Last week I entered a photo contest because the theme of the contest was TREES and not only are trees what I photograph, but the truth is that I could probably live happily ever after photographing nothing but trees. Recall, long time readers (Mitzy), the blog post in which I relayed a story about declaring my "relationship" with a certain little tree grouping because I had photographed it before. Yeah. Sometimes when I gaze off into the distance and wonder what kind of old person I am going to be one day the answer is as clear as can be. I am going to be the strange kind of old person. Right now I can see myself dressed in some kind of long flowing goth black fairy costume (as long as I have on my beloved hiking boots) conversing with the trees because I have "relationships" with the trees.
Anyways, back to trees. Since I had to edit my work down to a dozen or so images, I did an initial edit on the computer and then printed out contact sheets to work from. I cut up the contact sheets in order to be able to gaze upon a single image at a time and then chose from there. The minimum entry for this contest was 5 images, so I did choose 5, but then I decided to sequence them, as if for a book, since I have books on the brain after my book oriented MFA experience and ended up with a series of 12 and I ended up submitting all 12 to the contest. Then I taped together the tiny little contact sheet images and I really like my new book, but this is what I am thinking. I'm thinking that instead of making a boring run of the mill book I might do something completely different, like print the images on transparencies, back them with gold leaf, scan them and print them on either super smooth and bright paper or super soft and fibrous paper (will probably do a test run of both) and make them into an accordion style book because I want the viewer to be able to pull the whole thing out at once as if they're walking through the woods saying HELLO to the trees that they have relationships with (like me!) as they head down the path.
Also, I'm having some ideas about how to differently present the thesis work I did. I think that work would be really interesting if I went in a totally non book way to present it. If I do rework that book, I will be sure to make a little video and let you guys see it. I think the crux of that work has to do with how we see a landscape. I presented sweeping vistas in triptychs mixed with single black and white images for my thesis book, but I want to present the work in way in which it is more obvious that the multi paneled landscapes are not just a vehicle of convenience but imitating the way a viewer would view a landscape by focusing on different aspects from one side to the other.
When people tease me about staying in the park all morning I always joke back that I try to get my 10,000 steps in before 10AM. Today... every time I headed back towards the parking lot a new and exciting person showed up and I turned around and did another loop with them and I actually walked an all time high of 13,670 steps (5.9 miles) before 11:15AM. My feet were pretty tired by the time I got back to the house and also I was hungrier than usual.
I carried my camera, but was too tired to carry the tripod and it was strangely dark this morning after a day of rain, so I ended up not taking any photos despite the very cool light. Then this afternoon I realized that I just might feel a tad bit under the weather. As soon as I publish this post I'm heading for bed, where I will cross my fingers and take my temperature and hopefully not be sick because I really do not want to be sick. I have plenty of time, just not time to be sick.
I'm a bit disappointed because in my calendar I had Josh's summer camp reunion down for tomorrow and if I was going all the way into the city I was going to take us to my favorite Ethiopian restaurant afterwards and then there was an email from Josh's camp which said the reunion is in December, so no Ethiopian food for me. I'm bummed.
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