I then proceeded to update my *matching* cover photo and twitter background with one gorgeous black and white picture that encompasses everything I want for my own black and white prints in this photo class I'm taking: grayscale, darks, lights, composition, style. Blake Lively. Men in wetsuits.
Here it is so that you don't have to go to my profile on your laptop wherever you are to see it and look like you're stalking me. In case you don't already do.
This photo class is seriously affecting me, and I think it has to do with the chemicals soaking my brain each day more than anything I've actually learned. Leaving the photo lab last night, I found myself critiquing the outdoor darkness and its perfection. That grayscale! The darks, the lights! That tonality! Look how the edges are burned just so! I find myself looking at real life and seeing it as millions of photos, my surroundings a series of negatives my head develops in seconds. Why am I doing that? Isn't the purpose of photography to take a negative and develop it to appear as close to reality as possible?
And here I am doing the opposite, just wanting my reality to freeze so I can take it with me in all its sharp and tonal perfection. I think maybe I'm starting to realize the disparity between my prints and good prints. Good prints mimic this perfection of reality. My prints just don't capture it.
Yet, that is. Will they by the end of the semester? Yes. If it takes 15 more 15-hour sessions in the darkroom. Yes.
It's the reality of that photo up there that I crave. It's like magic. And I'm not giving up until I get it.
It's the reality of that photo up there that I crave. It's like magic. And I'm not giving up until I get it.
