Who am I?
Finding who I am as a photographer has been a journey. I swear I have thought I would be everything under the sun at one point in time. Once I thought I wanted to be an underwater marine photographer. The reality was that I am scared to death of being in ocean! Then I had a small fashion side, not that I am any fashionista by any means! We had some true fashion photographers in our building, I just didn't have it in me like some of these other people! There were so many other things that I thought I wanted to do, until I found film. Film is one of my truest loves. Shhh..don't tell Dakota! Film actually made my heart flutter a little when hearing the image imprint itself on it. The darkroom was some of the most stressful calming moments I have had in my life time. But, at the end of the day I knew this was something I needed to do more of!
Once I found film, I started to find out who I was a little more as a person. Something else I fell in love with was alternative processes! I would take negatives, paint chemicals on a paper, let it dry, place the negative on the paper, and let it sit in the light for a few minutes. Depending on the process, I could get these beautiful cyanotypes (these look like blue prints but with photographs)! Or another process that I love are called platinum prints (these were similar to sepia toned prints)! It allowed me to push more on working in depth with my work. This isn't a pick up the camera and boom everything is done like that! It could take days to work on it to make it look perfect. I adored the process!
My projects were sometimes personal, and sometimes it was something that I was attracted to. Other times it was something that, I had no idea what to do but needed a project! Art school is hard. It's not as simply as showing up to a class with this photo. These projects needed an in depth thought behind it, and they all needed to look like your thought behind it. Projects like these don't always come to mind.
The reality from these projects is that I miss them. I miss spending time on them, and over working on these ideas. Some I hope to continue working on them in the future! All of these were taking with film or with an alternative process print. Say hello to some of my first babies!
Oh the land of the flat South Carolina. Let's be real, we don't really have that in Virginia. I was oddly smitten about it. They aren't always beautiful, but they were oddly beautiful. These were taken on a 4x5 camera. Remember the camera that you had get under black drape for? Yep that's the same camera!
These were these alternative process prints I was talking about. You will see that some I put both cyanotypes and platinum prints together. That was my final project in that class. At the time, I was struggling with how fast time has moved by. By having the movement from the so called blue print to the what looks like a brown print it helped show it. This very quickly became something that I wanted to continue for the future!
These project was still slightly based on time moving so fast. I decided to come home and photograph some spots that meant dear to my heart. I wanted to be able to attach that memory to them with the image. I hand wrote my memories under and placed them on the image to make more of a connection with them. This one I hope to continue working out throughout my life as I build more and more memories.
If you saw the blog posts about kids, I posted another project that I worked on! If you haven't seen it, check it out! It has more of my personal work!