road i walk on has been worn and i see the tracks of tires made by byciclists. Every now and then i kick a rock and listen to it skip across the dryness of the blacktop below me. To the one side of me there's a big sign that has been knocked over that says WELCOME TO......i can't read the rest because it's covered in weeds. The smallness of this path is only wide enough for maybe three people to walk shoulder to shoulder. I keep looking back and hoping that some byciclist won't run me over. It's a nice little place, secluded, and a place that i wouldn't feel comfortable in the dark, but it's nice in the daytime. There are new houses to my right that are being built. But they all look the same. They have no personality. Just plain, brown, bland. Bland. Bland. That's all this neighborhood is....bland. It almost takes away of the beauty of this little grove. I turn my head away from the plain houses and look at the wild weeds and flowers that give this pathway a little personality. But soon this little pathway will probably become somebody's backyard and nobody will be able to feel the beauty of this pathway again.

Observation: Place 1

The weeds have overrulled everything else. There used to be a canal here but i cant even see the water trickling down now. Although i hear the water. As i walk down the weeds become less and less. Although i see what has become not only grass but wild flowers, which i guess some people might still call weeds since they are plentiful. The little purple flowers are flourishing from the water of the canal but as i walk down further i can smell what smell like sewer, all though this isn't a sweage place. At the end of the canal there is a dark tunnel that leads further into the earth. The stench is horribly strong here and it looks like the tunnel will never end and that darkness will rule forever. But as i look down the clear water flows over the rocks giving them a sheen of sparkle as the light hits them just right. I look across and there's this big black spot on the rocks ahead, and it looks like someone lit a firework that exploded there.

Observation: Person 2

He is strong and robust. His hair is cropped short on his head, like he's been in the military. He's probably in his early 40's though. His face is hard and stern as he watches his two sons mow his lawn. it's like He's coaching him. He was probably a football player in highschool, he looks as though he would be a football coach. His eyes flicker back and forth from son to son, to make sure they do a perfect job. He probably has a OCD sense about him because the feeling he gives off is that everything has to be perfect or he'll make you do it all over again from scratch. He would be a good military leader. His arms are folded across his chest, and his face has turned to a scowl of dissaproval. I feel bad for his sons.

Observation: Person 1

Her shoulder-length blond hair wisps in curls around her face. She looks tired and I can see the wrinkles starting to form around her eyes. The dark circles under her eyes suggest that she didn't get a great night's sleep. She was probably kept up again by her 5 year old son. She's sitting on the porch watching that boy and his three sisters playing basketball. She's leaning back as if she was remembering her childhood. Her baggy faded blue shirt suggests that she has worn it many times before, perhaps for cleaning around the house? She has a faded look in her eyes almost as if she's ready to retire. She must be very tired for it shows in the emotion of her face. You can see the grey in her hair as it's starting to grow out of the roots, the first sign of old age. Although she could possibly be in her middle fourties. She looks worn though, like her shirt, possibly with all those kids she has approched old age too quickly.

Journal 4: The Life of A Rose

So i'm really excited to shoot my final assignment. I also really like the name of my final assignment cause it just rolls off the tongue, and it sounds poetic. Anyway as i have mentioned in my previous journals i really like photographing flowers (i just have a thing for flowers it's not all that wierd....is it?) So when Mr. P. mentioned that our assignment had to do with time the first thing that popped into my head was....well...the life of a rose. I thought it represented time very well and had a feeling of melancholly about it, or as they say in japanese, mono-aware (i also like the message of melancholy...even if it's wierd). So my plan was to get a white sheet for the background so the main focus would be on the rose itself.

I think my shooting went really well although i started to run out of time, which when you think about it is kind of ironic since this whole term revolved around time....But anyway i'm actually really happy the way my pictures turned out, although a few of them (the ones that i tried printing but didn't end up in my final project themselves) were blurry which made me kind of mad. Also one thing i would change was that one picture in my series of seven was vertical while the rest were horzontal, so i would make that one horizontal too or i would have a bigger collection of pictures and make a couple more vertical. I liked the light in my pictures thanks to the room we call the "sun" room. Hence the name. I really like the last picture in the series, the one that has no petals, and also the one that's starting to droop. I think these two pictures have a special meaning and really express what the Japanese call "mono-aware". Overall i'm quite happy with my final project.

And i'm quite sad that the term has ended. BYE PHOTO! :'( I'll see you next year!

Journal #3: Night

So i had some really cool ideas for night, and i was really excited to do this project, it seemed like a really cool project. Again i wanted to shoot flowers especially dead flowers because in my mind it had a connection to night and it, (to me at least) portrayed a specific feeling (although i'm not quite sure what feeling). Also flowers are like the best thing i can photograph, cause you know how some people are way good at portraits? Well with me it's flowers (i hope :)). I also really wanted to shoot this canal that was behind my house because i think it would have some really neat photo opportunnities.

So this project was almost a complete disaster. First off i sort of kind of procrastinated which was very bad of me, because procrastination sucks. And second i don't think i lived up to my full potential in this assignment. I also had some restrictions, like having to go to bed at 9:30, and it not getting dark untill 8:00 (my curfew sucks) but it's still my fault that i procrastinated so i take the blame there. I do like some of my pictures though. One of my favorites is my tomato plant picture, (the one in the barrel if you can't figure out which one Mr. P.) I really like how it all seems very geometric with all the lines and stuff, i also really like geometry (maybe there's a connection???). I also like the one of the dead plant because it did get my message across of, well i actually don't know, melancholy maybe? OH but the thing that went disasterously wrong was that i lost my little night assignment sheet so i didn't know at how many seconds to shoot and so i winged it and the was a really bad mistake cause all my pictures seemed brighter than day and i mean really bright.....and then my camera broke and i had to open it up and thought i lost like half my pictures (and there wern't that many to begin with) Anyway i just don't think i did my best on this project.

So moral of the story DON"T PROCRASTINATE!!!! And never lose a sheet where it tells you for how long you should shoot. And never let your camera break on you, even if it wasn't even your fault and had nothing to do with you.

Journal #2: Before and After (or in my case, close closer and closest)

Before: So i really didn't know what to do for this assignment, my mind was really blank. I thought that the close closer and closest one would be easier than the Before and After. And i was so right. Although i did have some ideas for this assignment they usually ended up being quite impossible to do so i never really ended up doing those. Some ideas i had were of flowers, since i really love photographing flowers, but it was because i couldn't get a flower to grow fully in the time period i had. So the main point of this before paragraph was that i really was out of ideas for this project and i really didn't know what to do....

After: So i really took my time with this assignment (and no i wasn't procrastinating ;).....for the most part.) I ended up doing no before and afters but that's ok cause i actually really liked the photographs that i took. Before i was talking about how i had no ideas and that was absolutly true until about the last week. But in that last week i was on a roll and just started to take of what i thought were really good pictures. So yay me! I think my project turned out quite well and i think i had a really good contact sheet and many possibilites to choose, from. I really like my my silloutte piano pictures that go together because i really like the light in the pictures and also the background (which was a mirror). I liked my other three pictures also although the last picture of the group was a little blurry. But overall i think they turned out quite well.