time to play catch-up

With sincerest apologies to Meg.


Self-assessment of the Kent Island landscape series (I know---a little late):

Being on Kent Island was probably the best exercise in image gathering I have ever participated in. With about 36 hours to capture every single image I could ever want of that eerie, windswept rock, I felt a lot of pressure to shoot shoot shoot. That time constraint (and Meg's ancient computer as backup) really let me let go of any conservative notions about contolling my shutter finger. In the day and a half I had to shoot, I took 508 RAW images, of 7.55 GB of photographic data. It's not the largestnumber possible, but it was definitely a significant increase from what I would consider to be my hourly average in shooting. Even if I hadn't gotten any great pictures out of that shoot, it would have been a valuable exercise. Fortunately for me, I ended up with a lot of stuff I am very proud of. Editing those 508 down to 20 for the pecha kucha was some of the hardest decision-making I've had to do all semester. I don't know if it can be attributed to my own skill or simply that one would have to make a serious effort to take a bad picture on that island, but whatever the reason, I love what I came away with. I'm hoping to find some excuse for using those images again later on in the semester.


Response to the notion of Lomography:

First of all, let me get it out in the open: I think the exclusivity surrounding Lomography is complete crap. Why do you need a special camera to be spontaneous? Spontaneity should be a creative choice in photography. It should not be dogma. If those fools at the Lomographic Society think they're creating some sort of serious artistic movement to be remembered throughout the ages, they will be sorely disappointed. It's more likely to be just a marketing scam, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they take some sort of artistic stance in this. A photographer makes choices on hundreds of variables throughout the creative process. Choosing to use a LOMO camera eliminates a handful of those variables by ensuring their being left to chance, but it's all part of a bigger context. Lomographers may be choosing to limit themselves to a trite, snapshottish feel (and they are completely free to do so), but they shouldn't hold that aesthetic up as some grand landmark in photography.