movement 8: clouds and stars

There's not much to say about this piece...I was lucky to go outside and be able to set the shutter speed to thirty seconds and capture these clouds moving across the sky that were actually red. Seriously red, no photoshop here. I think for some reason the shutter being open longer made the clounds more red. I like the balance that the stars provide. You could say it's very evenly salted.

movement 7: divorce

So this was really fun. I felt truly innovative doing this. I was thinking about how you can capture the movement of a car's lights going by at night and thought how cool it would be if somehow a car's lights spelled something. But that would be impossible. So I went out and got some glowsticks at michael's to make my own moving light. The hard part was deciding what to write in the air...it had to be meaningful. I couldn't just write "this is movement" or scribble aimlessly. And at the time a had been thinking about my frustration of having to live in two different houses...and with the step parents in the picture I've lived considerable amounts of time in four different houses...while still going to Lakeridge. So this was a comment on the impact of divorce on kids.

Compositionally, this was really difficult. I had to put the camera on a timer, set the shutterspeed to 15 seconds, and go run in front of the frame and start writing, backwards, in the air separately for each word. You'd be surprised how long it took me to get the word "where" in the frame and just the right size. But it came out well.

Movement 6: light from the left

I love this photo. The think I love about it most is the intense, intense shadows. This is my favorite park to shoot at because the concrete looks so meshed, texturized, and conglomerate-like. The builders didn't care about making the concrete look pretty, they just made sure it was rideable. This was taken at mid-day. You would think that it would be difficult to get long shadows at noon, but in oregon during the wintertime, the sun goes low across the sky instead of high over it. This means that at any hour of the day you can get long, dark shadows...even at noon.

This is matt's fronside air. Just look at the concentration.

Movement 5: matt's frontside air

This counts for a 'movement' piece right? I hope so...We took the effort to drive out to west linn park right after finals to get there before the masses came so I could get the shot. This was shot at a shutter speed of 1/2000 (!) and an aperture of 5.6. It was pretty bright out, so I put the ISO at 400 and this was the result...There is a first time for everything. This was my first time shooting skateboarding, and I'm pleased.

Stumbled across this baby in my bedroom. I'd forgotten my grandpa had given it to me. It's broken, but it could probably be fixed. It's a hasselblad 500c made between 1947 and 1967. Obviously it uses film, which is awesome. See the thing that sticks out of the top? That's what you look through. And what you see is mirrored. Basically, framing your image is like trying to walk straight after an hour at vigorous speeds on the merry-go-round. It takes a long time to get used to.

I ordered this today

With christmas money and money from work, it was just enough to buy this. I'm broke again. I wonder if this is how I'm going to be spending my money for the rest of my life...

A moving river, a moving brother

A (slowly) moving river

Moving in

A moving me, an inanimate tree

A moving sea, an inanimate me

The transition from night to day

Concentration Change

I'm changing my concentration for two reasons. The first is that the idea doesn't interest me as much as I confessed it did. The other reason is that I don't have the desire to take photographs of my friends posing with their moms. I've decided to do my concentration on something that's more important to me. Movement. Both metaphysical and physical. It has occurred to me that everything is moving in today's world. Nothing that advances stands still. Nature is moving. Rivers are flowing to a destination. The waves in the ocean are crashing on sands unceasingly. A hummingbird flaps its wings and flies, or it dies. We don't live in a one-day situation. We live on a spinning earth with each day leading to the next. And if we don't spin with it, we're left behind in a sorrowful, still-standing void of unproductivity. I want to capture the types of movement on earth that we don't control, like the transition from night to day, or the way water moves. And then I want to capture human movement that seems necessary to us. Like getting to work on time. (Images of the infinite amount of cars' lights streaming buy on a busy road). But there is plenty movement that is creative, and fun, rather than necessary. This is where people interest me. What is the most fun way that I could get down these stairs? How creative can I be in riding this piece wood down this mountain? Can I do other things on my bicycle besides pedaling from point A to point B? Can I describe the way this music makes me feel just by the way I move and bend my body? I could go on. I'm fascinated with skateboarders. (Specifically skateboarders who love skateboarding.) I've witnessed them go on and on into the cold and blindness of evening ripping up concrete bowls indefinitely. "Don't you need some water?" "Afterwards." It's their desire to move, to induce pleasure by creative, acrobatic, dangerous, movement. Snowboarders are the same way. "You could get seriously hurt trying a backflip!" They say without the risk there is no thrill. There is something about being upside-down, suspended only by your own momentum. The wind rushing against you gives you a great sense of self-propultion. You never heard of evil kinevil jumping his motorcycle over ten automobiles only to land in an endless sea of soft marshmellows. "You could get seriously hurt trying to ride your snowboard down this twenty-stair handrail! You could just walk down the stairs you know." Is this a joke? Not only is the snowboarder going to ride his snowboard down the handrail, but then he will be so enlivened by what just happened that he will run back up the steps just to do it again. And then next time he will try and spin onto the rail. Maybe he will try and bend his board while on the rail! "You could have been seriously injured driving your motorcycle at seventy miles an hour off that sand dune and landing on that other one a hundred feet away!" "Yeah, but I FLEW!" It is the unending creativity in moving the human body that is what drives all action sports. This intrigues me. It excites me. I want to capture just one moment in time of these fun endeavors and turn it into ART!