Week Seven

This session has been unbelievably stressful. More than anything I have probably endured before. Stress with assignments, stress with workload, stress with friends... It has been an amazing ride. The first four weeks consisted of the three group projects. We worked every day of the week for three weeks, often over twelve hours a day. I worked ten hours a week, my fault, and that added to the overall load. I am so tired at this point that if I sleep more than four hours a night I am more tired the next day than if I stick to my newly established routine. I am relatively healthy, though, thanks to pounding about thirty supplements a day, so I am making it through. One more week. My final critique is this week. At that point I will show my instructor my final ten images, and I am hoping to also have five extra credit images to go on top of that to try and regain some of my footing towards reclaiming my 4.0. Right now, one A- has dropped me to a 3.94. ONE! And the ridiculous thing is that it counted in my GPA as a 3.7 when I earned a 3.92 in the class. Crazy. So tired. So sore. I dropped a light on my left pinky on Thursday and it is black and blue from the palm to the first knuckle. I slid the weight of the black glass onto my leg on Wednesday and it has left a nice little expanding bruise, and today I swung a twenty pound retaining wall brick into my right knee cap and it is already bruising as well. The biggest spider I have seen up here waltzed under my ridiculously poorly sealed door last night and I slammed a glass down on top of him, used a dark slide from my 4 x 5 to scoop him up and threw him outside because I was too emotionally drained to deal with spider goo on my floor if I had the courage to smash him. I have comfort only in that after I threw him, he ran away from my door.

Next session will be a welcome relief. Next session the course work is supposed to be remarkably less grueling. Next session I start my Internship with a local Travel and Stock Photographer. Next session I yet again will be a TA for my favorite instructor, only this time I will be able to breathe when I grade, and I will be able to have conversations with him that don't start with the phrase "I only have a minute, but we have serious problems..." At least now they can be "Hey, you wanna talk about the serious problems we have? Because I have time. Like, hours if you want..." That will be a relief. Easy course work. Internship learning. TAing. Sounds like heaven.

300

This is going to be the bloodiest, goriest, limb losingest, highest contrast post I have ever made. This is my 300th post.

I actually loved 300. Yes, it was over the top. Yes, it was gory. Yes, it had bizarre sword armed giants with no explanation. But, that was sort of its root, so I am fine with it. Truthfully, the film is beautifully shot. The lighting was stunning. And they maintained the high contrast guttural feel throughout, so I bow to the intentional representation of yet another comic book on film. So far both of the films based on Frank Miller's work have been visually stunning in their own right. Sin City had some wonderful cinematography. It was a comic book come to life, no doubt.

At any rate, I had no intention of writing about 300 until I saw that it was to be my 300th blog, so there you have it.

In reality I was going to write about school and my incredible life over the past six weeks, and counting...

There are two main culminating points in this class. The first is the group comp book, which I designed, wrote, printed, edited, compiled, and delivered on behalf of my "group." I take the blame for doing the work, because if I didn't do it, I didn't have any confidence that the quality of work would be up to my standards, so I did it. I forced my fellow teammates to meet and discuss the write up so that I could incorporate their feelings about the project, which cost me three hours of my life that I will never get back, but I ended up writing what I wanted to write anyway.

The second is the individual comp book. This is where I shine, for several reasons. One, I have already created templates, basic write-ups, and lighting diagrams for the group book, so a great deal of the individual book is already written and ready to go. Two, since this book is entirely mine, I am the only one accountable for its appearance and overall presentation. This book is a thing of organized and calculated beauty. My analytical mind has been working overtime in this class figuring out optics, geometry, diffraction, incidence, reflection, and the inverse square law of light; but for some reason it longed for the simple beauty of writing clean, concise conclusions about the class work that I have done up until this point in the session. Concise I am not good at, but I did my best. Honestly, I don't feel as though you should skimp on explanation when someone has asked you to explain something. I did edit out some of the "flourish" though. I like big words and modifiers, and I think that might get old if you have to read twenty two books. (Which I did have to do while grading LT work, so I can appreciate brevity.) So I presented the information in as simple a form as I could while still saying everything I wanted to say and providing some freaking beautiful lighting diagrams. The book was due today. Well, half of it. The presentation and half of the assignments had to be completed today. Everything else is due during my Final Crit next week. So, five images including two Black Glass III images, two Background images, and one Theme Assembly were turned in today. Everything else I will turn in next week.

Unfortunately for me, most of the remaining images have yet to be shot. I had some trouble with two of my Backgrounds and one Black Glass III, so now I am reshooting like a rabid dog. But, no worries. My final crit is late in the week, so I should be able to get everything accomplished that I want to and hopefully some extra stuff just for me. I like shooting stuff just for me. I have this concept for a Background involving a woman in a red dress that I think would be fun, so I have to get that organized, if I have time. If not, no worries. I am not made of a mixture of time and money. At any rate, I think that my overall comp book presentation and current images should at least get my foot in the door, and then I can hopefully move on to bigger and better things outside this class with a solid "A". I do want an "A". "A". "A". They are like juicy, juicy candy to me. I want to bring my GPA back up to a 4.0. But that will take several more "A's" to balance out the one "A-." (Oh, the shame. Shame!!)


At any rate, for those of you that are interested, I did not win the Territory Ahead scholarship and have not yet heard about the ME internship, so I will let you know when I do. I may or may not be a TA again next session, depending on RSB and possibly depending on DW. I would prefer to work for RSB, but DW would offer an interesting opportunity because he teaches 102 and LS, both classes that I wouldn't mind revisiting the material. But now I feel as though I would be more help to RSB since I have done the grading and refamiliarizing with the LT material once already, so the next time through would be a breeze. Plus he is fun and quirky and I like hanging out with him I think more than I would like hanging out with DW, just because he is slightly intimidating. Actually, he is really intimidating. But nice. In an intimidating kind of way.

I still haven't slept much, so I am going to leave you now. Too much gobbledy gook.

If You Must Know

Okay, fine, if you really must know, I will give you an update of the Brooks experience.

For starters, this is the first night in four weeks that I have had the opportunity to do something other than come home and sleep. Normally I am in the studio nine to twelve hours a day. This session I also have agreed to be a Teaching Assistant to my favorite professor, who keeps me busy with grading on average three hours a night after a nine to twelve hour day in the studio. I don't watch television, I don't sit in front of my computer, I don't chat with friends on the phone. I eat, sleep, dream, and live every single moment of every day, seven days a week, some form of the photographic experience. I average four hours of sleep a night, average, meaning that if I sleep six hours one night, I sleep two the next.

This session is the right of passage. This is the infamous session that everyone talks about from Photo 101. I knew that this was coming before I even came to Brooks.

The session is Lighting Studio and it focuses on table top product photography. The main project of the session is called Black Glass. When I came to my open house in October of 2005 the students who were our guides mentioned it to each other and nodded with a joined camaraderie garnered not from sharing classes or group assignments, but from having survived Black Glass. It is revered. It has a stigma about it that no other single assignment in the Brooks curriculum has. It took my group fifty four hours. 54. We did it in six days of constant studio attendance.

I lost a friend. I gained the respect of the majority of my classmates. I brought my group together and forged our way through the project. They chose to proclaim me the leader and would have easily followed me into battle had I lead them. It was a turning point for two of my three teammates. The other is no longer in the fold. He has been cast aside as an irresponsible, unreliable manipulator. It is a permanent burnt bridge as far as I am concerned. This one assignment brings to the forefront all of the best and worst qualities of the people that you choose to have in your team. The only choice is who you want to work with, and that was our only mistake.

Even with my tireless teammates (those who chose to show up) and my keen awareness of perfection, presentation, and the extra mile, we still can only, at best, receive a B+ on the assignment. But it was hard earned and thoroughly bled for. We cannot expect more of ourselves than we provide with every ounce of our bright blood on the table. The table of Black Glass.

Why, Eric, Why?

I know that I haven't blogged in a while, and I know that some of my dedicated fans have been waiting for the next installment so I want all of you to know that this is important. This is a topic that has riled me into writing again, and the need to express this emotion in print is essential.

Why did I just see an add for a Romantic Comedy with Eric Bana? Why? There is something remarkably beautiful about Eric Bana. Anyone who can take a film dedicated to the representation of Brad Pitt's glorious body and own it with an irrevocable ease is a creature of great and stunning beauty. I am, of course, speaking of "Troy" and how the most amazing performance was provided by the subtle and thoroughly believable portrayal of Hector by the remarkable Eric Bana. I hate to see him reduced to romantic comedy. After films such as The Incredible Hulk (don't scoff) and Munich, why a romantic comedy? Sigh. I just...it's just hard for me, that's all.