dah dah dee duh dum dum....

[charloween]

Last night... a thoroughly bizarre experience:

My room looks out west-ish over the Woodlot, so in late afternoon the sun shines in and I can lay in a sunbeam. *happy cat noises*

The moon shines in too, I guess, but I'd never noticed. Until last night. Around 4am The. Moon. Woke. Me. Up. It was shining through my window and the damn moon woke me up.

This has never happened to me before. It was so bright and shiny.... *awe*

Upon reflection, I guess it's not so strange, seeing as I've spent the past 7 years living underground. It's almost natural that I experience odd things whilst above ground. O_o


Other than that... Farscape last night, and an ecard from Mum this morning. Plenty of work.

The silly photography prof showed us this incredible documentary of Ansel Adams and then asked us to think about the many definitions of landscape and notions of the sublime (ie. something that is concurrently so beautiful and so terrifying that, when you experience it, makes you feel very small and mortal). Then she gave us our next assignment. Landscapes. *sigh* Speaking of feeling small next to that. Christ.

I know that a first-year amateur photographer can't produce the same caliber of work as a man who's been at it for 60 years and is no hack himself... but still. I look at the pictures I took and do I ever feel small. more *sigh*

We're supposed to wander around all week with an empty slide mount and 'frame' things to better understand how to see the entire picture, and make it more dramatic. Oooh. At least this time we don't have to hand in the entire roll for evaluation. We can pick the best exposures and hand those in, rather than being stuck like last time.

off topic: the top one is my pretty. it's even nicer in real life. The OS-105!

Comments

Ansel Adams and a book.

[(Anonymous)]

Charlotte:

For me, personally, the Ansel Adams photographs did very little. I've seen some of his work that I felt had more life to it, but most of those photographs that were featured in the documentary were, of course, technically perfect, but felt a little too sterile and bordered on banal.

I feel that landscape photography, as a whole, fails miserably. Despite having seen countless photographs of mountains before I moved out west, I had never truly seen a mountain until I got there. The experience puts any two-dimensional mountain photograph to shame.

I think that the camera is better suited to document urban settings and people's unique characteristics. I've always been drawn to the work of someone like Walker Evans. The photographs are full of emotion.

Anyways, I just wanted to say thanks for lending me that book. I really appreciate it. I'll be sure to return it as soon as I'm finished reading it.

Take care,

Dylan Hayward

Re: Ansel Adams and a book.

[naturelf.livejournal.com]

A camera captures a moment; for a mutable urban landscape or a human subject, that moment is very specific to time and place, whereas mountains remain relatively unchanged through time. Adams's mountains are cold, remote and changeless and almost alien. You say sterile, I say austere. Adams chose to show the eternal nature of the outdoors. Most of my roll for that A-Z assignment was of a living nature that's a bit more friendly.

I'd love to see mountains in person some day.

[spells-disaster.livejournal.com]

i read yr post and was reminded of my first year photography course with a guy who also had been taking pictures for what seemed like 60 years when he was showing his work. he had this great picture of john lennon with a daisy that he was really proud of - craz-ee hippie
anyhow.. happy belated birthday and happy csi night.. hope you had a blast

Happy belated birthday

[deleriumd.livejournal.com]

The silly photography prof showed us this incredible documentary of Ansel Adams and then asked us to think about the many definitions of landscape and notions of the sublime (ie. something that is concurrently so beautiful and so terrifying that, when you experience it, makes you feel very small and mortal). Then she gave us our next assignment. Landscapes. *sigh* Speaking of feeling small next to that. Christ.

I try not to look at other photographers.. it depresses me so much.. like a man with no hands and ample amounts of forks.