Valentine's Day

I was demonstrating typing on Path's to my lab when I realized the juxtapositioning of text and image seemed autobiographical. I love Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken." So I used that as my text. When I demonstrated typing within a shape, I used the heart shape from the custom menu. One of the sentiments from Facebook's Super Poke emerged so I included that. Once I realized how my subconscious played a trick on me, I went with it and played around with the background, et voila!

Although the majority of this art piece is created in Photoshop, I did include one of my photos. I used a photo of a rusted door and lock, desaturated it, created a high b/w contrast, then used it as the grunge effect. Still very fitting and meaning-Full for me.

What I Photograph

Here is what I like to photograph:

Anything in decay
Old, rusted metal
Chains
Mechanical apparati (is that the plural?)
Textures
Reflections
Fragments (shards?) of anything
Close ups (almost to abstraction but not quite)
Close ups (as abstracts)
Incongruities

Symmetry by Dezra Despain

I like character and mystery. I like stories. I relish metaphors and symbolisms.

I don't photograph just to get a pretty picture. It has to have meaning.

Meaning.

All I do that has value to me is meaning-Full.

That's when photography comes alive for me.

Search for Essence

I went to my photography club yesterday. It seemed so trite after reading Sontag and Barthes. The club is a good group of people but I couldn't get past the technical treatment, the "this is how you compose a shot" theme that made no sense to me because photography's soul was taking up my mind.
Soul.
Essence.
What is the essence of photography? What is my relationship to it? How do I approach it? What is my photographic voice? What is it about photography that grips me, that pulls me in? It's not "this is how you compose a shot" and yet, that's how I've been taking photos. How do I become photography?

I'm getting a bit weary with how I approach photography. It is all about the composition, about seeing the forms and lines and repetition of shapes and colors. It is about seeing what is not seen and exposing it. And yet, I haven't liked what I've done lately. It's trivial. It's boring. It's predictable.

I think about Seeing Sideways as an antidote but am not captured by the thought because Seeing Sideways ends up about Seeing Sideways. Seeing Sideways becomes the goal. The outcome only points back to Seeing Sideways, not to the essence of the outcome. It therefore is no longer about photography. What I must do is discover the Me within Photography.

I don't know if any of this is relevant for my final project. But it is my reflections at the moment.

On Photography

I've been reading essays on photography; "On Photography" by Susan Sontag and "Camera Lucida" by Roland Barthes. Rich suggested I immerse myself in reflections on photography so that I could read how others view it and in turn uncover my own perspective. The reflections have been interesting; Sontag is depressing, reflecting on the raw, the absurd, and the hollowness of photography--at least, that's my take on her writing thus far. Barthes uses Sartre's "L'Imaginaire" to inform and direct his narrative. Up until now, I hadn't thought of photography from an intellectual or philosophical perspective so reading these two books has made me conscious of what my personal take on photography may be. I see this as an opportunity "to exhaust a philosophy...to reflect within its perspectives, and create my own private ideas at its expense..." (John-Paul Sartre)

Even though I haven't consciously thought about why I photograph what I do, I do have a perspective that I want to explore. My fascination lies in what I call "snippets" or parts of the whole. I have always been fascinated by isolation of parts, by gathering bits and pieces, whether it's in what I write or what I photograph. I'm constantly gathering "snippets."

A photograph cannot capture the whole. Perhaps that's why I like it so much. I look for the story within the story, and, even within the story; folding in on itself like a Mandlebrot fractal, looking for an essence...The Essence.

As I think about this, though, that isn't possible in photography. The closer in you get, the more the view becomes abstract and unidentifiable. I wonder, though, if it's the search that fascinates me...always searching. The journey.

How this will fit in with my project, I don't know. I'm not sure where the project is going yet.

I'm in the image gathering stage using Camera Raw. It has been difficult because I don't have a lot of time to devote to the photography now that I'm working full time and teaching part time. So I'm trying to listen to myself and work with myself and with what I have available to me so that I am satisfied and content with my subject.

I feel guilty taking photos. I should be doing something I don't like instead. But because I love taking photos, the pleasure I feel is full of guilt so I haven't taken many photos. But I plan on it this weekend.

My Final Semester Begins!

How is it that the final semester of my master's program is here? When did that happen? OMG! I feel like I've lived through lifetimes and yet have just barely started. Time has stretched and shrunk and folded in upon itself all in a matter of two years. Two years. I've slipped around and through the program. It has been wild.

Now I'm starting my final project and I want to blog about it. I want to link my thoughts about my project to the medium itself and see where it goes. I don't know what to expect with my project. I'm taking Kierkegaard's philosophical leap of faith, leaving rationality behind and stepping into the Unknown, that part of me that I know exists but that I've ignored because it scares me so.

Fall 2006, I took N503 Digital Media Application Design Processes with Richard Edwards as the professor. I did not want to take that class because traditionally it had been taught using Flash as the application and it was the traditional that I wanted to learn, but Rich decided to take it in a different direction. The direction he took it appeared to be totally useless for me.

Ultimately, N503 ended up being the one class that I value the very most from all my studies. I figured anyone who can bring Niestzche into a New Media classroom and discuss philosophy and how it relates to New Media is someone worth taking a class from. On top of that, Rich played to everyone's strengths, encouraging the class members to create a project that had value to them.

I was able to push my knowledge of Photoshop, my personal application of choice. My final project was thrilling for me...so much so that the still image of it is currently the header of this blog (the project itself was a .mov shown on the Wall...a huge screen on the UITS side of the building). I also printed it so that it fit within the framework of a door and it has hung in a gallery. Wow!

(I wish that Google Video didn't chunk my video. It runs much more smoothly than this.)

Last semester was my Semester-From-Hell (SFH). So much happened to me during that semester that I had to make choices about what I could do and think about and what I had to set aside. I set aside thoughts of my final project.

Once the SFH was over, I turned my thoughts to my final project. I had wanted to do something with art and technology but I knew it was too late to really start on something as extensive as that so I settled on a not-for-profit branding project. It was "safe." It was something I could do and it fell within the parameters of the program's expectations. But I felt I had done myself a disservice by settling for something easy. I just didn't know what else to do. Then I had to find a mentor.

My first choice was Rich, though I had two other instructors as possibilities just in case Rich was booked for the semester. I was thrilled when Rich agreed to work with me. The way I saw it was even if branding wasn't Rich's forte (one of the other instructors I had emailed is excellent at branding), he is a conceptualizer. I knew that he would get me to think differently about what I was doing. He would expand my perspective and pop me out of whatever narrow box I was rummaging around in.

When I sat in his office at our first meeting, he looked at me and said, "I don't get it, Dezra. I don't see this as something you would be doing. This isn't YOU."

I tried to explain that I had no time to think about my project during the SFH and this was all I could come up with. But Rich wouldn't hear me...THANK GOODNESS! He said, "You should be doing something with art, perhaps with your camera and photography."

I just didn't know what!

But his parting words were, "Dezra, if you decide you want to design a matchbox cover, I can turn that into a project for you. I want you to think about what you're doing and get back with me."

So I am now leaping into the unknown, working with Camera Raw because that is what is grabbing me, not knowing where I'm going with it but trusting the process...because I trust Rich. I trust that he will be able to direct me and I trust that I will be able to seize the opportunities. And I trust my gut. I don't know where it's taking me, but I'm in for a ride. And I'm thrilled.