"Take, O Boatman, thrice thy fee"

I began scanning in some old family albums today. The album is from the late 1800's, as far as I can tell. Each photograph has a pithy little quote under it, in the world's most exquisite script. The photographs found on their molding acidic pages are objects, at least to my eyes, of unspeakable beauty. This is a campaign for immortality; photographs this beautiful should not die.

Digital photography and photograph manipulation tools grant us a chance never before handed to photographers, that is, a chance for near immortality. Sure, data becomes corrupted, but properly backed up, information on a hard-drive will never fade, scratch, or get coffee spilled on it. As I scan in these faded, mildewed, scratched, gorgeous survivors, I feel like I'm saving an entire chunk of the past.

Way more of these to come.

Politics

Hillary Clinton Speaks at Clark University:
Clark University just hosted Deval Patrick to speak about Obama, and Hillary Clinton to speak about, well, herself. The Hillary event was packed, but I followed the nice lenses, and snuck right past the crowds to sit across a rope from US Rep Jim McGovern and his family. A secret service agent kept glaring me down, but I guess I managed to look respectable enough, because he didn't harass me. I viewed this as a chance to hone my skills. They aren't very good in indoor lighting, so I was proud of a few achievements. These are straight out of the camera because a. I like to look at my shots like that and critique my style, and b. hopefully it would discourage stealing. I like this picture, of Clinton, McGovern, and his daughter, Molly. She's such a little princess, check out the slipper. (To be fair I also have a picture of her picking her nose, when she thought no one was watching.) The Worcester city mayor brought his kid to the Obama rally. That's right politicians, show the kids off. Speaking of which, I even got to see Hillary Clinton hold a baby. She didn't kiss it though. She didn't kiss these people either.

Old School

Since I'm going back to film for a while, at least partially, I decided to look back at the beginning of the year, to see what I was doing before I got used to digital. I realized there was actually some interesting stuff going on back there. Again these are straight out of the camera, and to top it off the camera is a point and shoot, the Cannon powershot A550 which is sort of a digital toy camera. These are from a September 07 shoot.

The Longest Night

One way I kept myself busy over break was by shooting random events in the area. This is Ashfield's solstice gathering, which was surprisingly well-attended, and pretty darn moving. Even though most of the attendants probably wouldn't classify themselves as Pagan, the ceremony was getting at something else altogether. It was about unity, warmth, and light.

A problem I encountered was that the photographs are necessarily noisy. I was shooting with a tripod, but people move pretty fast, so the ISO was maxed out most of the time to get me nice crisp shots.
Still, even though the images are mostly too noisy to print, I think this shoot was a great success. I learned a great deal about night shooting, and using a tripod. Another perk is that I got offered a freelance job for the summer, shooting photographs of one mans nature camp. That should be truly fun, and a great learning experience.

Pictures from home

Sorry no post for several weeks. I've been back to the homestead, where there is a wealth in images, but alas, no high-speed internet.
Above, a shot of my little brother doing what he does best. I love the intensity in his eye, and the grace with which he grasps the wheel. Sunil has been driving since about 4, and is quite good at it at this point. Better than most adults, in fact. Another picture of Sunil, this time helping my dad build the barn. I was standing on a ladder to get this shot.
This shot is of my dad building a wood-rack for outside the barn. I liked the idea of comparing his preciseness in angles with the similar skill of framing a shot. My favorite part is the angle down in the bottom right-hand corner.
Last but not least, above is my glamorous sister, vacuuming flies from the sunny window-sill. Bri and I plan to partner up to take some fashion shots this year, which is something we have been doing since we were 15 or so, but hope to do much better now that I have proper equipment (instead of, say, the camera on my lap-top). I should say some of the proper equipment, since we still need to rustle up some more lights. If I were a rich man...

Men Working

To me there is little more beautiful than the slow but insistent work of man, the kind that I think of as "one foot in front of the other" work. My father recently put up a barn, a large and complicated one, with one buddy in the span of couple of months. I asked him how it could be done, and he told me "by hitting nails. Most things, when you come right down to it, are all about repeating a tedious action a thousand times."
I watched these guys digging this hole throughout one foggy morning and afternoon. They began by slamming up the concrete, then they starting using the earth mover. A lot of it, though, had to be dug by hand. That's where the slow but insistent part comes in.
And me, I was busy writing a final project, but I kept coming around every twenty minutes or so with my camera, unable to keep away, so that by the end of their very gritty day, they would straighten up and wave when they saw me. And eventually, both my project, and the whole, were complete.
What they plan to do with the gapping hole in the middle of our quad...now that's a mystery. Maybe its a trap for elephants.

I've always been very interested in pictures that capture the feel of a place. Looking through my old images (printing for final crit.) I noticed some pictures that really said Worcester. I haven't run them through photoshop or anything yet, so excuse the rough feel, but here it is, Worcester Ma. Preparing for crits has been very stressful. I keep double guessing myself. See, part of me really likes my images, but part of me knows that if I'd just thought harder, moved a little more, worked them up better, and looked for more inspiration, well then my prints would be better.
On the other hand, I've been making myself rework each image from scratch before producing the final print, which is time consuming and annoying, but shows how much I have improved at working up images in photoshop. No matter how finished I thought the print was when I first printed it, I can make it look better now than I could then.
Plus, I know this is not in any way the end of my electronic photo career. Even as prepare my final, I think of things I could do better next time I shoot.