Archive | May, 2010

I had toned all of my silver prints with selenium.  This brings out the blacks and whites and makes them pop as well as extending the grey-scale throughout the image.  Unfortunately something happened and I eneded up having fingerprints all over them. Disaster.  Calamity.  I was all set to re-print 10 pieces in one week, a job that has taken me all term to accomplish.  Then an excellent fellow photographer told me to take a small step first.  Bathe the images in water for 5 minutes and them rub off the prints with my fingers.  She’s an ace that one.  Worth emulating if only for her humility and modesty.

Success!  Now all I have to do is spot my images, matte them and I’m done.  My digital work is finished as well.

There is bad news, however.  A fellow student’s family member has died in America and he has to leave to attend the funeral.  This is a big blow to our small community and it is more of a shock coming as it does so close to the end of the term.  He’s an excellent sort–a poet–young, full of piss and vinegar and a devotee of Jean-Paul Belmondo…that he knows French New Wave cinema at his age is a credit to him.  I wish him god-speed, safe travels.  May he write dangerous poetry forever.  Write when you get a chance Johnny.  I’ll keep an eye for your name in the press.

More to come…

JDCM

Tomorrow begins the final push to the end of the term.  I was thinking today on the beach how this is similar to a birth.  The contractions have been slowly increasing as the weeks have passed and now, as the end nears, we are all pushing more to get that baby out.  Alright, I have no idea what birth is like, after all I was very little at the time, but the pressure is on.  I have been working in the Digilab at night, cranking out the prints and in the darkroom exposing test strip after test strip and getting that portfolio finished.  This week I begin the selenium toning process and spotting.  Next week I matte the 22 pieces I will have for both courses.  Then the show…If all goes well I will have what I need to finish up this BA and move along onto something new for the summer and fall of 2010.

Speaking of that I am looking into an MA program in art history.  I am avoiding MFAs.   SUNY Purchase and SUNY Albany both have what I need and combined with two more terms at the Aegean Center the ticket I will end up holding would be First Class, round-trip.  My goal is set and it is only a matter of walking the walk, doing the footwork, to make it happen.  My goal is to apply to some programs, as well as the Aegean Center for spring and fall of 2011.  The spring would be another term here on Paros but the fall would be split between Italy and Greece.  The fall work is primarily art history so I could transfer massive credits towards the 30 I need for my MA.   This could be a great thing but so far it is still on the drawing board.  It seems as if I am on track for the big goal…my Ph.D by 50.  Stranger things have happened in my life.

As this is a personal blog as well as photographic I might as well mention that my bisexual tendencies have been rising to the surface.  Odd, since I haven’t even thought of men in many years that way.  Have I been so consumed with work at home and abroad that I had forgotten?  Oh well…old memories, some quite fond, steal into my thinking.  Maybe it’s the light here in Greece.  I had a long talk with my friend K in Athens about it and she and I both agreed that labels of any sort can be damaging in many ways.  Let’s just say that I am open to many of life’s experiences.  You never know what door love (or sex, for that matter) will walk through.  Take it before it slips away.

More to come…

JDCM