Positivity Wrapped Up

Hello followers, thanks for sticking around, we have truly appreciated your support throughout the year. I cannot believe it's now 2010 and that we've managed to complete this experiment to it's fullest. I've never typed this much in my life. I can say that I was only happy with about 60% of my entries which I know is not very positive. But, I'm aware I am not a stellar writer and this brought that more to the surface for me. I prefer to write in fragments, brief thoughts, and poetic verse.

This blog has traveled with me through the start of my photography career, losing my job, nine months of unemployment, my medical assistant pursuit, to my now teaching aspirations, to my new job in day-care, to my beautiful wedding engagement. 2009 couldn't have been more life alternating for me and now I have it completely documented. I've kept up journal writing through most of my younger years and this process has been very therapeutic in that same regard. I feel I know myself better. I feel more confident in my own skin. I think this experiment effected me more deeply than Jason, just because I was writing during such life changing times. I became a stronger person when I was unemployed and got to explore all my passions. I did love and appreciate this experience. I know now that I need calming devises around me when my life gets tense and stressful. Exercise, music, films, and my favorite foods to name a few. I feel more positive, I really do. Whenever I sense Jason getting negative, I catch myself getting negative with him. I don't like when I do this and I'm glad I'm immediately aware of it, so I usually find myself stepping out of the situation and concentrating on the positive.

Top big projects that we need to stay positive about are selling the Towson House, affording all the bills including our two mortgages, getting my teaching certificate and becoming a teacher, getting the city house finished, getting my photography career moving and shaking again, and getting a wedding plans together. We have each other to get through these tough projects. We can achieve anything together.

Things I think of when times get me down: My loving mom and dad, my sister and Allen, and their wonderful growing boys, Kaiden and Blake. My grandmom, who needs positivity more than ever. My new dreams of helping and teaching children achieve and grow. Cooking delicious food with my wonderful fiance, Jason. My new loving family- Jan, David, Steph, John, Lou, Karin, Grandpa, and Jackson. And all of our other family members and friends. Starting a new garden next Spring. Starting any new project with Jason. Finishing our city home together. Being a bride walking down the aisle to my beautiful, kind, heartfelt soon to be husband, Jason.

I love you dear, we can move mountains together. I hope all your writing dreams come true. I believe in you- Stay Positive!

Nail Polish

I love the way nail polish looks on your fingers or toes. I started really enjoying the aesthetic look of nail polish from seeing the French film The Dreamlife of Angels. The lead actress wore dark black or brown nail polish on her fingers and it was half way coming off, but it really added to the tone of the film for me. It just looked really cool. I know I'm a bit of a strange one, but there are aesthetic details that I sometimes really enjoy visually.

I shot a Halloween party and wore a conglomerate of a few different things I had in my closet and said I was a fashionista (or a Norwegian Supermodel, I could not decide). I put dark red nail polish on and it's starting to come up which of course is when I like it most. I will always love small visual details in life and in film.

Independent Film, The Other White Meat

As a film lover, this year's experiment wouldn't be complete for me without at some point giving a nod to the independent film industry. And not by deriding the major studios. I love a good blockbuster studio picture occasionally. Both worlds have their advantages. Major studios have capital. Loads of it. They can afford to bankroll film extravaganzas that an independent producer couldn't dream of tackling. Special effects-driven bonanzas with more eye candy than you can shake a 200 foot transforming car robot at.

But...because of the massive budgets involved in many major studio films they have to appeal to the widest audience possible in order to be profitable. So you get a lot of formulaic filmmaking. Dense plotting that reminds of you 15 other movies. Or films with gorgeous visuals and little plot meat. And remakes...I just heard a remake of "Footloose" is in the works. What? I can somewhat understand remaking older films to recontextualize them in a modern setting or special effects based movies to update the visuals. But Footloose? It's only 25 years old (which I just learned...obviously they're remaking it for its quinvicennial). Soon movie sequels released by the studios a year later will simply be remakes of the original film with a new cast.

This is where independent film steps in and shines. Independent pictures are produced for much lower budgets generally, often employing up and coming or unknown talent. They focus more on story and character development, and less on eye candy. And because the investment per film is so much lower, they can afford to appeal to more niche audiences. They can take risks. This creates a much more diverse crop of films. You could say that the independent film industry appeals to film lovers generally, while the major studios appeal to people who like the spectacle of movies. Independent producers are enamored with the art of filmmaking while the studios are enamored with the art of making money selling films.

They both have their place. I'm not necessarily favoring one over the other. Like most of you I'm eagerly awaiting the next big-budget special effects blowout. I'm just glad that independent films exist as an alternate voice. Films that scream at you are fine, but sometimes you just want your movies to have a conversation. Or not talk at all.

The Digital World

Yesterday I started working on SuNn's photos. Remember she's the up and coming female rap artist I took various city pictures of for her album, portfolio, website, etc. I asked her and her manager to pick their favorite pics and I would take those and Photoshop them. I'm really enjoying the process. In other words I'm enhancing them with a computer program called Adobe Photoshop. It's so funny since I came from a mindset of keeping film and photos organic. I used to hate the idea of digital video when film made the moving images raw and grainy, giving it texture and life. I loved going through the dark room process, developing your photos with a sense of artistry and wonder. It was hard work and involved a lot of strange chemical smells. I now really appreciate the digital world. Where mistakes can happen, since you have a memory cards fitting over 500 pictures on each one. You can take as many pictures as you want. Knowing that at least one out of every 30 or so will be stellar. Then you go home and load them into a computer. Going through and picking your favorites to manipulate creating unique masterpieces. Same with digital video, all the same steps apply and you don't have to send the film out to be processed. Time is not a factor anymore. It's amazing and I'm really enjoying learning all digital photography has to offer.

The Maryland Film Festival

This year was the 11th year for the festival, and it seems to get bigger and better every year. And yet many people are still unaware that Maryland hosts a film festival. For those of you that haven't been but love film, do yourself a favor next year and attend a few screenings.

What's great about the festival is that it's all about film appreciation, not commerce. Most of the large festivals, like Sundance, Cannes, Tribeca, etc. are more about procuring distribution deals for filmmakers. They're an orgy of film capitalism. Not to say that they don't have great screenings, but they aren't designed for the everyman. The Maryland Film Festival is all about us, lovers of cinema. As a result you get a great mix of film material. Narrative shorts, animated shorts, avant-garde shorts, feature length indie comedies and dramas, documentaries, and even a few big budget hollywood flicks. Last night we saw, among a few screenings of short films, "World's Greatest Dad" a new dark comedy written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait and starring Robin Williams. Great movie!

What I love about MFF is that fact that everyone screening their films at the festival do it out of the love of the craft. Sure they come for exposure, but they're not going to land a big distribution deal from a screening at the Charles. But they are going to get a huge, warm response from a film-centric crowd more concerned with viewing good cinema instead of selling good cinema. Bobcat made the comment last night (he came to introduce the film and for a Q&A afterwards) that he's cried twice at screenings of the film. The first was when Robin watched the film and started crying. The second was when he saw the reaction from the MFF crowd. He said that he had never felt so much gratitude for an audience at any screening ever. I think that says so much for the festival. It's all about the love of the art.

If you come and can't afford a lot of screenings, at least do the ticket three pack. Tickets are normally ten dollars, but you can get a three-pack for 20, so you essentially get a free screening. If you love movies you'll love MFF.

http://www.md-filmfest.com/

Shows that make me go wah!

I love dramatic films or shows that bring tears to my eyes. If something is so powerful to make me cry than I know the movie or show achieved brilliance. Last night Jason and I watched the most recent Grey's Anatomy and we teared up about four times, starting only three minutes in. It was intense all the way through. It has really redeemed itself and has once again become the show that it once was. Some other notable tearjerkers are In America, Dead Poet's Society, The Shawshank Redemption, Titanic, Schindler's List, and Sophie's Choice. I love feeling the true deep emotions a good sad film delivers. Common themes are war, death, family reunions, and terrible hardships. These themes really put your own troubles into perspective, really telling us our lives could be much worse. Let's continue to be thankful for our love and joy filled lives.

Digital Cameras

I know there are a lot of purists out there, people who lament the ground lost from film cameras.  You know who you are.  I don't think there's anything wrong with that position.  Film has an aesthetic and emotional resonance that digital, in its cold 1, 0, 1, 0 perfection, can't match.  But...

Digital technology easily bests film in most other areas.  The resolution on high-end cameras is now larger than 35 mm. film.  And there's no upper limit.  We're limited more in our printing and reproduction capabilities than in image capture.  A 30 megapixel consumer point and shoot can't be too far off.

Digital images can be manipulated much easier than physical negatives.  Programs like Photoshop do everything an artist would normally do in a darkroom, plus a gargantuan amount more.  Granted, physical negatives can be scanned for manipulation digitally, but there's an inherent quality compromise.  Better to capture digitally from the beginning.

Getting prints made is so much easier with digital files.  Instead of having to either develop your images yourself, or drop the film of at a processing center, you can print your images at home.  Or digitally transmit them to a processing center of your choice.  This creates competition, because we aren't limited anymore to just our local processing centers.

Sharing images is clearly much easier as well, with the plethora of online photo sharing sites.

But the real benefit of no film is...no film!  It's expensive, and therefore limiting.  I went on a three week trek across Europe back in 2001, and I took along a relatively simple old film camera.  With only 24 exposures per roll I had to be very choosy about what scenes I captured.  I think in all I shot about 15 rolls of film.  If you figure (and I have no idea if these figures are accurate) six dollars per roll to purchase them, and then eight dollars to process them, you're looking at a grand total of $210.  That's 58 cents per print.  Today you can get prints online for as low as 6 cents per print.  And you're only paying for the images you actually print.  The other thousand images you have sitting on your hard drive didn't cost you a thing.

I can only imagine what images I missed because I didn't have the latitude then that a digital camera would afford me now.  I probably would have come home with many thousands of images instead just the 360 I did.  Of course volume is no substitute for talent...it's anyone's guess if any of those missed images would have been any good.

Reminiscing

I enjoy reminiscing. Tonight I traveled back to my college years and watched a "Making of" video that was filmed while my friends and I were shooting our senior project, "The Brian Lee Story". I miss those times so much, but I'm happy to have videos like that to help reflect. Thinking of the times where all you had to do was study subjects that you were passionate about and then hang out with your friends making short films till the sun came up the next morning. You had this great freedom even though going to class everyday was such a structured lifestyle. Freedom came across in the expression of your art, for the love you had of your studies, and from the amazing friendships you created and hopefully still have. To be honest, all of this makes me a bit sad, growing up can be a pain in the butt, but remembering the adventures you had can be very therapeutic in reminding you that you have the ability and talent in you to be artistic and spontaneous.

Capturing Moments

I like being witness to thoughtful, meaningful, moments between loved ones, let it be fictional or real-life. Sister's making up, mothers and daughters reuniting, seeing the real closeness and sensing the unbelievable happiness of that one moment. I usually end up in tears- good tears, not bad tears. I want to capture true and amazing moments for people, I want to be around happiness and joy for a living. I saw a fantastic film tonight with Jason called Rachel Getting Married and even though a lot of the film was sad, it was ultimately about families reuniting and new beautiful beginnings. It was an amazing portrayal of the complexities of human nature and human relationships. I love being emotionally affected by other people's happiness.