Well. This is it. My very first content-driven post! It’s kind of daunting… but also a little exciting. I won’t lie. Trying to figure out the theme for this entry took quite a bit of pondering. I thought about rambling about what I want to do with my life/career/senior portfolio, since it has been weighing heavily on my mind lately, but I figure that we’ll have plenty of time for that later. I also thought about having a show and tell of all the things I made last quarter, but that raised the question of why start at last quarter? Why not just post a bunch of the relevant/awesome things I’ve done throughout college and even before that. You know you want to see some dinner plates I drew on in pre-K. They show an early attempt at perspective and a unique approach to “sky”! No? Maybe another time then? Also. I don’t have much of my recent work with me here at home or photographed nicely. So… that put an end to that. And then I realized that it doesn’t have to be about any sort of grand theme.
For those of you unfamiliar with SCAD’s quarter system, we get from Thanksgiving to New Years off. That’s right. I am home for 6 somewhat glorious and eventually insufferable weeks. I always start out with grand plans and huge lists of things I want to achieve is all that wonderful free time. And as always I am so burnt out after finals I don’t want to think another creative thought for a long time, spend the first 1.5 weeks engaged in family activities, have about 2 weeks of boredom, 2 weeks packed with social activities, and a few days at the end left to hurriedly pack and lament over lost time. This winter break is shaping up no differently. There are a few competitions and projects I’m working on at the moment. But the lack of tracing paper and a steamer for setting dye has halted more than few of my tangents. Instead of figuring out a way to remedy those things, I have been preoccupied with NEW SHINEY FUN TOYS: a film SLR camera and a Wacom tablet.
This is my camera, a Minolta XG1! And I was given the camera + 50mm lens + 205mm lens + flash + camera bag + more for FREE. I’ve already taken and developed 1 roll of film with it, and the pictures came out surprisingly well. I only overexposed a couple shots, and only one photo came out blurry. The colors were so dreamy and perfect compared to similar shots I took with my digital camera. Learning the very backwards logic of film has been a challenge. Bigger numbers mean smaller things. It’s all very confusing, but I’m finally getting it and getting more experimental with my second roll in the way of double exposures. Here’s to hoping I actually did it right! There’s something exciting about film in this digital world of instant gratification. I find myself taking more care with the photos I take, meticulously fiddling with the focus and composition before snapping the photo. I like it. And once I figure out a way to properly scan them, I’ll be posting some of my favorites up here!
My second toy is this beauty. A Wacom Intuos4 tablet! Now this is a Christmas present gifted to me early so I can work on those projects I mentioned before. I must confess that I left the box sitting around for a few days before actually opening it. I wanted to wait until I had a great big chunk of free time so that I could really sit down with it. And this evening I had myself I nice pseudo-Christmas morning. How i miss getting gadgets! In my state of old, yet hearty & trusted, electronics (my mp3 player is going on 8 years!), I forgot the thrill of opening up a new thing and trying to figure out all it’s workings and reveling in the newness of it. So that was my evening. And these are my toys. And there you have it, an in-depth, backstage look at some of the tools I’ll be using to make things in the coming months!
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