Monday, June 29, 2009

Wild Turkeys

These two wild turkeys chased me today in The Fens. There were three of them crossing the street as I passed by on my bicycle, so I decided to get off and take a closer look. Other people were fairly close to them so I thought I would be fine. I was walking my bicycle with me and I think it must have offended them cause these two guys charged right at me. I literally had to run across the street away from them. It's not often I get to run from wild turkeys, albino squirrels yes but not turkeys. They are lucky though I didn't have my bow and arrow with me, little jerks.


Saturday, June 27, 2009

Polaroids: You Are Not Forgotten

I just found out today that my great uncle Eddie past away. It had been expected soon since he was not recovering from his cancer treatments, but the cancer itself was not expected when he was diagnosed just less than two years ago. I didn't know Uncle Eddie extremely well, but I did know that he was a wonderful and simple person.

I only got to see uncle Eddie twice since his diagnosis, and this photograph below was from the first time. We had talked about drawing and photography for over an hour that day, and I took this photograph because I didn't want that great moment to be forgotten. Now with his passing, I don't want his existence to ever be forgotten.

These are three photographs of relatives who have within the last three years passed away. I show these photographs in the utmost respect to them as individuals and their wonderful existence. They will never be forgotten.

Uncle Eddie 2008


Grandma Walker 2008


Aunt Annie 2005

Friday, June 26, 2009

Older Photographs: A Decade of Me

Last fall I got to show my self-portrait work to my friend Stephen Jacobs Beginning Color Class at The New England School of Photography. He was giving out a self-portrait assignment and had several people come in and show their work and discuss the process and different ways/styles of executing self-portraits. I normally would just show my graduating portfolio from NESOP and talk about that process, but this time I wanted to do something a little different.

I gathered up every self-portrait that I had with me here in Boston and put them in a box. when I got to NESOP I had an hour to figure out the way I wanted to show them. I scattered them all about the tables and for the first time ever in my career I saw ten years worth of my self-portraits all at once. I had never really thought about doing that before, especially since the different groupings of self-portraits were done for different assignments or projects. Some of the ideas from one grouping may have led to ideas in other groupings but they never really crossed over in my mind.

I basically laid them out in chronological order and figured it would be best to describe the different stages of the work, and what each grouping meant for me at the time and what it means to me now. The work became more related to each other than I thought and it was quite amazing for me personally to see that progression, of not only maturing as an adult in the images, but also maturing within the work as a photographer.

These images here are selects from different parts of my life this past decade. Some were used in final portfolios for classes, some are out-takes, and some exist just by themselves. Please enjoy the progression as I do.

"Self-Portrait on Front Porch" 2000


"Dining Room Table" 2001


"Me as Bela Lugosi" 2000


"Dracula" 2005


"Sitting in Light" 2005


"Three Me's" 2005


"Creature Feature" 2005


"With Friends" 2005 (From the series Walk With Me)


"Untitled" 2006 (From the series Walk With Me)


"Recreating 1997" or at times "Most Content Hobo" 2006 (From the series Walk With Me)


"Untitled" 2006 (From the series Walk With Me)


"Self-Portrait At The Front Door" 2006 (From the series Was Home)


"At Filip's Mantle" 2007 Polaroid


"Changing: Two-Minute Exposure" 2008 (From a study of motion)


"Writing Filip An Email: One-Hour Exposure" 2008 (From a study of motion)


"Self-Portrait In Living Room" 2009 (From the series This Is Life)

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Older Photographs: Minnesota Fats

This Photograph was taken in 2005 at Sacco's Bowl Haven in Somerville, MA.

Four Photographs Taken in Dorchester

These four photographs were taken in Savin Hill, an area of Dorchester where I lived. Though commonly known as a rough town to live in, I was lucky to live on a hill where it was mostly family's and young adults.




Older Photographs: Abstract?

This is an image I took in 2006 that I sort of like. I also don't like explaining the image, though to some its easy to decipher, I still feel it is very abstract and can represent many other things. Take from it what you will.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Older Photographs: Super Best Friends

These are six of my earliest photographs from 2000-2003 when I first started taking photo classes. The top five are from when I was at Wright Community College and the bottom one is from when I did a term at Columbia College in Chicago. They are not by any means great photographs but they do represent a part of the process for the early stages of any photographer. Not only that, but personally they represent great memories, which may not be important to most except those involved, but those few people are enough for me to want to post them. Enjoy.






Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Polaroids: Process of the Process.

These are older Polaroids taken in 2005-2006 for self-portraits I did for my graduating portfolio at the New England School of Photography. At the time I was doing this series, it was always very difficult for me to talk about the work and to really know what I wanted to say with it. I showed this series a few time within the last 2 years, either in classes I was a teacher assistant for or as a guest speaker for classes a friend of mine was teaching. It was through those showings that I was finally able to really understand the work myself, and to figure out what it meant for me.

In the end, it was simply just about being comfortable in my own skin. Whether through metaphors or the everyday mundane situations I went through, these images show the start of someone who was slowly becoming a man. There are a lot of images to this series but I thought it would be interesting to show the Polaroids for them, since these are a major part of the photographic process, I thought they would juxtapose nicely to the idea of my process as a person.





Saturday, June 13, 2009

Polaroids: Chicago 2005-2008

Twenty Polaroids taken from three different visits to Chicago in 2005, 2007 and 2008. Each visit presented different kinds of monuments for me to shoot, but all relating to my own personal disconnection from my home town along with any traces I tried to dig up.

Though my recent project Learning Something New has been a new way through photography to reconnect with my past, these earlier Polaroids were an unconscious path that lead me to that idea. They lend to the concepts and visuals of my newer project, and have taught me many things along the way. Though I wouldn't quite group these Polaroids in that newer series, I would say that they represent my need for that nostalgia.