For Those of You Who Might Be Interested

My parents forwarded me a link to a YouTube video of the winner of Ukraine's Got Talent, Kseyina Simonova. I don't particularly care for America's Got Talent, but I'm glad they sent me it. Simonova's is drawing using sand and a light board (and she is amazing). She performs, drawing, with mood music in the background. The story that she told involved how ordinary people were affected the German invasion during World War II.


First, she paints a couple holding hands sitting on a bench under a starry sky. Soon warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

Next, it is replaced by a woman’s face crying. A baby arrives and the woman smiles again. The war returns as Simonova throws the sand into chaos. A young woman’s face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow and then the image turns into a monument to the Unknown Soldier. Simonova then frames it with a window and the performance ends with her creating a touching goodbye, with a mother and child inside and a soldier standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass.

Tы вcюдa pядoм - You are always quite near.

The Great Patriotic War resulted in one in four Ukranians dying, eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.

Project: Glass

For our second project, we were given the task of either lighting glass or metal - no small feat! I was teamed with Vivian Esparza. Originally, I was going to do metal and she was going to do glass, but we both kept thinking of ideas for the other to shoot. So we decided to switch. I had two ideas. One was to shoot a hurricane lamp and some old photographs. The one I chose instead was one I titled, "Decadence." My caption read: "Decadence reigns as the champagne is poured. Stacked in a pyramid three glasses high, traditional symbols of excess are displayed: champagne in glasses containing an antique gold ring adorned with diamonds and rubies, chocolate-covered truffles wrapped in blue foil, and fresh succulent strawberries." I was torn between two pictures. And I really wanted to photoshop out a slight imperfection in the image - a spot on the light board.

Here's the image I submitted:



Here's the lighting diagram for the picture:



And here's the one that I also really liked, but didn't choose because the ring wasn't lit as well.



I ended up really liking the bubbles. Vivian wasn't as big a fan, which is why I got rid of them, but in the end, it seemed to give some added energy to the image. If I had to do it over again, I would have had the bubbles and the snoot. (Or else I'd photoshop some of the one onto the other. Hmmm...)