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.

Junior Year

The last year of grades that gets sent into colleges. SAT scores. Final GPAs. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Junior fucking year.

Ironic that the girl who could tell you exactly what she wanted and how she was going to get it in fifth grade no longer knows. It's not a matter of so many options being in front of me. It's a matter of me becoming to realistic for my own good; I've become so realistic that my idea of realistic is closer to plain old pessimistic. It sounds terribly corny and stupid, but everything went south when I started believing that I couldn't be what I wanted to be.

Seems like the joke was on me. I can be whatever I want to be, and I just lost three months of the most important year of my high school career trying to re-learn that I could be whatever I want to be (something I knew once before).

I think it's how close college is, how close the "real world" is, to me that is making me go crazy. The best advice I can give to any freshman and sophomore is to take care of yourself academically, creatively, and socially those first two years of high school. When you're a junior, don't get caught up in being a junior. Realize that you were doing fine all through out high school and junior year is not that much different from what you've already done. If you let junior year become this mystical force you're just going to screw yourself over.

Getting Shit Done

The level of productivity is relative. "Productive" depends on you're level of understanding and expertise on whatever you're working on. So when comparing two people one person finishes something in one day but it takes another person a week to do the same task. The first person has more experience doing this thing than the second person has. The first person finished the task and just takes a break for the rest of the week. The second person fished the task days later, but has been constantly working on it. The first person wasn't productive. The second person was.

Some of my friends are just plain old stupid. But what they don't have in intelligence they make up for with hard work. What some one needs to be brilliant is a mix between intelligence and hard work. You may be born with the thought process of a genius, but without hard work no one in the world is going to know that but you. I mean, maybe it was easy for people in the 1800s to get themselves out there just on their smarts, but in todays dog eat dog world everyone has the opportunity to learn. Even the worst public schools out there could help bring out a brilliant person. It's about what the brilliant person puts into school. If he puts in a lot of work, he gets out a big reward.

Do these two paragraphs seem to relate to eachother? If not, sorry. Just thinking through blog.

Not "living in the past" was brought up today. I thought, Hey! Maybe I am living in the past!

I'm not living in the past. When I really thought about it, none of my recent behavior indicates me living in the past. So what didn't make sense is why I was so quick to believe that I was.

You know why I kept telling myself that was the reason? It's because I wanted to give myself a reason, any reason, for my recent behavior. You could of told me I was sad because my pet gargoyle died and angry because my evil step-mother is the one who killed it, and I may have believed you. I ignore the fact that I don't have a pet gargoyle or a evil step-mother (or even a regular step-mother) and I give myself a reason.

It's been a shit year so far. I've been denying it for weeks, but it's true. I've just kind of been in a slump, and I wish I knew what put me in it. Knowing why things happen doesn't necessarily make it a whole lot easier to fix anything, but when you have a reason for why things are the way they are you're at least assured that you're not going insane.

Well, maybe all this over analyzation of my own mind is what's going to drive me insane.

Procrastination

It's a major character flaw, and it comes in the way of almost everything I want. I won't give you any of that "take me or leave me" bullshit because I'm almost positive that there's another version of me walking the streets, and if that version of me isn't a procrastinator I would probably take her and leave me.

It's not something I like. I hate it. I spend days procrastinating - watching movies I've never really wanted to see or online shopping for shoes I really don't need. I can't even enjoy these meaningless tasks because the whole time I'm thinking of the essay I should be writing or the book i should be reading (erm, The Empty Space).

It's a horrible disorder that I would not wish upon anyone. After you've wasted a large amount of time, you try and squeeze days worth of work into three hours (usually from about 1 AM - 4 AM). You stress yourself out for weeks worrying about when you're going to get off your ass and start, and then you end the process with a truck full of "THIS NEEDS TO GET DONE NOW."

It's in my way. Step One - rid procrastination. Step Two - take over the world. That's really all there is to it.

Tell No One

Tell No One is one of those movies that leaves you with butterflies in your stomach. The same kind of butterflies you get when you see your crush in the hallway. The love butterflies. And while it's not the same brand of love, I'm definitely in love with Tell No One.

I don't even want to talk about the plot twist. (Or rather, plot twists). The fact that I didn't even see the last plot twist coming is enough to get me to love this movie. I usually know exactly what's coming when I'm watching a movie. Either my intuition was off or this movie is brilliant. From what I can tell, it's the latter.

What I really do want to talk about is the shots. Every single shot was gorgeous. There was not one piece of the movie that I couldn't see as a gorgeous photograph. The movie is more then a mysterious thriller, it is a mysterious thriller with beauty. Every shot was more beautiful and elegant then the one before it.

My favorite shots were at the lake. True, the area is already naturally beautiful so it shouldn't be that hard to capture a beautiful shot. But while it's easy to capture a beautiful image when it's already naturally pretty, it's not easy to capture a beautiful image that really makes you feel. I gave me a tang in the stomach very similar to the one I feel when looking at Monet's Water Lilies .