Days where one does absolutely nothing are just as important as the opposite. Having time where your mind isn't working is very healthy, it reduces stress from work and encourages creativity.
Evan.
This is Evan, he is one of the happiest people I know, look at him, he's so happy.
We explored a beach close to our accommodation and my legs got burned in the sun, they really hurt now.
rock.
texture.
Setting out on a little treck across dartmoor we found ourselves going uphill for an annoyingly large proportion of the walk, but it did make for some great photo opportunities and a chance for me to practice landscapes.
Curves.
Pan1.
Today we drove from Bristol to Devon.
pea.
Learning for me has little to do with school as many people would immediately associate it with, learning is linked with discovering,understanding and growth. If you find something out for yourself then more value is put on that information and you have created an individual process. If someone tells you how to do something then all you are doing is regurgitating their process that puts so much less weight behind this information and creates, in my mind, a redundancy to it. I believe in being self taught in many things, its sort of nature versus nurture (nurture being the proactive attempts to teach ones self and nature being externally taught).
On the technical side of camera work and editing processes I almost totally taught myself and in some cases I have taken parts for teaching from others but in doing that i have taken from many areas to create my own understanding (that's called inspiration might write about that one). The next step (and is something I have talked about in 3- Intimacy and slightly in 4- Ego) is finding ones own voice through art and creation, this I think can only come from the self. I would not want to say something with my art that I myself had not understood was something I wanted to say, this goes back to the regurgitation of others techniques but this time is regurgitation of other people's voices through art.
I am traveling down to cornwall and quite possibly wont have internet, this could be the end, oh dear...
Friends are some of the most important people in anyone's life, having good relationships outside of your family is very healthy since many people aren't reliant on family and are distant as well as all different emotional distances from their family. Friends for me are experiences, enjoying a person for who they are when they are themselves is such a great voyeurism that I would recommend to anyone (wow its a whole human person that's really cool). Once again intimacy comes into it, being emotionally close and mentally close to another human is a wonderful thing. With this comes support and stability, valuing friends for more than a good time is something I think gives a person great depth and value in themselves. Superficiality is not a nice aspect in a person and something I see in none of my friends and hope I never do. Seeing and being only a surface is a very fragile and hollow way to go about things, obviously some people find it hard to share but in that case you just need to find the right people.
Peng Juice.
I think my photography is pretty dam good, quite often I'll take a picture, edit it and just be proud that I made that by myself. I think that my self belief can go a little too far, it has leaked into my critical view of other work. I think I have great taste in lots of things, usually drawn from lots of different aspects of the world around me bot natural and man made stimulus. This comes into play (not exclusively) when I view other peoples work, I believe I know whats good and whats bad and will voice my opinions (very often not publicly in any sense). I believe the voicing of these opinions to be flawed in some aspects mainly from the view of people feelings, I am an advocate of not being a dick to people and I think I should keep this mentality whilst viewing people's work. Having said that I still believe in my opinions and won't change them, having opinions is very important they create an individual with non-woolly thoughts (get it, because sheep just follow the crowd, hehe) and individuality is beautiful. So I guess the moral is, you should have a critical view and personal opinions but don't be a dick about it. (yeah that's massively prolific...great)
Chantry.
I really feel like intimacy is going to be a very large part of my creations and already is in some superficial aspects. I believe my work to be without an artistic direction thus far, I haven't created a project because of a feeling or because I wanted to say something. I have taken pictures for a few reasons, either it was for school, if I had my camera with me when something happened to be interesting in my vicinity or someone wanted their picture taken. This to me is not totally depressing because I appreciate that I will create things from personal stimulus in the future, I think for the time being I will have to stick to learning and shooting for aesthetic purposes.
Calum.
My interpretation of intimacy is half explained in the film Cashback (Sean Ellis, 2006), that is the more sexual side of intimacy. There are many aspects of it and the biggest one for me is about experiences and closeness to other human beings, knowing someone because of the little quirks in their speech or movement is intimacy and that is beautiful. Appreciation of other human beings is something I value above many other things.
I could very easily write about how I'm worried that I won't 'pull this off' but I think that might just be testing fate and I'll actually end up not doing it. I think one of the main points of this is to show to myself that I can do something sustained that takes commitment, energy and effort. Those are some actions I rarely put into things outside of 'fast gratification' activities, and even those activities don't need much anyway! So by committing to something like this I might be able to train myself to understand the importance of putting effort into a long term project that isn't going to give me gratification until its over.
The idea for this came from my playing around with an old 7-200mm lens at the same time i was studying Uta-Barth and my photography teacher put two and two together and made windows (i think that's how the joke goes). I think if I were to create a project around this it would experiment with the intimacy of showers and the items a person keeps there and what that tells us about them.
window sills,
Summer, for me begins in a few weeks and usually consists of nothing more than lounging around and wasting time until school starts again. I usually begin to get bored of this a couple of weeks in and I think I've worked out why: I have nothing to do, no goals no productivity. Pinpointing the source of the problem is the easy part, sorting it out is the trouble. This is more of an experiment than anything (I'm only saying that so if I don't follow through I wont feel so bad). The plan is to take a picture every day and put them up here so people can follow what I'm up to but more importantly so I have something to keep me from the deep pit of boredom.
Tom.
So here we go, I'm not gonna be all pompous and call it a journey but I hope I learn something due to all of this.