Grunt Work

I'm taking the opportunity to reflect on the experience of preparing the gallery today. I will say, it was definitely a lot more difficult and more work than any of us had anticipated. I thought it was just going to be walking in there, patch up a few holes, paint, and we'd be out of there. Boy, do i wish it would've been that easy. Walking in there, we realized that there was this huge mural(size of a whole wall), constructed of paint and lots of paper that was stuck with wheat paste (basically wallpaper). So we had to strip all that off, sand the walls to be smooth, put on multiple primer coats, THEN PAINT! It was definitely not what I had anticipated, and I was real exhausted by the end of the day. But I did show up 12 on the dot, and work to do as much as I possibly could to get everything prepared for tomorrow. The way I see it, the work absolutely had to be done today, so we could walk in and just hang work, no stress, just take the time to lay everything out nicely and not have to be pushed for time. Unfortunately, there weren't a whole lot of people who actually showed up, i am glad some did though. The majority of the people only stayed 1 to 1 1/2 hours at a time, which is fine, I understand that everyone has a busy schedule and the end of the semester. But i honestly, stayed the whole damn day, 12 to 6, which isn't what I was hoping to do, but i'm a work horse, everything got taken care of, lets have some fun at the show. I'm really looking forward to be able to hang out and look at people's work, goof around a little bit and just drink a few beers. I want to enjoy the outing as one of the last times to really hang out with this graduating class. We might as well have a good time while we still can, I honestly don't know who and when the next time i'll see them after this.

Panel Meetings

I wanted to write a few sentences just to respond to today's meetings with the panel members. First of all, I wish it wasn't raining this morning, i didn't want to walk in the rain with my portfolio, etc. What a pain in the butt. Anyways, it seemed like everyone was kind of anxious/nervous, I've been really confident with my sports photography lately, so I went into the meeting very comfortably and just had casual conversation with all the panel members, not that we didn't talk about my work, but i'm glad it wasn't a nerve-wrecking situation. Scott Elmsquist was a really nice guy, he gave me some good feedback on a number of photos and was really pleased with the overall quality of my shots, minus some prints that turned out poorly, but the composition and photo itself he enjoyed. I feel that both of the panel members real pleased that I knew exactly what I wanted to do after graduation and how to get there. Kimberly Frost was also really nice and down to earth, making it easy to talk to her about my work, we also had similar interests and ideas. Instead of looking at individual photos and talking about them, she just flipped through and then started to talk. She was really happy with the quality of work that I had in my photos, the only thing she said I needed to work on was advertising myself. I've already worked on a corporate identity, i have a logo and business card, I'd just like to work on them a little more. Plus I need a letterhead to put on invoices in the future.

In conclusion, I was really pleased with the individuals I met with today, everything went really smoothly and they were nice and easy to communicate ideas with. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be a mock interview or what, either way, because i'm really passionate and fascinated with the genre of photography that I'm shooting, it made it really easy to talk about.

Swift Creek

This weekend was a perfect chance to get out and do some shooting. I drove all the way out to Swift Creek aka. the middle of nowhere, but once I got out there, it was like youth lacrosse heaven. They had somewhere around 10 different teams playing on Saturday, lots of different ages, teams from different locations, it really turned out to be a lot of fun, and the kids loved the camera. There was one team I've been following around a little bit, Swift Creek Miners, which are actually a really talented bunch of kids, the kicked some ass over the weekend. Most of them recognized me from their last shoot, so they were real comfortable in front of the camera, i got to talk with them, joke around a little bit. Its always nice to just b.s. with kids about the sport and just have some fun while i'm shooting, it was a good time all around. The coaches are all down to earth and appreciate all the photos I'm taking, they let me get in there, wherever i want, works out really good, I'll just hook them up with some photos. They have more games this weekend, only they're in Nags Head, so I won't be able to get to those games, but I'd love to.

At the moment, I'm still looking through all the photos, workflow, etc. I will have them posted up tomorrow, but as for now, I'm still in the process of weeding out the good and the bad, which takes a long time when you're shooting a couple thousand photos a day. None of these will be done by the senior show, but they'll definitely be in the final critique. Besides that, can't say theres much more to say, I'm just gonna keep shooting. If i get the chance, I may try and make it out that way again this upcoming weekend, so I can get a few more good photos before the end of the school year, just want to help my chances as much as possible. Plus, I've been getting a good tan and having a great time meeting new people and shooting sports, its what I live for.