Unedited B&W Prints 1 and Existentialism?

After an hour and a half of fighting scanners, I have prints to share with you. Unedited prints, hurray, meaning they're really just tests.

Also, today I was asked what my final photo 1 project will be. The first thing to come popping out of my big mouth was "Existential photography," as if that was a very normal subject and how I'd do this was quite obvious.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

Potential ideas are: pulling quotes from Thus Spake Zarathustra and taking photos to match up with them; taking photos of the Existential concepts if free will (Angst and the Uebermensch included, naturally), "...Man is not yet a self," and "Existence precedes essence."


What to do.

Here are some contact strips of photos I'd like to develop. Please note, as I have with great joy, that I got a photo of the baby engineer. I'm unreasonably excited about that; he kept moving so fast I had a hard time getting him in focus but I GOT HIM. I swear, he's like seven years old and is already very much an engineer. Note also the lovely pieces of strong, abstract lines.

Marcelo

Somehow I manage to go to outdoor concerts in the summer and not expect hundreds of kids. But there they are, tumbling around on the grass and running all over the place, and some swinging their kites around. Marcelo was one of the kite-swinging kind.

There's A Window

I know, since I was there, that this was at a jazz concert.

This doesn't change the fact that whenever I look at this photo I falsely remember for a moment that I was at a '66 concert watching Janis Joplin. Annie Sellick is the woman here, though, and she has a powerful voice and stage presence. The photo below was from her piece "There's A Window."

This one might be one of my favorites, and those who know me probably could guess as much.

If you're wondering what the random white bits all over might be, in my defense the scanner is FILTHY. Because the cats think it's a chair.

Shake, good boy

Today's B&W photo is of my brother and his girlfriend's dog, Fawkes, who had found one of the cat toys-- the crocheted mouse filled with catnip. He was very excited about this. Naturally, he did whatever my brother told him to do if it involved the catnip mouse being thrown; this involved sitting and offering his paw to my brother.

There are a number of things to tweak in this photo, and multiple ways to do those, but here it is as it is now.

First batch of B&W photos

Some of you may know that I've been learning the tricks to black and white photography, including the developing and printing of such photographs.

I finally cleaned off the scanner, and have the prints that I am pleased with ready to upload. Huzzah, it's about damn time. I'll be posting one a day, instead of a bunch at once... see if you can figure out which ones involved a light meter in any fashion.

Now, I like abstraction, geometry, and, obviously, modernism. Gotta love good clean lines, and making people ask "What the hell is that?"

Shell swizzler

I'm not sure what these items are normally called, so I call them "swizzlers" usually. Firefox informs me that this is not a word, but I'm not sure this information is to be trusted given what else it tells me isn't a word.

This week I got to develop my first roll of film and produce my first photo print. Very exciting! It's really not too hard, in my opinion, but rather time-consuming and tedious. ....especially if the enlarger you're using has an excruciatingly dim bulb, causing you to go through four contact sheets before you realize "Ah, 40 seconds will be good." I'll scan these sometime, not sure when.

Window shell

A small metal shell that sits in a windowsill.

As of today, I find I need to make a note that my work is *gasp* copyrighted and belongs to me. No, I will not just send you my files because you want to use them, especially not if you tell me to instead of asking me. If you want to use an image, ask me, and we'll figure something out.