Archive for the ‘ news. ’ Category

forgotten but not quite dead.

Listening to: Say Hello To The Angels — Interpol

Holla! I realize that I’ve been gone for quite awhile. But recently (or more-than-recently, as it would seem) my life has been Busy. Since my last post nearly a month ago, several Events occurred: Prize Night, at which I was awarded my school’s prize for excellence in photography (and a copy of Vanity Fair: The Portraits, which is mostly why this was the most notable of the three awards I received), and graduation, where a great number — maybe even a majority — of my friends gradu-danced off to that Big Boarding School in the Sky, also known as college.

More importantly, though, I squeezed through finals week with minimal injury and even got to leave campus a day early. On my first day back in the Midwest, I managed to get rearended at the grocery store/sent to the ER/saddled with whiplash, which sucks. But what doesn’t suck is my drawing class, which met for the first time last Wednesday and which is where I discovered that compressed charcoal is very, very, mess. What also doesn’t suck is the fact that my summer dance classes start this coming week, even if buying ballet shoes made me feel like an elephant (I wear a 14 women’s ballet shoe; the girl trying on shoes next to me wore a 2.5/3). And, for the first time in my life, I have an actual job, which means that I’ll be making $200 in a month or less and all without working in foodservice or manual labor.

And, of course, since I’ve gotten home, I’ve been taking photographs. Here are a bunch:

Of course, there’s far more, but the WordPress Dashboard isn’t cooperating with me uploading photos at the moment. Blé’s gone to Poland, so I’m out of my primary model for the moment, but luckily I have far more willing friends here than at boarding school. So, hopefully, I will write soon, and there will be more photos to come.

we’re only seven miles from the sun.

Listening to: The Antlers — French Exit

dancers backstage at the concert.

So, I’m back on WordPress after whoknowshowlong, and suddenly my dashboard looks all different and I’m like, “Oh no, did the Rapture hit the interwebs?” If you couldn’t tell from that statement, I’m not a big fan of changes to my routine.

But oh oh oh, how my routine is going to change! There are only about five days until graduation, so after that the only two people left in my hallway will be me and my roommate. And speaking of roommates, tonight’s roomdraw, aka where all of the underformers line up in order of GPA/room score and pick their rooms for next year. I’ve decided I’m getting a single, because living with someone whom I never see/talk to makes me paranoid.

This past week has been rather busy. We had the spring dance concert, in which we were covered in clay and dancing in the round, which were both very different experiences for both the dancers and the audience. I still have clay in awkward places (inner lining of my ear, wtf?), and now I’m sad because yesterday was the last performance we’d ever have on that stage (it’s getting renovated) with those dancers (most are graduating) under that choreographer (she’s resigning). But I’m excited for dancing this summer (modern and ballet), especially seeing as it’s only a few days away.

There’s more that I wanted to say here, but I’m not yet quite sure to word it. Please hold.

how can I catch up when I don’t want to?

Listening to: The XX — Night Time

Well well well. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? The past week’s been so busy that I’m not quite sure what to write about here. I could write about anxiety attacks and stupid people and how I keep getting other people’s underwear returned with my drycleaning. Or, I could write about how my dad came down to visit me this weekend and brought me very small notebooks and chocolate pastilles and Doublemint gum, or how I and a handful of the AP art students had an exhibit on Thursday. I could even tell you about how I’ve lost all feeling in my toes because I stood in the freezing rain for three hours, timing a track meet.

But I don’t really feel like talking about any of that in detail. Instead, I would like you to know that I found a lost roll of film in my drawer and got it developed yesterday. So, please attempt to enjoy a super-grainy section of my roll of forgotten film.

existential crises of communication.

Listening to: Modest Mouse — Perpetual Motion Machine

First, something superficial: the #1 taboo of boarding school roommates is to never match. Usually, my roommate and I — two people with completely different styles and different wardrobes — avoid this pretty well. Until yesterday when, having not seen each other until first period math, we realized, horrified that we were both wearing the exact same dress (which I was going to link to, but apparently it’s no longer on forever 21′s website), with gray sweaters and black boots. The boots and sweater part wasn’t so bad, since I wear black boots and/or a gray sweater about 75% of the time, but the situation was rather awkward, and made even more so by the fact that the two of us aren’t really close as in “matching-buddies” close. Or at all, really. Crisis (and English class, God) was averted by my roommate’s decision to get changed between classes, which was only fair because I got dressed first. But what was ironic was that we were talking about probability in class, and we’d just figured out that the probability of one person with three shirts, skirts and pairs of shoes running out of distinct outfits was almost infinitesimal.

Okay. Superficiality out. I guess I’ll have to talk about my spiffy new shoes at some later time.

Something you may or may not have inferred about me is that I have a deep love of modernist architecture, especially of the glass-walled open-spaces neighbor-irritating variety. I’d live in one of said houses if I hadn’t already decided that I’m living in a minimalist loft/studio/penthouse. So recently I’ve been thinking about architecture as my Future Plan, since I’d be able to marry art/design and science and get to Create Stuff. The only snag here is that I can only draw diagonal lines, not horizontal or vertical ones, which might not be such a problem if I’m going to be all modern and such.

Also, the dance troupe has just been alerted that our upcoming performance is going to be black box-style, which is both cool and intimidating. One of the sections of the piece we’re working on is to Yael Naim’s cover of “Toxic”, which is a really good cover of a questionable song except that it ends in pan-fluting. The dance itself is this half-burlesque half-broken doll/clown/ballerina doll clown type thing, which actually looks a lot better than whatever the hell I just described. We practiced it yesterday in tutus, except that my tutu was actually a crinoline so it was rather difficult to roll around the floor in. Today I will have to act fast and take one of the normal tutus, so I don’t spend the entire practice hiking up my skirt.

Speaking of dances, though, this coming lack-of-weekend is going to be party central around here. Friday’s our previously Winter, but postponed until Spring Formal, which is awkward because there’s still school the next day. But Saturday, there’s a GSA-hosted interschool dance somewhere else, so by Sunday I expect that my feet will be quite sore. Last year I was even more socially awkward than I am this year, and so dances of all kinds were rather uncomfortable for me (I was dragged along, nevertheless, by my dear friend the Hungarian), but I’m determined to make them better this time around.

I have so much awkward free time right now that I’m procrastinating my procrastination. I’m actually starting to resent it, it and the uncomfortable rain that hasn’t got the memo to STOP ALREADY.

landings & returnings.

Listening to: Suzanne Vega — World Before Colombus

Break is over, too soon. Now I am unpacked and sitting alone in my dorm room, drowsy on Dramamine because when planes land I break into a nervous sweat. Tomorrow is class and then more class for two more months, and it’s only just starting to sink into my head that I’m back at school, I’m back at school and I have to work and learn and wake up before midday Finally, after what felt like an eternity of carpal tunnel syndrome, I’ve finished typing the sequel to my novel (which I have yet to tell you where I’ve posted it), but before I did that, Blé and I took a screech appreciation moment to enjoy the early-spring weather that somehow feels like fall.

it’s only the end of the world.

Listening to: Panic! At the Disco — Nails For Breakfast, Tacks For Snacks

Let me begin with a complaint: my coccyx aches. I just had my weave taken out and my hair wrangled into single braids, so now I’m blonder than ever. Firefox crashed every time I tried to upload this header photo and every time I turn on any sort of media all I hear about is news of death and destruction and even more impending doom. Maybe we set the year 0A.D. too far back and it’s already the Mayans’ 2012, and we’re all going to die (well, we are anyway, eventually, and I don’t actually believe that 2012 is Armageddon because Ragnarok should totally come on a February 31st).

On Saturday I went house shopping with my aunt and cousin and enjoyed petting other people’s cats and debating doors vs. windows as sniper targets (my cousin doesn’t want to live in a house with lots of windows, because “nobody’s ever been shot through a door;” I told her I was going to shoot her through a door just to prove her wrong). I won a silver medal for a double exposure LC-A+ print in the national Scholastic Art Awards, despite my photography teacher’s telling me not to hold my breath waiting to win anything. And I’ve planned an epic photoshoot with Blé for Friday inspired by:

but in suburbia and with cheaper clothes (obviously, since stylist/photographer anwa has a nonexistent clothes budget and all the shmancy vintage dresses she just inherited from her mother are at the cleaner’s). Have I ever mentioned that I love love love Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, possibly definitely even more than I love Annie Leibovitz (okay, definitely definitely more)? But I’m having a crisis of method in deciding whether to shoot this shoot in digital or in film, but I’m kind of leaning towards the film because then I get to use all of my better lenses AND I will take a “behind the scenes” little photo-movie with my new Flip camera to make up for the fact that it’ll take way too long to get the prints developed.

your genius is showing.

Listening to: Sade — Jezebel

Yes, I am the educated type of person who makes Spongebob references. Mind me not.

So, everyone, as of now I am pretty much mentally on spring break. I have no “real” classes next week — it’s a relaxation/”alternative learning” week we have before we’re actually allowed to leave — and tomorrow, well, tomorrow’s a Saturday. It should technically be a weekend. Tonight’s the winter dance recital, so I’m alsopretty psyched to be — successfully! — lifting my partner and not dropping her in front of the entire school and my dad, who’s driving down from Canada to see me.

Today I nearly failed a class for the entire marking period. And by “failed” I mean got a zero. In Photography. How did this happen, you wonder? I have an issue with uploading my photos to the school’s network. So, even though I may show them in printed form or on my computer screen, I never actually turn anything in. You see how we have a problem, no? Well, today in the middle of lunch he told me he was going to fail me if I didn’t upload my latest portfolio (last time I tried, the computer stalled and refused to take less than seven hours to do the job) by the end of the period. I spent the next half an hour having a veritable nervous breakdown until one of my much-more-logical friends suggested that, instead of uploading my seventy photos file-by-file, I make a zipped folder of the portfolio and upload that instead. And somehow, after I’d closed every program my computer was running, plugged it in, and put the battery on high performance mode, it managed to upload them with fifteen minutes to spare. Cue relief. My GPA was just saved from making a full two-point crash.

In other, less cataclysmic news, today I spent awhile skulking about with a few of the lax bros in my class. They’re all pretty fun (and rather welcoming to me, the Nerdy Artsy Black Chick), though the number of times I heard the words “fuck” and “bro” was staggering. I finished editing the fourth chapter of my novel and posted it; though I’m still conflicted about telling you all where it’s at on these interwebs (sorry!). But according to the Matrix, which I finished watching in class today, it doesn’t matter because your memory of reading it would be false, anyway.

There is no blog post.

bish got blog.

Listening to: Phoenix — Rome

It’s that time again. Yes, portfolio-building time. I told you recently that I just updated my Carbonmade portfolio, but apparently that wasn’t good enough — my photography teacher has now tasked me to create TWO portfolios, one of my best fashiony work and one of my best randomosity. With 50 freaking photographs each. Did I mention it’s due tomorrow, and I haven’t even started yet?

But the main point of this post was to tell you that I’ve started an auxiliary blog, The Ridiculous Things Store, since apparently the writings. page on here isn’t quite as functional as it could/should be. The Store should be updated more frequently than authoraiINK here (because have you noticed how posts have been slowly waning? school does that to you.) with snippets of writing and poetry. But don’t worry, I will still post my rants/photography/occasional sartorial choices here. And maybe one day Blé will post too.

 

efficency up by 200%.

Listening to: Metric — Front Row


Just some quick housekeeping. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of winter. But it’s never too early for spring cleaning.

In case you didn’t notice, I’ve updated (or, rather, reverted) the blog layout, because the previous one was just too cluttered for my taste and I kind of missed the simple blogginess of the very first one. Also, spent awhile reorganizing my Carbonmade portfolio — you should check it out — and changed the photographia. link back to Carbonmade, because I don’t really like Flickr at all and am sort of debating taking my photos off there in general.

Also have been lurking around Vimeo a bunch today, because I’m taking my photostalking to the next level and getting a Flip camera as an early birthday present as to achieve my dream of never-ending photographs. So I can capture life in motion as well as in still. (as an aside, Nirrimi’s two short films — but they’re more of what I think of as “never-ending photographs”  — on there are kind of amazing. oh, what the heck, see one here:)

a shameless manipulation.

Listening to: Eluvium — Reciting the Airships

Usually, I don’t do much manipulation on my digital photos. Sure, where necessary I’ll touch up on brightness and contrast or fix some really ugly yellow light, but I DO not airbrush or extensively ‘Shop in things that are supposed to, well, actually look like photographs. So, when I stumbled upon Nirrimi’s Color Shop, I just had to stop and think for awhile. Now, we all know that most of fashion photography is a shameless manipulation, but — really? Seeing how you can make even the most mediocre of photographs amazing with the click of a button makes one wonder what’s the photographer’s actual style behind the lens and what’s made to look a certain way post-production. (And also — $35 per action? An action that I could make myself in two minutes? Well, I guess that nothing’s too expensive if there’s someone willing to pay for it.) I’m not against the process, really, or even the Color Shop itself — Nirrimi is still one of my favorite contemporary photographers and a huge inspiration for young artists — but the whole thing, I dunno, just shakes my faith a little. Makes me wonder.

But I was so fascinated with the concept that I spent a bit of time making a few of my own curves/actions on the GIMP, one of which I used on the photo above (does that change the way you think of that photo? because it does for me). Here’s a really low-quality GIF that I spent oodles of time making for comparison:

So, what do you think? Yay, or nay?

–> So, we’ve been kinda surviving the Snowpocalypse over here. And by “kinda,” I mean that our school set classes back until 9am yesterday (even though it was a half day and all the games were canceled, they refused to cancel classes), and half the school called left because the ‘rents thought that OMG MY SNOOKUMS IS GOING TO FREEZE. Break actually starts today, so once I finish packing I’m leaving for the city.

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