Perception

Something about the way you see things is always changing. It's terrible, but great at the same time. I don't think I'm making much sense.

What I'm talking about is those times when you think of some one as incredibly ugly, but the longer you stare at them the prettier they become. And then suddenly, on a random moment, you're hit by their new found beauty and think them to be one of the most beautiful people you've ever met. I'm not talking about learning about the person and thinking them to be pretty because of their personality. I'm talking about just staring at some ones face and noticing that the strangeness in his nose is quite cute because of how it falls in the rest of his face, or the mole in the center of her face is actually adorable because of how it frames her mouth. Random things like that, that hit you at completely random times.

Or opposite to that, when you stare at something so long it becomes ugly. This is one that comes commonly with clothes. Like, when you buy a sweater on sale. The whole time in the store you were staring at this sweater in your hands and in your head you've agreed its the world's perfect sweater. Somewhere between the car ride home and placing the sweater on a hanger, you've noticed that the stitching is tacky and the cut is unflattering. Then your stuck with a sweater that was overpriced even when on sale and is non-returnable.

So what is it about noticing these details that changes are view of things so completely? For whatever reason, the small things seem to overpower the big picture until the details themselves become the big picture. They become all you see, all you know, all you think of. Is this what makes "detail-oriented" such a great thing to write on job applications? Is it the looming truth that eventually the details becomes all a person sees, regardless of how a finished product looks? Or is it just all-together impossible for something to look good without immaculate details to begin with?

Blockbuster Syndrome

Every now and then everyone gets a big old hit of blockbuster syndrome, but as I sit here staring at my common apps I wonder if there's ever a time where blockbuster syndrome is necessary.

The questions are simple - Why do you want to apply for your major? What makes you want to go to this school? What do you like about our program? Nothing really too difficult, so it shouldn't take me a week and a half to give 100 word answer for each question.

But it does take me a week and a half to write a paragraph, and the reason is fairly obvious. It's blockbuster syndrome. I want every idea to be my greatest ever, every sentence to be the best ever written, and every comma to be the most beautifully placed comma that the admissions officer has ever seen.

So now the question is, is blockbuster syndrome hurting or helping me?

While the writing may be really thought out, it might be worse than a casually written blog post. Less from the heart and more from a robot. And who wants a robot attending their top tier school?

Then there's also the whole time thing. (Especially when you're applying to 15 schools, with 8 of them being early action with november deadlines.)

I guess I'll go back to figuring out things to tell my safety schools when they ask me why I'm applying...

Stac Wide Web

When STAC was initially given the mural assignment, I couldn't of cared less about the meaning of it. I was sure Luke had something great and meaningful to tie it all together with, but I was so engulfed by the image of the project that the value of it had become completely secondary. I had envisioned this beautiful, huge, web of words that was completely neat but completely messy at the same time. I imagined the words to be much larger, and to be planned out better and more uniformly. In my head it was this gorgeous thing of epic proportions that at first overwhelmed the viewer so much that it seemed impossible to read, but once the reading would actually begin it would become a simple task. I imagined something that you would see as a museum display.

Reality was far from imagination. Reality was chaos in differently sized and spaced words. Reality was writing that overwhelmed you not only as you look at it but also as you plunged into reading it. But I think reality might of been a lot more fulfilling.

If we really did spend the time to make it perfect - to use the stencils, and organize our thoughts, and create the layout - it may of not had the same affect. The way we did it allowed us to go into ourselves to see why we like the things we like, find connections, reasons, and more connections, and then some connections with other STACies. It was satisfying.

My imagination would of brought another kind of satisfaction - the kind of satisfaction that would of been more "factory" driven. The satisfaction of something beautiful. Reality brought the satisfaction of discovery.

Writing Workshop #5

It's funny how you spend your whole high school career learning how to not write the way you talk and then have a published author tell you that the best writing is the kind where it sounds like the writer talking.

And it seems like school does this all the time, especially when it comes to arts education. They focus on one thing, one thing thats really one one-millionth of the subject as a whole, until you almost forget whatever God given talent you had to begin with. They focus on the tiny little technical aspects until the only good thing left in your writing is your ability to place commas.

While schools won't ever be able to "teach" talent per-say, they're doing a really sucky job at letting their students know the importance of following your gut. Not only have they mixed in the talentless with the prodigies, but they've failed at letting the prodigies know that it's okay to go with your intuition sometimes when you really think it's going to work. School's just mixed everyone into a big melting pot of prison food. I would like no more, sir.

That's one of the best things about Reed's workshop. He's not pretending that he can teach you how to write. He knows that writing well is something that comes from within. He teaches you ways to work on letting yourself get to the point where your writing becomes you. (Or where you become your writing.) He gives time and prompts to work on becoming creatively free, and he gives you critiques to let you know when you've just gotten a bit too creative. It's that delicate balance that makes for a good workshop.

Writing Workshop #3

Reed something really interesting during the writing exercises. I don't remember the exact quote, but what he said was something about how ironic it is that he hates (and therefore never writes) when other people are the room when he's trying to work, but that he's making us write in a room full of people regardless of how he feels.

And I'm the same exact way; in fact I snapped at my little brother today when I was helping him write a speech because he started talking when I was fixing some of the sentence structure. Simply saying thank you put me on edge when I was dealing with fourth grade grammar.

But that being said, I think there is a lot of value in being forced to write with a room full of people. It helps you cut out that "I need to be inspired" aspect of getting shit done. I like being trained to just write without having your novel writing utopia around you. It helps you create structure in a field that has a negligible amount of structure. You write when you can, it's your job.

Writing Workshop #2

There isn't much to do with writing other than critiquing it before going to write again. This isn't a complaint - merely an observation. I don't know if this makes me like writing more or less. Probably more. It must be more.

But I think these two things are so incredibly useful - and time consuming - that it's easy to forget that it's only really two things. Today we did critiquing (writing is to be done at home). I realize how useful critiquing must be for the person whose work you are critiquing. But, me being the center of the universe and all, what matters most to me is how useful critiquing some one else is to me. Critiquing some one else's work is more than helping some one else get a better essay. It's about opening your eyes and mind so they can see what makes good writing rock and what makes bad writing suck. It's having a mind set capable of doing this without thinking that makes good writing.

I mean you can, read and read and read, and watch and watch and watch, and immerse yourself in any bit of pop culture you can find in order to build your library and come up with the best stolen piece of writing ever, but I'm talking about really improving your writing, not making what you have to say worthwhile. What good is all that if your voice sucks and your sentence creating skills prove you to be illiterate?

Writing Workshop #1

We didn't really get that far into the actual writing part of the workshop today, but I can tell I'm going to have a really good time in this workshop. I like the idea of being forced to write the first chapter of a novel, because it's something I wouldn't start on my own and would never have the opportunity to have critiqued. I just need to sit back, relax, and type. I also need to not try really hard to write something fresh and exciting. Like Reed said today "Good writers borrow, great writers steal."

Lighting Workshop Six

Sorry about the late post (I've been without a computer for over a week now).

The last workshop was a great learning experience, what struck me the most was the amount of pressure. Our job was to make our client (Mr. Semerdjian) happy. That's a lot of pressure. In most other forms of art your job is to create. For most there is a lingering thought of an audience that you hope to gain the approval of in the back of your mind. But that's all it is; it's just a thought. It's not until its too late and you have the finished product that you get to worry about how it will be received. When you're taking photos for some one else the audience is sitting right in front of you, waiting to see something worth whatever it is they're paying you. (In our case there was no money, just the desire to impress some one who may or may not be grading you.)

But it seems those who are truly good at what they do manage to do whatever they want and have everyone adore their work regardless.

Lighting Workship Number Five

What I loved about today's assignment (other then the adrenaline rush of a deadline) was that I could take a picture of the same thing 10,000 times and have it look completely different each time. This is true for all photography - not just newspaper photography - but it became really clear to me today when your objective was to spin the subject a certain way and all you can really change is the angle. Lighting, location, and even time, is completely out of your control. But with a 30 degree change in the angle of your wrist, you can have the auditorium seating have a whole new meaning.

Lighting Workshop Four

After two workshops with natural lighting and two workshops without, I can definitely say I like studio lighting better. I'm we're covering both, because I know I need to learn both. I can just say that I enjoy creating the lighting situation more than having to make something out of the natural light given. Although, I do like the effects of natural lighting more. There seem to be a lot of beautiful light you can find in nature that you just can't recreate.

What I enjoy the most is the fact that I am at the point that I can have an opinion on these things. My opinion may not matter, but just the fact that I am able to say, with certainty, that I like working with studio lighting more than I like working with natural lighting is a cool thing. It's nice knowing enough -however little it may be- about something that you are able to figure out where you stand on it.

Lighting Workshop Three

I jokingly called myself the "Queen of Innovation" today in the workshop, but there was some truth behind it. Less emphasis on the queen part (I don't actually think I'm the queen of anything) and more emphasis on the innovation part. I wasn't creating robots that perform surgeries or some kind of food source that could provide for every starving person in the world, but I was finding ways to create art out of cardboard and clothing hangers, and that's pretty cool too.

Right now the workshop isn't about the photo for me. It's more about the procedure. I'm not really working for a gorgeous photo (although its a pretty great reward when I finally get to shooting and see how pretty some photos actually come out). I'm working in order to better understand how to create the scenario that a gorgeous photo comes from. I know they may sound like the same thing, but they're really not. There's a difference from spending an hour setting up lighting for a picture that you want to have come out to be really pretty and spending an hour setting up lighting so you understand what makes a photo come out really pretty. The first mindset comes after more experience, like maybe you should start thinking this way when you're about 4,000 hours into something. Right now I'm having a lot of fun with just having the lighting be the accomplishment - it's like a puzzle! I can't wait for the day where the lighting becomes routine and the photo is the real prize.

Lighting Workshop Two

After a year of playing around with my big fancy camera I learned a few things that I kept in mind while taking photos. I knew the rolly thing that made the clicky thing take longer and the button that made the picture brighter. But now I know that the rolly thing is actually called "shutter speed" and the button is actually called "f-stop." Who would of thought my scientific terms were so off?

What makes me so happy with the past two workshops is the fact that I learned more then what they're called. I learned the basic reasoning of why they do what they do, and how you can use what they do to your advantage. I was also happy to get a bit of time working with natural lighting, since I'm more likely to be experimenting indoors so I'm glad I got some experience outside. I'm very excited to see what the next workshop has in store!

Lighting Workshop One

I know I probably sound like a broken record, but I really and truly do love photography. It's one of those things for me that never seems to get boring, whether I'm viewing some one's photo or am actually the one taking it.

That being said, I'm the kind of person that always worries that learning about the technical aspects of something will make it loose it's magic. The thing with photography is, learning the technical stuff only made it even more magical. The way a softer or harsher light creates a completely different is poetic. The way you create the soft or harsh light is completely creative. The number of ways you can use the light is infinite, making the numbers of emotions you can create infinite.

The workshop was all technical, but none of it was boring. I wanted to go to the Home Depot right after in order to get the materials to be able to play around with the lighting! Needless to say I'm excited for workshop number two!

Apertunity

Rob Goldman is a Long Island based photographer and author. As well as having a published book and published photographs, he holds workshops and seminars for personal development programs and photography classes.

While many of his workshops focus on helping those attending achieve their personal greatness, his workshop with us is going to be solely on photography. Particularly, lighting and its effects. As a photographer Rob is well established. He has work published internationally, in magazines like Cosmopolition, Bride, and Mademoiselle, and in advertisements for Club Med, Microsoft, AT&T, and Marriot.

Photography is something I always loved, and I probably always will. I've never been particularly good at it because I barely know the bare minimums of the art. I'm excited to learn something as useful and fundamental as lighting, and I'm glad to have the apertunity to do so.

Absence

I haven't posted in forever. I'm usually the one person who gets everything in on time no matter what, but I guess I can't really say that anymore. I feel a lot better now. I said it before (and I wasn't lying) but now I feel 100% me again. So back to blogging and back to working hard, because staying in one place doesn't make anyone happy. I don't know if anyones seen a difference in me lately, but I feel a difference. If you don't notice anything then I guess I'm really good at covering things up. If you do notice it, bear in mind that I'm better now. If half of you notice and half of you didn't, then I guess I'm good at covering it up to people that don't know me as well. Is this blog in English? Whatever, I'm better now.