2011 - the year that kicked my butt

2011 was a tough year for me. I lost my grandfather, my sense of home, a job, plans for the future, felt very alone, useless, and over all a giant mess. Nothing is resolved and for a lot of things I will not receive a sense of closure until much later, if at all. All these things have changed me and influenced me in some unexpected (good and bad) ways.

In review of older posts from this year, I found the way in which I reacted to life.

In this Rock Collection post, I consoled myself over the loss of my grandfather through learning about the things he was interested in. One such thing was the rocks and minerals he studied.

Nick has stuck with me through this tough year and we're both beginning to learn more about the struggles and triumphs of a relationship. I shared my favorite pictures of Nick in this post.

Though I did feel very much alone, my friends and family were always there when I needed them. Eric wrote a very lovely song about my photography in this post. They encourage me and even got together to give me the money to purchase a DSLR so that I could further pursue my dream to be a self-employed photographer.

Being unemployed was a mixed blessing. The positive part about it was the time I received to be creative and stretch my artistic abilities. I did more experimental work this year than I ever have with film: Halloween portraits, expired film, double exposures, graphic design, event photography, studio work and lots more.

This year I worked on two big projects in black and white photography. Both projects reflect the loneliness and distance I felt, and being able to work with those feelings in a creative way was very therapeutic. You can see both completed projects here and here.

And in helping with keeping up a weekly blog schedule, I started two themes a few months back. This is my favorite book review and this is my favorite Flickr inspiration.

Good-bye, 2011.

When there is spare time

I've been using what time I have available between work and visitors to make gifts. It's important to me to give something hand made to the people I love.

I will be sharing the tinctures I have made soon, but till then here are some earrings I've been working on.

Black and White Project: Bodies and Nature

"creek"


"bricks"


"brush"


"foothills"


"rock"


"wood"


"sand"


"sky"


"bark"


"wind"


"leaves"


"tree"

This is the entire project. I presented it with mattes in a small room last night for my professor and students from another photo class. In the end, I found the portraits to be a little repetitive, but in a way that worked for me because of the many different texture and backgrounds. It wasn't about the people, it was about the way the bodies looked in nature. There are hardly any faces because I wanted the viewer to feel distant from the image and pay more attention to the movement between the background and the body.

I have a thing for texture in black and white, so this project was a fun experiment for me in that perspective. Clicking any title of a photo will take you to the post in which I talk about a photo individually.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this because I sure enjoyed sharing and talking about each photo.

Thanks for looking and sharing your thoughts, your comments have helped in through the thinking and developing process of this project.

December Break

(one of few self-portraits I've done. Taken with 35mm slide film in 2005)

I used this blog to get me through a really difficult time of being unemployed, feeling useless and lost. I worked really hard almost everyday to have a post up that was new, interesting, involved photography and shared my art. Having this blog and trying to start a business pretty much saved my sanity.

Right now I do have a temporary job and am very busy working, holiday preparing and spending time with loved ones. There will be less posts from here on out unless I have the urge again to post every day. I will be posting film and photos when it is developed, will share other people's art, will sometimes do book reviews, and will for the new year entirely change this layout. I also still read your blogs! I may not be leaving as many comments as I have been, but I do read them and support you.

What I'm saying is that the direction of this blog is in mid-change to something else that is good for me.

Cheers,
Kiley M

Double Exposures Close Up

Earlier this week I shared some double exposures in this post. Today I'm sharing some individual images from that roll that make my eyes tingle.

(I love that in the above photo, the hand of god has oyster mushrooms!)

I love experimenting with film. The images were an accidental mash of summer and fall images that turned out to go pretty well with each other. Funny how that works.

Flickr Favorites #21

This weeks Flickr inspiration: Moutains

1.


2.


3.


4.

1. Dasha Riabchenko
2. Ashley Payne
3. Jules Andre Brown
4. la mar

When Fall and Winter come around, I begin to think a lot about mountains. Something about the snow, trees changing, and foraging in the forest.

Your Photo Friend

Do you have a crazy photography friend? Or someone that dabbles with film? Well, here is a little list of things any photographer would love to have for the holidays.

1. An old camera. Preferably a working old camera. I certainly light up and drool over the idea of using a brownie, bellows, or 70s Polaroid camera.
(source)

2. A camera strap. If you tend to wear a camera every day and all day like I do, it's nice to have a sturdy camera strap that is also nice looking. It's simple and will be well used.(source)

3. A camera bag. Sometimes you just need to carry around another camera and 3 other lenses on a 30 minute hike. It happens to the best of us, and it's better to happen with a decent camera bag.
(source)

4. A toy camera! They're friggin' everywhere now and they make for great gifts. They're also fun to rip apart and restructure so that they will do your evil photographer bidding. I mean, they're kinda cheap and made of plastic so go for it!
(source)

5. Film. It's like gold. I treasure it, I smell it, I use too much of it. It can be a tricky gift though if you don't know anything about film. So if you don't, don't buy it! But if you do, it's fun to buy expired film, special contrast or neutral color film, or even infrared film for that special photographer friend of yours. Or even just regular film. Seriously. If someone gave me a box of film for Christmas I would pee my pants with joy and not be ashamed.(source)

So there you have it. You could make a photographer's day with any one of these gifts this holiday.

Double Exposures: You can do them too!

Short story. I was using color film in my camera and didn't finish the roll in time for my photo class which required black and white film. So I wound up the color film and decided to use it when my photo class was over, hoping for a few interesting double exposures. Three months later, I forgot how many photos I had taken with the color roll and just started the whole thing over again. It turns out that I had actually shot 17 out of 24 frames.

Now I have lots of double exposures because I thought I had only used 7 frames. However, I am not disappointed in my lack of recording information because this roll of film came out like magic.

(To see a larger size of this image, click here)




(To see a larger size of this image, click here)


(To see a larger size of this image, click here)

Yay magic! I'm working on a few close ups right now which is hard because I don't want to separate the images. On the weekend I'll share some more.
(edit: see the separated images in this post)

Do you have a film camera and want to try making double exposures?

1. Shoot an entire roll of film.
2. When winding the roll, make sure to leave about an inch of film. Basically, don't wind the roll all the way.
3. Reinsert film and re-take the roll. If you want darker images, underexpose by a stop or two.
4. If you have the ability to scan negatives, make sure you ask to not have your negatives cut so that you can cut them yourself in the best possible places. One way to make sure that there is a space to cut is to take a photo every 5 images or so with the cap on.
5. If you don't have a scanner and someone else cuts your negatives, have no fear! You can piece them back together like a puzzle with any photo editing software.

New Geometric Happenings

I really enjoy recycling old film photos that I don't share or use online, and have been working on three different designs. They're all from the same photo, though I may eventually go back and remake a few with a different image.

Every technique I used involved reorganizing one image into others like a puzzle.

"rainbow" available on Etsy

"geometric lake" available on Etsy


"earth compus" available on Etsy


This is what the original image looks like:

What do you think? Have you been recycling any unused objects or photos?

Flickr Favorites #20

This weeks Flickr inspiration: Fog

1.


2.


3.


4.

1. Lauren Treece
2. Lucie Camp
3. fenk
4. Ludvig Stolterman

It's been really foggy all day and every day this week. It's spooky, magical, and great photography.