Recent Photos

It's been interesting to look through over 60 posts on my blog and see my photography get better and better over the years. Here are a few photos from last week. I was actually taking two of them from a moving car so that was challenging.

Visual Storytelling: Final Project

Untitled Film About Anxiety

This is a collaborative project between myself and my classmate and friend, Rosie Dyer. We had originally thought of doing animation of a traditional Cheyenne story, however, we soon figured out it was not going to be possible in our time frame. So we thought of the elements that intrigued us by the story and the idea of a film about anxiety was born. We filmed over two three hour class periods and worked collaboratively in the editing. We accomplished this through Skype screen share as I have the editing software and Rosie was able to see the editing I was doing and we worked out pacing and problems. I created all the strange sounds in the film.

Overall it was a great process and I felt Rosie and I worked together really well. The only issue we had was that we couldn't come up with a title for the film so it doesn't have one. I usually refer to it as "Roy" because that is the name of the bowling ball featured in the film...the name Roy is carved on the actual bowling ball.

Similar to our midterm project we utilized two buildings on campus as our setting and asked our friend Kim Tune to act again as well as adding three other women. A huge thanks to Betsy, Kim, Renee, and Alecia for sharing their personal stories and anxieties. It wouldn't have been possible without their honesty.

Untitled Film About Anxiety

Visual Storytelling: Midterm Film Project

Film: Feedback Loop

Assignment Parameters:

1. Work in a groups of 4.

2. Come up with a premise for the film and create a storyboard.

3. One three hour class to film the ENTIRE story on campus.

4. All group members each have a role in filming.

5. All group members have access to all the footage shot.

6. Each group member will create THEIR OWN version of the story: editing, pacing, sound effects, music, color, etc.

7. No dialogue. Story must be told through visuals 

My Version is called Feedback Loop:

Here's the cast poster I made:

Color Photography: Final Project

Self-Portrait

Blood Quantum

This photography series is a continuation of my "kill the man. save the Indian." series I posted about last September. It explores further the ideas and feelings behind the use of blood quantum to establish tribal identity. Native Americans/Alaska Natives are the only groups of people on the planet that utilize this archaic means of determining ethnic and racial identity. Only dogs and livestock are treated this way. 

Blood quantum was created during the mid-late 19th century when US scientists were heavily into eugenics and finding physical ways to measure race through physical means. We since have found out that race is a social construct, there is NO genetic basis. Blood quantum is a tool of genocide and if our tribal governments don't start looking at alternative, and dare I say it, more traditional and ethical ways of determining membership, we will extinct ourselves...do the math. 

I would like to revisit this idea and reshoot it at some point. I received excellent critique and feedback from my class. 

My main goal was to create a

 psychological and emotional environment that visually represented my struggles with my mixed ethnic/racial identity.

Thanks to Rebecca Cheney for her technical assistance. 

This images were taken at two recent clear cuts near Scappoose and Cornelius, Oregon 

off Rocky Point Rd. 

Color Photography: Assignment 4

Narrative

In this assignment our challenge was to create a narrative(s) by the conceptual framing of our photography. I chose to pair up three night photos with one photo from the daytime. In the collage below you can see the night shots on top and its corresponding photo below. The night shots were very difficult and challenging. I got really lucky with the top let shot of the farm across the street from my house. The picture of the cow below is the farm during the day. I also tried using my nephew in one of the photos to play with the uncanny. In a reading assignment they talked about the successful use of children in awkward or unusual poses or environments to add a sense of the uncanny. My nephew is very introspective and is the perfect model for this kind of shot. I think it was successful. 

(Click on image to see larger.)

The lower middle shot is from my photography adventure in the woods where I found all the garbage and then the beautiful wetland. 

A few more narrative photos

My nephew in the kitchen. 

My nephew laying on the counter. 

Night Shots: from the same evening

Longview, Washington from the Rainer hill. 

Longview, Washington from Rainer Hill 

Color Photography: Color as a Psychological Tool

Assignment #3

My friend Michelle let me use her mannequin head and a bright, pink wig for my subject matter. Setting up an area to shoot and using dramatic lighting is a big departure for me. It was a good challenge and I'm happy with the results.

A collage of the six images I turned in and had critiqued.

I didn't turn in this image, but I really like the lighting. 

Winter Term: Color Photography

Second Assignment: 

Color Theory

Winter term I took a color photography class from the amazing photographer, Holly Andres. She is amazing at color correction as well as conceptual ideas in photography. The purpose of the class is to only use the manual settings of our cameras taking care to adjust ISO, aperture, and shutter speed as needed for conditions. We could also make slight color corrections in Photoshop, however, Holly wanted us to work on getting the correct exposure through the camera settings. We were also to pay attention to the conceptual idea of the photo and composition. For in class critique we printed out our best six photos on 81/2x11 luster photo paper in the school print lab. Our second assignment was to photograph objects or environments thinking so color theory. For instance, complementary colors, analogous colors, or monochromatic colors. This could be accomplished by either finding these color combinations in your environment or creating scenes or still life. Here are my six best photos that I turned in for critique. 

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We had one beautiful, sunny day and so I grabbed my camera and went out to the woods. There is an area out in Trenholm that we used to go mushroom picking in the fall and spring. Old growth timber so thick you had to put your lights on during the day. In the 1990s timber companies came in and stripped the land of all the beautiful trees and reacted the ecosystem. All I have left are my memories. 

To help the public feel better about the logging, Oregon has a law that timber companies must replant the trees after they strip the land. Unfortunately this still cause horrendous damage to the land and animals and they only plant douglas fir tress, which is not a normal ecosystem. Plus, have you ever been in a forest where all the trees are the same and you are older than any of them? Very disconcerting.

Driving out to Trenholm on Cannan Road there are several areas to stop at old logging roads. I randomly picked a logging road and pulled up to the steel gate blocking vehicle access. Grabbing my camera and tripod I noticed a beautiful wetland area to my right and then a bunch of garbage back in the woods to my left. 

First I walked over to the edge of the forest and found several objects that would indicate the presence of people at some point. There was a Coors Lite beer can stuck to one of the tree limbs, socks, mens underwear, chip bags, and other items thrown about in the mud and bushes. I also found a plastic shopping bag full of cut up fruit and vegetables thrown out on the forest floor. Like someone had thrown it down in haste. Was someone trying to bait a bear? You can see the photo of the bag in a later assignment called narrative.

All photos taken on manual settings with a Nikon D60 DSLR.

Image of wet, dirty mens underwear and a near by soggy, orange business card of a man from Rainer, OR. The image fits the criteria of the assignment because of it's use of complementary colors. 

   

A few feet away from the mens underwear were two grey mens socks with red bands sticking out of the mud. I photographed from an angle close to the ground to suggest a person laying on the ground and perhaps just waking up in this forest area after partying or maybe something else... 

      

We make a change in the image sequence to the wetland area 100 feet from all the trash. No garbage in sight. The sun just happened to be peaking through the clouds and created amazing color. An example of monochromatic color. I stopped taking photos as this site because of hearing something growling at me from the forest. 

                                                           

This image was taken of the moss that lives on the old apple tree that recently cracked in three pieces and fell over. See a previous post called Old Apple Tree for more info.

The Pool

I've been taking water aerobics class at the local swim pool, Eisenschmidt Pool, and I asked them if I could come in and take photos of random things. I thought it would challenging to take photos due to the lighting and all the different patterns, colors, and textures. Some photos are more successful than others.

Winter Class: Collections

Winter term I took a credit by arrangement art studio class with Wendy Red Star exploring the intersection of objects, collections, and cur ration. I had several different assignments to do over the course of the term and here are a few of my highlights. All the objects in these photos were taken at local thrift stores See the wording below the image for more information. 

All images were taken with my iPhone.

Manifest Destiny

These Avon perfume bottles were at a local thrift store and I just had to set up an area and photograph them. I actually cleared off a small table, placed a couple game boxes towards the back, and used a white table cloth draped over the boxes as a background. 

Colonial Gaze

Toys.

  

 Collections at Goodwill.

 Doll.

A collage of several of the photos of objects I took while on my trips to the thrift store. 

Connection to Place

The Old Apple Tree

My mother's family bought and has taken care of the two acres of land I currently live on since my grandparents purchased it in the early 1960s. When my mother was pregnant with me there were five generations of my family living on this land. My great-grandparents remodeled and for many years lived in the cottage I now call home. My parents living on another part of the property in the old farm house. When my great-grandparents called this cottage home they built a large patio in the front of the cottage for sitting and visiting. In the center of that patio they planted a nice apple tree that over the last 50 years had grown to give the large patio and front of the cottage a lovely span of shade from it's branches. 

This winter we had a snow storm that dumped half a foot of heavy, wet snow in a short amount of time and the old apple tree gave way that morning. As I sat reading I heard a loud crack and scraping on my roof. I knew immediately it was a tree and was worried about the many large fir trees that surround my house. I soon discovered it was the old apple tree that had slip right down the middle in three separate pieces. The cracking went down deep into it's root system. I had never seen anything like it. 

I had several little things like pottery and a few statues around the base of the tree. Only a few pieces of pottery were damaged. The tree missed falling on my cottage, my car, my lawn furniture, and my dad's trailer. It makes me so sad to see this great tree that holds so many memories, fall down. I went outside soon after it fell and took photos. 

Woodpecker enjoying the apple tree a few months before it fell over. 

 I was shocked to find that attached to the roots of the tree was a new tree growing! 

My Kuan Yin statue and the doll horse from my childhood. I really love this horse and spent many hours planning with it. My cousin Jake broke it's tail off when we were little and ever since rediscovering it in my parent's toy box I had to have it. 

A shot of Kuan Yin and the trunk pieces in the background. We will be using the wood for making things and the large truck piece will be moved to the side of the patio to be utilized as a sitting area. The tree will live on in other forms.