Focusing on Photography

In recent months my camera has been predominantly stuck in the 🎥video setting, because I've been trying to catch everything in vlog form (and I don't have a decent cell phone). But while attempting (and failing) to do Vlogmas this December, I realized that I don't like having to experience life through video, looking for things to record and then having to put it all together and make it entertaining.

So for 2017 I'm turning my focus on photography. Learning new skills, working on it as an art, practicing. I'm already aware that I'm a lot more energized by capturing things as photographs than in video. I know that's because of my ongoing design education, and my passion for art and aesthetics. For me, video is more connected to performance, which I am also passionate about. I just think I've been trying to use video too much for what I want to be doing with photography.

I won't be giving up video by any means. I'm just refocusing on what I want to be working on, how I want to document my life, and restricting what I use video for a little.

So wish me luck as I figure out Lightroom!

Besides all these very reasonable, logical thoughts, what really triggered this was stumbling onto Savana Ogburn's work - via an article she did in Rookie Magazine - and just being incredibly inspired. Her art is so dreamy and sweet and crisp and full of energy. She's such a professional and she's only 19! When I started university, I hadn't even come close to figuring out what I'm passionate about - and I'm still far away from it.

All images belong to Savana Ogburn, go check out her site!

Traces of A Day Lived

Wow. It's been a while. (I've been keeping a little more up to date over on my youtube channel, if you'd like to check that out) I don't even remember what my last blog post was about.

But THIS one's about photography!

I'm in my 4th year of university now (how did this happen), and this semester I'm taking a photography class. It's not quite all I had wished and hoped for, but it involves a lot of darkroom stuff, and the fact that it's such a basic class gives me the room to be creative and artistic.

Our most recent assignment was to shoot a "Day in the Life" style Photo story, which was actually a lot of fun. I love taking a lot of pictures chronicling what I do, but I think I get discouraged when I take the mindset of having to do it indefinitely, so having the set time frame of a single day was a nice limit, and it motivated me to get as much out of that time as possible.

I figured it would be rather nice to transpose that story from my presentation to a blog post. So here it is! I won't give too much description of the images, because my intention was to make the images speak for themselves as much as possible, as I believe good photographs should.

10:06 - Breakfast

10:46 - Heading Out

10:50 - Bus Stop

10:53 - View on the Bus

11:08 - OPUS (a total waste of time)

12:56 - Working at Home

1:13 - Walking through my Neighborhood

1:25 - View on the Bus, II

3:40 - My very neat drafting table

4:16 - Venue for "Shop Talk" (not a fisheye lens)

4:17 - Theatre SKAM sign

7:29 - Dinner Break

7:50 - Poutine 66

8:46 - Our director, Chelsea, in the trap

The Struggle is Real

I've been realizing slowly, and it's been formulating in my mind tonight, that if I want to make a fresh start and make my life more meaningful and full, I'm going to have to try harder.

Which, when I put it like that, seems super obvious. And it is. And I've known it for a while.

Scene: Amelia is presented with a facebook post by someone she's heard of, but doesn't actually know. They're asking for somebody to do something that Amelia could do. Amelia lies there and groans.

The thing is, I knew right away that I could do it. I have the abilities, I'll have the time. I knew it would be a nice thing to do, and I'm aware that I should do more things. But what if I just... didn't? That would be much easier.

I have this problem a lot. It's why I procrastinate so much, to an extent where it often could actually be really damaging, in particular to myself. But why do things, when you can just... not do things?

As I gear up for my third year of University, I feel very much in need of a fresh start. We're moving our of this apartment that I don't feel comfortable in any more, I'm leaving my stress with my ex-best-friend behind (although she'll still be around, and I'm going to have to work around that, too), I have a lovely boyfriend who is really good for me, and student loans should come in in September. But it's not going to work if I don't put the effort in.

I need to do more things, especially the kind of things that get me engaged and involved in this community of mine that I never quite feel a part of. I need to keep doing technical theatre things, even though I feel like I can't get the hang of it.

So I groaned and grumbled some more ("This person doesn't even know me", "It's not paid and I need to spend my time making money because I'm broke", "What are you doing with your life, anyway?") and I commented. Yes, hello, you don't know me, but I can do the thing.

And here we are. I'm practically signed up to spend 3 weeks pushing buttons and sliders on a board for a show I know nothing about. And that's a good thing.

I've been pushing myself to do a lot of things I don't really want to do these days. I kind of picture myself standing behind myself, listlessly shoving my annoyed and unenthusiastic body forward, going "just do it. You need to do it. Come on, get it done. Then it's done."

At least with the sound board, I can tell myself that I'll enjoy it once I'm doing it.

This weird and vague post is brought to you by Spotify, except not at all.