Quiet that Vinegar-Lipped Reader Lady!

First I wanted to post a link to this article about a mouse riding a frog in an Indian monsoon. Photograph from Reuters/Pawan Kumar (India). From 2006, in the norther Indian city of Lucknow, they captured it on film:


This week, we were charged with reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. And I absolutely loved it. It spoke to my soul. Yes, it's about writing, but like Rita said, it can apply to creating photographs. I love that it's not just me that grew up awkward and teased and tormented. I like to think that Anne got a note passed to her in 6th grade titled, "Who Hates Anne Lamott" with classmates signatures on it, so that I'm not the only one. I like to think that she got called Trapjaw because of her underbite, or harrassed with some stupid song like There's a Hole in the Buckett. I mostly like thinking that I'm not the only one who sometimes wants to sit frozen because she's convinced everyone would rather she not exist because she's so annoying or stupid or whatever crime I might have committed.

I loved the image of the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady.


She really does look like this in my head, going, "That's interesting? Really? That's a terrible idea! How disappointing."

Something that Inspires Me

Just want to post a picture from a photo story that really inspires me:



I'm really interested in the Middle East, since my parents live there (Saudi Arabia). Hearing their stories and getting a peek into Arab culture, as well as knowing Palestinians and *knowing* what goes on in Palestine, it really caught my interest. I also like it because it's well-shot.

Dominic Nahr won gold for this international picture story at the 62nd CPOY competition. I really wanted his portfolio to win gold, too, but they chose a guy who did a story on Skatopia. I didn't like his story as much, but that's judges at CPOY for you (chipmunk).

Mixed Bag of Thoughts

If you've never tried photographing a black dog, then this picture won't impress you. Taken by Michele Abeles, it is an excellent example of knowing how to use light.



Also, I came across this - some new features for Photoshop CS4 that you might not know about.

And one final thing - I really despise Nick Cave of Nick Cave and the Bad Dreams. The stupid doof named a woman "Elisa Day" in what seems to be a very popular song "Where the Wild Roses Grow" so now there are many women out there who have adopted the name because of the song. Case in point: In investigating potential domain names, I discovered that elisaday.com is owned by a singer in Germany who counts Nick Cave among her favorite musicians and her brand of music is in line which his style. And somewhere on the site, they asked what her 'real' name was and "she'll never tell!" Arg! Not only did they mispronounce the name (eh-lie-sa) in the song but how creepy is it that both my first and last name are in a song where the namesake gets clubbed to death down by the river? Here's a really lovely doll dedicated to, but not inspired by, me, the *real* Elisa Day.



This is the doll from the Living Dead Doll Series 9. The one on the right is the special 666 edition. Don't you love it?

I Couldn't Resist the Urge to Cry

I took some time today to look at a bunch of pictures on the NY Times blog and I couldn't resist the urge to cry. Most of them were pictures from Haiti. I was struck by how many people are living with so very little. And for some reason, today, it seemed incredibly sad, sad - that there are people out there that will spend $10K for a dining room table, when that's probably more money than these people will see in their lifetime. I think one that really struck was these people pressing to try to get inside the US embassy for food. All those people, desperate just to eat. (It was the top picture for the blog on Wednesday, Jan. 20.) The other ones that got me were from the 15th, "Prayers in the Dark," because it just lots of dead people, bodies, and they didn't have the resources to deal with them other than to just dump in piles for family members to dig through. It's just that I look at these pictures and I feel for the people and what they lost, and how they can't ever get it back.

Life As I Express It

This semester, I am taking 'Picture Story.' As one of our first readings, was 'Life/Work' by Bill Jay. Jay talked about how photography, good photography, reflects real life. But not in the 'photograph the banal' but in the 'what's your passion' sense. And it got me thinking: one of the things that I have been wrestling with, since coming to grad school, is listening to and validating my own voice. What I mean is, it's so easy for me to doubt myself, to second-guess myself. And when I think about my future, what I want to do, or what I like to photograph, it all just doesn't seem to be spiffy enough, fancy enough. The word lame comes to mind. But Jay writes, "Stephen Dalton obviously has a passion for, and deep knowledge of, insects. His technically amazing, and aesthetically beautiful, images of insects ooze a love for bugs even to those who have an aversion to the little beasts themselves." and "If the photographer is communicating a personal passion in something, anything, through the pictures then the images are also revealing, incidentally, a great deal about the photographer as well as the subject. His/ her attitude to life is evident." So, maybe it's not so lame, I'm not so lame, after all. Maybe, like Rita said, I'm the only one who can tell the stories that I come across. It seems so elementary, obvious, but it's so easy to feel inconsequential.

I also liked this one: "A unique style emerges in photography by ignoring it, concentrating on the subject, and allowing care, passion and knowledge to bubble to the surface through a lot of hard work over a long period of time.' I like the idea that I don't need to worry so much about distinguishing myself, not being derivative, being original or the best, and just focus on working hard and I'll get there. It's just training my eye to see the unusual...

How I Spent My Winter Vacation

Since I worked Intersession, I only got about a week's worth of vacation. And my parents were in from Saudi Arabia, so I took a few pictures. I left my dogs in MO, so I missed them, but my parents have Snickers the cat...

Since I had no car, I didn't really get to see the sights. But I did get to go to L.L. Bean.

Pictured here are a group of tourists looking at their digital camera, after climbing and posing on the big plastic boot. That's what the boot is there for. It's a quintessentially typical sight outside of the main store.

A small bit of trivia: L.L. Bean has a 100% guarantee on all their products. Period. So, if you purchase and are not satisfied, you can return it, even without the receipt.

Here's a nice picture of my mom (Liz) - a rare thing, indeed! Most of the time, my mom looks like a stroke victim when we take her picture. We've never been able to figure out why.

And a nice one of her laughing :)

It's a Review to Remember

While at home, my brother shared this with me:

Hysterical review (well, the first of 7 parts of a review) of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

Some of it was stupid - like him pretending to be a homicidal murderer - but much of it was laugh out loud funny.