Project B Sides

I've been trying different poses with backgrounds to find the right posture and moment that best represents what I'm trying to convey. Sometimes there are ones that don't work at all and it is easy to weed them out of the project, and then there are ones that are so good it's hard to choose only one. I like these photos and may print them if I have extra paper at the end of my project so that I can give them to the models or hang them on my wall.

"brick" b sides




"creek" b sides




"brush" b side

I will have some more the share next week. This project is definitely dominating my blog because I am working on it more than anything else right now, and it is a fairly large project. I need to have about 12 really good 8X10 prints to turn in and I have about 6 done right now. I have until early December to finish, but I can't wait to see what it looks like completed. I love black and white film!

p.s. Hello to all the new followers and people who have taken the time to stop and check out Let It Be Raw! I appreciate all your nice comments and am doing my best to check out all your blogs. This followers fest was a really great way to find some awesome blogs.

Flickr Favorites #16

This weeks flickr inspiration is: Haunted Houses

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1. Kerry Murphy
2. Leo Hohmann
3. Dave
4. Martin V

I really love haunted and abandoned places. In the area I grew up, there were many old houses to explore and scare yourself in. I definitely spent more time in haunted houses then I did at parties in high school.

This is the last Halloween themed post for this month :(. I hope you all have great costumes for this weekend!

p.s. Do any of you have twitter? I would like to follow and support all my blogging buddies, so if you have a twitter and I didn't see it on your blog, leave a comment with your id and I'll find you! Or you can find me first if you'd like @LetItBeRaw. I'm trying to use/understand the use of twitter, so I'm hoping this is a good way to start.

The Project, pt.3

"brush"

This is photo 3 titled "brush" from the current project I'm working on (if you want the details about the project, click here). After I took this photo, I wasn't sure that it would work well with the project and that the lighting would be too intense, but now seeing it on paper has changed my mind.

The shadows that give depth and texture to his back play well with the tall and sporadic plants. It's a nice contrast of soft shapes on skin in the foreground and light plants that enter a clear sky in the background. It will be interesting to see when all is said and done which images go best as a project together.

Book Review #15

I'm doing more than one story this time and talk about some of my favorite fairytale villains. Grimm's fairytales originate from a lot dark and raunchy stories adults would tell each other to pass the time. They were written down and eventually passed off to be children's stories, which I find to be hilarious because they are adult entertainment. Murder? Sex? Violence? These ain't no Disney fairytales.

1. Bluebeard (image found here)
Let's be straight people. Bluebeard is a crazy serial killer of women. He has the bodies of all his previous wives hanging on hooks in a locked room. He gives each new wife a key and orders her to never enter the room, all the while relying on their curiosity to take over and make them open the door. Then he kills the wives that disobey him.

2. The witch from Hansel and Grettel(image found here)
She is not only a witch, but cannibal that has a taste for small and succulent children fattened up with candy. Her plans are so elaborate that she makes a house out of candy to lure in small impressionable children. Did I mention that the children were left to die in the forest by their parents? It's either eat or be eaten in this story.

3. The sea witch from the Little Mermaid
(image found here)
The see witch give the little mermaid what she wants, but at a price. To be fair, the little mermaid is kind of an idiot. She is told before she takes the magic potion to become human that the price will be to feel like she is constantly walking on swords and bleed a lot. Also, she has to kiss her true love in a certain amount of time or die. Guess what? She doesn't. Then she dies. The sea witch is pure evil.

4. The witch from Snow White(image found here)

This is one clever witch. She sends out an assassin to kill Snow White, but when that fails she gets creative. The witch dresses like a peddler and sells Snow White some lace, ties it tightly her waist so she faints and leaves her to die. She does this again with a poison comb and a poison apple. Snow White falls for it stupidly every single time (even after the dwarves tell her to just stop answering the door and to not accept anything from anyone).

These are the kind of stories that are fun to tell around a campfire, especially when people in the audience assume you're going to read them a Disney version.

Do you have a favorite villain?

The Project, pt.2

"Creek"

This is photo 2 titled "creek" from the current project I'm working on (if you want the details about the project, click here). I am absolutely pleased with the way this photo came out. I had to do little post processing when developing the print and hardly had to do anything to the contrast (thanks red filter!). Her skin isn't too bright and her hair and the creek aren't too dark.

I don't remember her name, but she is a friend of a friend. She has this pretty long hair that flowed beautifully in the water. I thought that long wet hair would work great with the creek as the background. The sun added a nice touch of lovely wavy-looking highlights to her hair. I'm pretty happy with the body and nature mimicry in this photo.

News:

• I have more b sides to share this week.
• I'm nervous about waiting to hear back from two interviews. I'm thinking positive thoughts right now. 7 months is far too long to be without work.
  
• I'm working on some holiday cards that I'd like to share this week with all the lovely blog people.
• I added a new projects button to the side bar so that you can see projects I have worked on in the past.
  

The Project, pt. 1

From now on every week or so I will be sharing a photo from the current project I am working on. It's in black and white film and I will be developing and printing everything by hand in a lab. I just love sitting in the dark with the smell of chemicals making prints!

I don't have the title yet, but the working title is "Distant Portraits". If, over time, you see more of my images and are struck with the idea for a better or super awesome title, don't be afraid to leave a comment with your title and idea. I'm not the best with titles and would love to hear fresh creative ideas from strangers.

A brief description of the project is something like this: a focus on the contradicting ideas of distance and connection between body and nature. That's the short and sweet of if and I will go into more descriptive detail later. These project tend to shift on me while I'm working on them anyways, so right now I'm not too concerned with description.

Enough talk! Here is the first image of the project:

"bricks"

This isn't a full-on nature image, but I'm going to fit it into the project. I had my friend make this awkward posture to mimic the stiffness of bricks.

And the project begins.

Flickr Favorites #15

This weeks Flickr inspiration is: The Eerie

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1. Christy Mildrum
2. David Hartsell
3. g.Olivia
4. Susan Bein

Keepin' it scary for October! This post reminds me that I need to work on my Finn costume more...

B sides 2

I have more b sides from the roll. These two where deliberate because they where too good to pass up on film. Sometimes, a scary black bird is dead at the beach and your friend happens to look like Mary in an outcropping of sandstone:

"dead sea bird"

"The Madonna"

Definitely a little spirituality/death thing going on in these two images. That was not intentional, but I kinda like it. Sometimes there are things like these subjects that make me take a picture before I even have a thought to think about it.

This happens a lot with spiritual/death related subjects:

"small animal skull"

and

"god rock"

p.s. Don't forget to enter the giveaway at Yellow Bird, Yellow Beard! The giveaway ends on Friday.

I am self-promoting the crap out of myself.

Book Review #14

(I found this image here)

This weeks book review, in keep up with a spooky October is Stephrn King's The Shining. I'm sure there are a lot of you that have seen the movie:

Or, if this trailer is too intense, you can watch the trailer edited to be like an 80s family movie:

It's a classic horror/suspense movie where people are seeing things and going nuts. Let me just say, like many movies from books, the book is better (it's way more effed up and scary). One of the main characters, Jack, is appointed care taker of the Overlook Hotel for 5 months with only his family for company. Jack slowly becomes affected by the evilness in the hotel and strange things happen to his family while they are there.

In the movie, it's suspenseful and artistically done. You know straight from the beginning that there is definitely something wrong with Jack Torrence, who doesn't really win over an audience with a smile or conversation (thanks to Jack Nicholson's creepy face and demeanor).

However, the book Jack is still not the best guy, but he seems to have more humanity and hopeful chance. This might be because the book is more concerned with the past and this uncanny way it's replayed in the present (through evil design in the hotel) to trap Jack and his family.

I won't kid you, I scared myself while reading this book because I read most of it at night. A lot of the time I felt like I was being watched from behind. And, I am also now forever scared of hedge animals. Thanks, Stephen King.

B sides from the project

Right now I'm working on a project with black and white film. Something that always seems to happen while I'm working is that I take pictures of things unrelated to the project. These unrelated photos are necessary to my creative sanity because they refresh my mind and allow me to think of something else, which in turn gives me new project ideas. It's funny how the mind works.

"clothes line"

"Bush"


"Abandoned Church"

As you can see, there are no people in any of those photos. I thought that was a little funny because the project I'm working on involves people in every image. It turns out my wandering minds needs a break.

What do you do for creative breaks?

Halloween Portraits

These are some of the edited photos from the Halloween themed shoot I did with the deadly doodler. The lighting and studio were pretty ridiculous, as you can see from this entry here. We worked with what we could, and these are the photos that came out the best:

"Halloween Portrait"

"Goth Doll"


"Crawler"


"Goth Doll with Candle"


"Halloween Portrait 2"

I still have a lot to learn in dealing with post-processing. This was great practice and I'm excited to do more.

News:

• I have an interview today for a full time job. I am thoroughly ecstatic.
• I really appreciate all the comments over the weekend about my Etsy shop. I will be changing a lot of things through November and will hopefully have plenty of new things for Let It Be Raw in December and the new year.
• I have officially started a new project in black and white, and I am looking forward to sharing parts of it soon.
  

Flickr Favoirtes #14

This weeks Flickr inspiration: Halloween Portraits

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1. Shannon Hourigan
2. Artpunk
3. Sometimes Suzie
4. Susan Lueck

Yes!
Who/what are you going to be for Halloween?

This is who I'm going to be:

(See what I'm talking about by clicking here)

Book Review #13

I'm going to make you read something this time. This is a poem by Edgar Allen Poe which is both fantastic to read alone or out loud around a campfire. It is parodied often, my favorite being the Simpson Pardoy (funny because someone taped this off the TV) in which Bart is the Raven and Homer is the Narrator.

Yes, The Raven, which you can and should read in full here. It is probably the post popular thing Poe ever wrote, and partly the coolest because he decidedly wrote the entire work in a specific and complicated rhyme scheme (partly why it is so much fun to say out loud).

(I found this image here)

I don't know if many of you knew this, but Poe had a pretty crappy life. He lost his family at a very young age, his work was often being stolen or he was unpaid for it, his wife died of consumption at a young age, and he was a big-time alcoholic and died in the streets. You can read about more of his life on wiki or go to the library and check out one of the many biographical books dedicated to Poe's life.I think it is safe to say that there were a lot of negative things in his life that influenced his writing.

Poe dealt with a lot of loss: family, wife, work, his own life. This sense of loss is what The Raven is all about. The narrator has just lost his love, Lenore, and can not deal with the loss. Through his questions to a raven a contradiction is revealed in which we find that the narrator wishes to simultaneously forget and remember his dear Lenore. I imagine that to be what Poe's life was like.

Oh, Lenore.

My friend Meghan looks like a Lenore:

Cameras

If I could, I would have many more cameras than I actually need or would use regularly. In fact, I already have too many, but I do love to collect them. I have been poking around Etsy (clicking on any image will take you to the seller's Etsy store) and thought to share these lovelies with you:

1. Kodak Vigilant Six-20. I really would love to have a bellows type camera, specifically in large format (larger than this camera). I'm talking hiding under a black blanket like in the old days kind of bellows camera. Yes.

2. Polaroid Sonar One Step. These are getting super popular right now, which could be a good/bad thing. More may pop up on Etsy and Ebay, but the prices might be jacked all high. I appreciate people bringing back old cameras to popularity, but the product demand is sometimes too ridiculous. This pretty much describes my love/hate relationship with hipsters.

3. Kodak Brownie. Another camera that I've wanted to a super long time. It's just so quaint and very nostalgic. Plus, you can use 120 film in it after a few simple adjustments.

4. Camera Bag. Mine is box shaped and not easy to carry around. My camera bag looks like this around my neck. Yes, it can hold a beer and protect my camera equipment at the same time, but that is the length of it's use.

5. HOLY SHIT. If I had money in the bank, I would use it all on this collection. It has everything I could want and more for a pack-rat camera collection. All more I can say is yes, please.

I have a problem. What's your poison?

Rocks and Minerals

I said a long time ago that I would take more pictures of rocks and minerals. I haven't the best set up, and I have been having a hard time trying to recreate studio lighting with a lamp. This is my first experiment of many in rock and mineral photography. I did use digital camera body, but I used my film camera lenses because the detail is just... better. Here are 4 minerals I photographed today.

1. Yellow/Gold Quartz

2. Amethyst

3. Unidentified

4. Gold

The last two are minerals from my grandfather, but the first two I found at Goodwill. It was a really lucky find! This wooden wall hanging is the perfect place to store them: