jamin.org

It’s 1:04 a.m. and I’m listening to KEXP’s streaming archive of John Richard’s morning show. Now playing: Where Is My Mind by the Pixies. I love it.

Three Hundred and Six

That’s how many photos I took for the photo project.

At this point I can’t remember what the actual assignment is. There were two options, I believe. One was do shots of Pittsburgh. The other had something to do with your life. Maybe.

I choose to shoot my classmates in their Pittsburgh dwellings. Over the past two days I invaded visited 11 of their homes. Due to time constraints, I missed two.

I’m nearly done with the assignment. So I decided it was time to take a break to allow myself time to determine whether I’m finished.

Have Ideas, Need Plan

Aside from showing up with my camera, I never really had a plan. This meant that I had multiple ideas about what I was doing, and my methods were kind of random. And I’m guessing this will all result in a project that isn’t as strong as it could be.

At first I thought about using multiple photos for each person, so I narrowed down the 306 to 33, or three for each person. However, I wasn’t really happy with all the sets, so I decided to be strict and choose just one.

This decision saved me about four hours, I’m convinced. But I think it was the right decision regardless. Choosing one photo really made me think about why I was choosing the photo.

I think the end result turned out okay. Since it’ technically tomorrow right now, I will have to present my work in a digital format. Right now it’s in InDesign. So I’ll export it was a PDF.

But It Was All Good Fun

In the words of Stan Marsh, “You know, I learned something today.”

Having a clear idea about what you’re doing is a good thing. But sometimes not having a clue and doing something anyway is a lot of fun.

Okay, enough blabbering about poor planning and having fun not sleeping. Let’s see if I’m finished.

I spent the last several hours traveling around Squirrel Hill and Shadyside invading my classmates’ homes to take photographs for our project this week, which is due Friday.

I’m not exactly sure what I will do with these photos. One of my classmates gave me a great idea, but sadly after I had taken 130 photos. I shot seven of 12, and I hope to do the remaining people tomorrow.

Regardless how the project turns out, I am humbled that my classmates are opening their homes and their lives to me and my camera. I am getting much more from the experience than just photographs.

So class, if you read this, thank you again. I apologize in advance for making you so blurry.

I’m going to skip over what we did today in class, which was essentially reviewing the pairs of photos we took yesterday, and jump right into tonight’s assignment: On photographing a person; and, on being photographed.

We had to write about the experience, so I’m going to include that in it’s entirety because it’s after 1 a.m. and I’m tired. I just wrote it.

For the assignment, I thought it would be interesting to photograph each other’s scars. There’s always a story that goes along with a scar. It’s a reminder of your history, and proof that something happened to you.

I don’t like to injure myself. But sometimes after I have, I’m sadistically happy with the battle wound.

I have a lot of scars in various places on my body. I didn’t realize how many I had before I suggested the idea to Matt Forrest, my partner for the assignment. I have scars on my head, my face, the inside of my lip, the outside of my lip, my shoulder, abdomen, arms, hands, and of course, my knees.

The first scar I can remember is a chicken pox scar on my temple that I must have picked when I was four years old. My most recent scar is from an injury I incurred during a soccer game the day before I started the design fundamentals course. I suffered a four inch scrape from my elbow going toward my hand. It was bloody the first day of class. A week later that scab ripped off during a collision with another player at another soccer game.

Matt did not seem to have a problem penetrating my personal space with his camera to get close-up shots of my scars. I felt a mix of vulnerability and pride while he took the photos. I worried that the lens would pick up other things besides whatever scar he happened to be focusing on. Would the photos show things I don’t want people to see?

I have already seen the photos Matt took. Some make me feel embarrassed and some show my flaws. But we all have flaws. And I’m no different from anyone else. I told him to use whatever photos he wanted. Still, it was weird to see photos that focus so closely on my body. I can’t naturally look at myself that closely. It reminds me that everyone gets to see me and from different perspectives a lot more than I do, and I wonder at the potential disconnect between my mind’s eye and reality.

I did not have any problems getting up close on Matt’s scars. The task became more important than whether I was invading his personal space. I was more concerned with getting the camera to focus one inch away from the disfigurements of his skin.

Matt did not have as many scars as me. But I remember the words he used to describe one of his leg scars. He ran at a sprint into a fire hydrant in the dark, crashing into it with his shin. He pulled back his blood-soaked sock to reveal “chunks of fleshy meat.”

I wish my photos of his scars turned out better. Here’s his shin.

It’s the final week of the design fundamentals summer course. In some ways it feels like we’ve been doing this course for ages. And then, as always, there’s that feeling that it went by too quickly.

This week we’re studying photography with Charlee Brodsky. As stated in this week’s syllabus, “We will look at, discuss, and make photographs.” Simple. I like it.

The goal is to give us a better understanding of photography “in terms of reading photographs and making them.” Cool.

Our assignment for tomorrow is to make six pairs of photos of representational and abstract images. So this afternoon I scooted around Regent Square on my bike taking pictures according to my interpretation of the assignment, which I hope is correct.

The photos I took were okay. I wish they were better. But I was stretched for time.

Here’s an example pairing.