My Life in Film

Photography has been taking all of my free time. I got the first assignment done and now I'm buried in work for our second assignment. The bulk of the assignment is a series of self portraits that show who we are and what's important to us.

I started with my first few photo's in my studio. Being a binder is a large part of who I am and I hadn't had a chance to take any photo's of my birthday present to myself. My lovely finishing press!
The second photo is the beginnings of a book. My jar of tools, a weight, my 3 most used tools on the book block, some thread, 2 curved needles, a block of bee's wax, and my favorite center finding ruler- all on my cutting board.

Hopefully one of these days I'll be able to bind the book in the second photo. I'll be teaching Tuesday at our monthly bookarts meeting. I'll be teaching a small double needle coptic like Rhonda at My Handbound Books posted about last week, which is funny because we planned the meeting two months ago. I've been using her photo's to try to explain to some of our newer members what we are going to be doing. I'm excited about the meeting as it will allow me some time to bind. I've got my first "midterm" Friday as well as the self portrait assignment due so maybe next weekend I'll have some time to spend in the studio without my camera and with my tools in my hand....

Photography not made simple

As those of you who are close to me know and the rest of you may have figured out I'm a perfectionist. A total perfectionist- which is why I was so happy when I got my first digital camera! No more shooting and developing an entire roll to find out you hate every photo.
I'm taking photo 1 this term to reacquaint myself with how to use my camera. To relearn what an fstop, shutter speed controls, etc and in general to become a better photographer. We got our first assignment last week and so far I think I've shot around 100 photo's and I have 1 I like- the picture included in this post. My teacher assigns projects in 24 images so that students who are shooting film cameras fill an entire roll for one assignment. If I only had 1 roll to work with I would go crazy!
It's hard to see in the itty bitty thumbnail here but the picture rocks! With the light coming in from behind you can see the outline of the back leaf on the leaf wrapping around.

I've been burried in homework so far this term, spending hours shooting photographs and relearning how to name organic molecules. I've been wanting to get into the studio and get some binding done but it seems that something else always seems to come up. I've got a custom order that needs to be finished this weekend so it's on the front burner tomorrow morning while the fog burns off so I can go shoot more pictures to finish this first assignment tomorrow. In the last week I also became the proud owner of an old leather couch that I'm going to strip down for the leather as it's no good as a couch anymore. It's a dark green leather that has great wear and age marks on it. When I get it done and some pieces to lay out I'll try to show you- it's gonna add some great depth to the journals.
For now I'm off to bed while visons of spaghetti monsters dance in my head.