Graduation

I'm not as scared of graduating as I was before. I think I'll land on my own two feet. As my wise grandfather - aka "Grandmaster Potentate" (no, he's not a Freemason), put it, "People do it all the time. You'll be ok." In other words, a lot of people get jobs and survive with no problem, so I shouldn't worry.
But now I am bothered by something else. What am I going to photograph? The other night I was driving to a friends house and I felt that I had used up all this area had to offer me. I don't feel stimulated. I feel like a robot who goes to work and school.
For our final project, "Finality" I feel that nothing is ever final or finished. Things always continue in one way or another. For instance if you get your tarot cards read, the death card isn't a bad card to receive. It actually means a new beginning.
A new beginning is how I feel right now. I just feel like I have photographer's block. My mind is in a fog.

It was if all of mankind was leading up to this moment

In tonights class during critique, the only person not wearing spectacles was the photographer.

Street Scenes from Suchitoto, El Salvador

Here are some pictures I am thinking of including in my love project for photojournalism class.

Squatters

Suchitoto is an oasis compared to a lot of places in El Salvador. The town is gorgeous. However, you don't have to travel far to see poverty. Here are a few pictures of one of the families that squats in what used to be a jail. They live with no roof over their heads. The mother grows corn that she sells to people who make tortillas. It's the only income she has to support her two sons, Jefferson and Jonathan.

Suchitoto Kids

On Tues. March 13, 6th graders from Escuela Eugenia Cristina Bonilla “La Escuelita” came to the Centro Arte para la Paz to pay a visit. We made brief conversation with them and asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Most answered the same thing: doctor or secretary. A few didn't know what they wanted to be. When we asked them if they wanted to be photographers or journalists, they didn't answer.















Then we gave them our cameras, and they brightened up.

Colin, you would have liked El Salvador

Tecate is everywhere.







Its $.086 for a six pack of cans or $0.97 for the bottles.

i'm back

el salvador was amazing. i swam in the pacific, enjoyed 90 degree weather, ate the freshest fruit, and met the friendliest people. i've never felt so healthy in my life (except for the mild digestive holocaust).
sorry i didn't post pictures on my blog. i had a weird internet connection when i did have it. i also have an incredible amount of photos to go through. but you'll see them soon.
but this is the beach we went to on sunday, march 11.

Sorry for lack of posts and pictures

We've been super super busy here. Plus I haven't had an internet connection I could get to on a regular basis. Plus when I have had it, it is ridiculously bad.

San Salvador

They say the sense of smell brings back memories more than any other sense. Before coming to DC I lived in Hawaii until the age of 7. Since moving away twenty years ago I haven't smelled burnt sugar cane or seen the fields. As we were coming to San Salvador from the airport we saw field after field burnt for harvesting the cane. The smell I immediately knew and memories from my childhood were brought back.
Today we are going to the El Zonte beach. I've seen the Pacific, though haven't swam in it since I left Hawaii. In a way, coming to El Salvador is like a homecoming for me. I've always wanted to go back to Hawaii with its warm climate, amazingly friendly people, and happiness everywhere. It seems like I found it here.
Its the dry season here, so it isn't as green as I was expecting it. When we landed I remarked to Muriel that El Salvador reminds me of Southern California.
It hasn't hit me yet that we are in a different country. The only thing that seems different is the language. The landscape and the commercialism. We went to one of the malls here and a lot of the signs were in English.When we went out to eat last night, the band was playing rock music (Pink Floyd!!!) in English, and the crowd was singing along. I'm sure once we get to Suchitoto I'll feel different.
Btw, the food here kicks butt. Very cheap compared to the US. Last night I ate fish covered with crushed macamias and a sweet curry sauce on top. With it I had two margaritas, coffee and desert. Including tip, my total was $27. This morning I had eggs over easy served on a tortilla and covered with salsa. The salsa had the ripest red tomatos and was made with chicken broth. Breakfast came with a side of beans, coffee and fake oj. Total was prolly around $4.50.
I'll be posting pictures soon, once I go through them. I'll also post some audio as well.

4 Posts in 1 day! The Gods must be crazy.

So a lot of my female friends will look at pictures of themselves and immediately deem themselves fat. Or they will see a specific body part and think it is much bigger than it really is (most of the times its the belly). Well there is a reason for this, and it isn't because they are fat, it has something to do with photography itself.
This is a great article describing why we never look as good in pictures as we do in real life.
(Tip: don't expect to look good using a wide angle lens or a point and shoot camera).

El Salvador Part Uno

So for those of you who don't know, this Saturday I am leaving with my documentary class for El Salvador. We'll be gone for a week. We're staying in this little town called Suchitoto.
For our class assignment this week we were supposed to take a picture of what we thought El Salvador looked like. I plan on waking up early tomorrow to photograph again. Here is my first attempt in Mt. Not-so-Pleasant.

Braddock Rd Metro.

A nickel in the tracks. Is this supposed to pay someone's fare? Is metro like the River Styx?

Photography in the Art World

So for my photo-journalism class we got this article "A Quarter Century of Photography" by Vicki Goldberg. To sum it up very quickly it is about photography in the art world and everywhere else. The state of photography you might say. I feel this is something we covered in Andy Grundberg's class, "The Photo in Contemporary Art." Not to insult Andy, but I had a very hard time staying awake in that class when Mike Corcoran wasn't there.
I know I go to an art school and I should probably know a few things about fine art photo, but to be honest with you, I could care less. I used to be into it, but once something becomes an assignment and you wind up over analyzing it, you get bored with it.
Not only that, but for the most part I don't really study other photographers. There are a couple that I really admire, like Irving Penn for example. His photographs don't just look pretty, they effect something within you that you didn't know existed. Every time I view his work, it has a different effect on me. It is like I am seeing something new. I can't explain it. All I can say is that I collect his books and his photographs from Vogue. If I had serious cash, instead of buying a Mercedes, I'd buy one of his photos. Then I would take a couple days off of work just to stare at the photo. I remember reading this article on him in Vogue a few years back. He said that he refused to use the word shoot or shooting when it comes to photography, because those words were harsh. For him photography is a love affair. I feel the same way.
Like I mentioned before I honestly could care less about the art world. Creators interest me, but the art world in general doesn't. If I want attitude and trends, I look at fashion. To me they are basically the same thing, except fashion changes quicker and I can wear it (though affording it I can't do).
I really feel that the rest of the semester should be focused on photographing. Building up or solidifying our portfolio. Working on slideshows or web sites, not just listening to lecturers but doing what they talk about. I want to learn how to use the software and the tools were given or supposed to buy. That is what I am paying for in my education. This is photo-journalism class. Discussing on what photography is, the state of it, or what we feel about our photography, yadda yadda yadda is what we have been doing for the past two years. We have 2 months left of school, and those two months are almost gone.

Meat

For the most part I don't eat meat. I eat fish and eggs. But meat just kinda feels yucky. I don't keep it in my fridge, because to me it feels weird having flesh in my fridge, especially since so many things tend to outlive their shelf life in that thing anyways. I eat meat when I am at someone's house, or when the situation is unavoidable. I make other exceptions too, like Five Guys. Five Guys could be made of seal pup corpses and I would still eat it. Pollo Campero is pretty good too, though I think when I get back from El Salvador my opinion of it will change. Of course Bacon is an exception. I know Muslims and hardcore veggies who eat bacon. It is like the one food you don't consider meat or pork. It's the crack or krispy kreme of meat, no one can give it up.
Where did my aversion to meat start? Many moons ago when I worked at the juice bar at Fresh Fields (now Whole Foods) I would have to work in Prepared Foods. Deli Meats were kept in Prepared Foods. So when someone wanted their Prosciutto sliced extra thin, I was the one who did it. Somewhere along the lines of me cutting cold meat that was dripping in juices I realized I was slicing flesh and that flesh came from a living creature. That living creature ate, breathed, drank and pooed like we all do. It felt weird. Very weird. Not unethical like I was murdering something, just weird. I didn't like cutting the meat anymore.
A couple years later I went veggie (though I did make the exception for Five Guys). Not having that meat sitting in your stomach for a couple hours while your stomach figured out what to do with it felt good. A year after going veggie and gaining 15 pounds, I began to eat meat a little bit more. Well, about the same as I do now. I lost the 15 pounds and then put it back on last semester. I think stress has more to do with weight gain than veggies.





Normally the smell of cooking flesh doesn't bother me. Tonight however, it has. During class someone was eating fakon (fake bacon) somewhere in the building. It reaked. The halways stank of bacon, though it wasn't bacon.
Right now my downstair neighbor is cooking bacon, and the smell is permeating my apartment. For some reason I am finding it gross. It is making me crave broccoli.
The day of our graduation this dude I know is having a bacon fest. When I heard about it I was gung ho. Who doesn't like bacon after all? Especially when it is dripping with maple syrup (don't knock it until you try it y'all). Now however, I think I might pass on the festivities.
And yes, this is Kevin Bacon as a pig.