"objects in mirror are closer than they appear"

bonfire

we burnt my brother's old guitar at a bonfire this weekend. i thought this was a cool picture sooo....

questions

1] what is the nature of your photographic study? simply to capture the nothingness that i do in my spare time and how much fun it is.

2] what was your initial source of interest in this line of inquiry? all the time i hear my classmates (and myself at times) complain about living in this area. when i take time to think about it i find myself realizing that it really is not as bad as most young people make it out to be. one thing that i do a lot is just drive around with my friends and i wanted that to be the main focus of my project. i wanted to find a way to capture some of those good times as sort of a reminder to myself.

3] what is the point/purpose? just to remind me and my fellow peers that living in the jamestown area isn't as bed as we all make it out to be.

4] were there any specific people or circumstances from which you found inspiration or guidance? the main one would have to be my friend karla. she was the one i was with most of the time (and the driver in all of our crazy adventures). she would be working on her own photo projects at the same time and it was fun to be able to be "creative" together i guess you could say.

5] how did the visiting artist guide your project? how did it change or evolve from beginning to end? Cathy really helped me to fine tune my project and helped me decide exactly what direction i wanted to go with my entire project.

6] what have you learned? how has your opinion/belief/outlook changed? i've come to realize how much i am going to miss this place when it is time for me to leave but now i also have some great memories and the pictures to prove it.

7] what happens next? i think that i will keep my project going on my own. at times i find myself thinking "oh that would make a great picture". they are fun to look back at and i think when i'm older it will be fun to see them.

untitled[for now]

what can i say...haha
goodtimes.

why is jesus in falconer?

i re-shot the picture of the jesus billboard in panama and i found some other "jesus related" shots and put them together to get the pic above.

[blue]eyes

so this picture has nothing to do with my vanguard project...i just really <3 it. it's pretty freakin' cool =]

time of our lives

i took this picture at a local bridal shop while shopping for prom dresses with my friend karla. prom is a huge event all around the country and here is no exception. with the date looming up ahead everyone [including myself] is feeling the anticipation and excitement so i wanted to capture it somehow.

rock n' roll

this is a picture of my brother josh playing guitar hero at our local walmart. a lot of the time he and his friends will just go hang out here or at the mall when they are board just to play this game [there is a serious lack of things to do in this town]. all of the little boys there were amazed at his skill of playing the easy level :]

no pictures please

haha i love this picture. it's of me and my brother josh in his car on our way to lunch with some friends. i was just goofing around with the camera and got some funny shots and i combined two of them to get this.

Only in Jamestown

I was stopped at a stop light in Jamestown when I saw a beat up couch cushion lying in the road near all of the factories. I laughed and took a picture because only in good old Jamestown are you going to see something like that. As I got up the road a little further their was another cushion, it was like going on a scavenger hunt.

"If irony was made out of strawberries...

...then we'd be drinking a lot of smoothies." I found this image comical yet sad at the same time. The Chautauqua Belle has been around forever and it's kind of depressing that a part of this areas history is sitting in a pile of snow with a FOR SALE sign on it.

Welcome to Panama!

I love this sign, I laugh every time I see it. While I was taking the photo their were some people standing just out of view looking at me like I was a physco and it make me feel like a dork...ahh well. It says a lot about this area I think and how much religion is a part of most people's lives. I want to try and get a picture of it during the day instead of at dusk because I liked the idea of it so much but wasn't pleased with the quality of the photo.

One Day in Barcelona...

I took these pictures at Barcelona Bay in Westfield, NY. It was so beautiful there. The sky was really blue with big fluffy clouds and it contrasted nicely against the icy Lake Erie.
[Picture Top] A great view of the sky and I loved the way the land curved into the lake. It is the opposite of a typical beach scene but when I look at it I can also picture it in the summer
[Picture Below] Karla working on her own photo assignment. We do this a lot. =]

Giant Frosted Mini Wheat

Although this photograph is kind of a stretch from my original proposal, In a way it still goes along with it. The reason being that one of my favorite parts about living in this area is the scenery. One day while driving around with my friend we saw a bunch of snow-covered bails of hay in a field. I got the biggest laugh out of it because I though they resembled frosted mini wheats (which also happens to be one of my favorite kinds of cereal) so I took a picture.

Self Portrait

This is a self portrait I took while driving around with one of my friends. It is one of my favorite pictures that I have ever developed and I choose to showcase it because I thought it fit in well with my proposal. I look happy and the viewer can tell that I'm in a car. So I'm not really doing anything in particular but I'm still having a good time. That's what we have to do around here, make something fun out of nothing. Sometimes it is difficult to do.

Girl Culture by Lauren Greenfield

Out of the four series that we had to view the one that had the greatest impact on me was the Girl Culture/Thin series by Lauren Greenfield.
1] The series was about the life of girl and what they experience daily and the pressures they are faced with daily.
2] The series kind of evolved. Greenfield said that she had always taken photos of girl culture, at first unintentionally but then intentionally. Girl culture is about exactly what it sounds like, the life of girls. The private and the public, being popular and being an outcast, the daily pressures of being a girl.
3] Journalistic I think. It's more of a documentary than anything.
4] No, the pictures are brutally honest but they are not disturbing.
5] For the most part Greenfield did a good job capturing "girl culture" but I think she could have focused more on more than the pressure to be beautiful, thin, and popular because their is more to being a girl than that.
6] Yes and no. Everyone is self-conscious at times including myself but for the most part I don't obsess about the things that Greenfield's photographs have captured. I can relate but only to a point.

My Proposal...

My proposal for the Vanguard project is to capture a part of my life that means a lot to me, meaning my friends. I want to base my project on all of the things we do together to have fun, which their is not a lot to choose from, but how we manage to have fun anyways. I want to do this because that is what my life at this point in time revolves around, my friends. Growing up in a smaller town we have fun doing the simpler and cheep things and I believe that it will be fun and memorable to find a way to capture that. To this I will take photos of my friends in school and in our free time using a black and white 35mm camera.

welcome

hi =]