Rediscovering the old RIT

(To start this off...) Overtime, obviously things change. We grow up, new buildings are built, and landscapes change...nothing is permanent in life, the same can be said about a place. In the 1960's RIT moved from its downtown, small campus, to the one we are in today, outside of downtown, and very large. Where RIT used to lay downtown, now has highway 490 running through it. Recently, I came across an article from npr about finding old photographs and finding their locations, and then comparing the two. http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/01/looking_backwards.html

This picture is taken in area that used to the central hub of campus. From the photo, it doesn't per-say look like this photo really belongs in this place, because the building that its taken in front of got a new face lift/makeover. Today the building is Rochester's public schools administrative building, then it was the clark building, the central hub of campus student life. The area that RIT used to be located was in the third ward, which was a fairly well to do area, but now when you walk around its run down... not the worst Rochester... but for sure not the best. And walking around this area made me think of what downtown would have been like if RIT stayed put, was RIT the demise of downtown Rochster? Or if RIT stayed, sure there would have been a major highway through the middle of it, but would the city still be as rundown all around it as it currently still is? There are no answers to these questions but for sure its something to think about...

slow food

I really hope that all of this legible, it's supposed to say Slow food. I'm pretty excited about this!! Each letter was photographed seperately, then I composited it together in photoshop
The shots below are from the local farmers market in Rochester from this past saturday

We're are living in a macro world, and I am a Macro girl

I am currently taking editorial photography. In this class the photographers work directly with a design major to create a layout that would go into a magazine, and that is exactly what our class is doing, making a magazine filled with our work! The goal of the class, is not only to make great work, but to get it into that magazine. The article that my designer and I are working on is about the slow food movement. The slow food movement was started in Italy in 1989 in efforts to ban chain food restaurants such as McDonalds and Burger King. Today Slow food has developed into a movement that is about preserving the local foods of that cultural region. Supporting your local stores, farms, and small businesses are all apart of this movement.

So, for this project, in order to keep up with the slow food movement, my designer and I went to the local Rochester Food Market... and it was amazing! Fresh food every way you looked and at incredible prices, we bought probably $100 worth of food for just over $30! We got, snap peas, carrots, parsley, mushrooms, lettuce, cabbage, artichokes, asparagus, sweet potatoes, string beans, brussel sprouts, radishes, scallion, tomatoes, homemade pasta, garlic, red peppers, jalapeno peppers, turnips and pears (the lonely fruit of the bunch). From going to the market, i never want to go a food store again for fresh food, at the market you can get not only vegetables, fruits and pasta, but fresh milk, eggs, cider, meats (chicken, fish, pork, beef), but also fresh bakery goods. the only reason to go to the food store would be for snacks.

Sterling Silver Silverware... say that 10 times fast!

Once again, it's been a little while since an update... but that's what happens when you have no time. Anyway, so today I set some time aside for myself to do some personal work. I have these old sterling silver silverware pieces with me up at school that I've been wanting to shoot for a while, and well I did. These are some of the (unedited) outcomes of today:

I decided to gel all of the lights, and each shot, I feel has a completely different feeling/mood to it. It always feels good to be back in the studio...

website

So during my winter break I have been doing a lot of work to my website, none of which has been uploaded to my server, because instead of doing it piece by piece and doing it that way, I want the big update to be one huge, well super-huge update. I have changed my layout 5 times this break, only to go back to the original 3 days later. My goal is to have a super simple and elegant website. Although I do find web designing to be quite fun, I run into a lot of issues along the way. My biggest issue being forgetting how to do something, and realizing that I forgot my dreamweaver book up at school, so I watch tutorials on how to do it, which is great, but it takes absolutely forever! A great place to watch some tutorials for dreamweaver can be found here : http://www.adobe.com/support/dreamweaver/tutorial_index.html . The best one that I have watched so far has been the one about planning out your website, which can be found here : http://www.adobe.com/support/dreamweaver/layout/site_planning/ .

Throughout my past four years in school (I'm graduating this coming May of 2010), I have learned a lot, obviously, about photography. I think the best thing that I have been taught outside of the technical side of photography is how to market myself. From learning how to market myself as a business I have learned the importance of websites in this digital based world. The great thing about having a website as a photographer is all the "free" advertisement it truly is. And by free, I don't mean a free space on the internet, like with flickr, but its a free way to tell other photographers, editors, magazines, companies etc. about what you are as a photographer and a glimpse at your personality. It also show how i see the world through a camera.. But, at the same, with just how important to have a website it is, it is just as important to have a "in hand" portfolio, a real, professional portfolio because seeing a photograph in person is 100% better than seeing a photograph on the internet. Besides the website and the portfolio, you also need promo (promotional) cards. Promo cards are probably the most fun things to make, once you chose a layout (choosing the layout for my promo cards literally took a week). They are mailable little cards to be sent to whoever you would send your portfolio to, they also make for wonderful Christmas cards! Then of course, you also need normal business cards, and lastly a resume. With all of these tools, along with my photographic skills and knowledge from my schooling at RIT, I am truly ready for the real world out there, wherever I end up, and I'm excited. But, for right now, it's time to head back to school for my last quarter and a half of college.

Also, Happy New Years Eve! My resolution for this year is too shoot more photography for myself more often!

I miss the summer

Looking through some older images today, fell upon this and now I miss the summer time.

Back to Work

Hello, it's been a while. I've missed you... Anyway, during my break from school I took a little bit of a break from photography as well, but now I'm back at it, in a new quarter, with new classes, etc. This quarter I'm taking a class in editorial photography. In this class the photographers are working directly with design students, this is definetly a different experience class wise, then I'm used to. Having to pass everything I do with another person, who isn't a teacher, is odd, but I suppose to good practice for when school is out and working with a lot of different people. It's definetly obvious that the desinger I'm working with and myself have way different views on the way a project should end up looking. So the goal of the class is to get work into a class magazine entitled "Positive/Negative". The photographer and the designer working together chose a topic that is either positive or negative, then makes a photograph to go with it, choses an article (or the other way around, all depends), and then the designer puts it all together in a layout. So for the two page spread we chose to do "The Benefits of Drinking Wine". To play off words, such as "health", the photograph will include a wine glass with grapes in it, wine is made of grapes. I want it to be beautiful, elegant, with a color palate of purples, deep reds and shades of beige.

Recently I foudn this new photographer that I've been looking at quite frequently because I think her work is really nice, her name is Syl Arena, and this is one of her photographs:
I think this is beautiful!! I've got an idea for a new series based off this for fruits and vegtables, more to come when I start it!