I have submitted my photos for printing. They'll be in my hands tomorrow and I'll begin framing immediately.
It took a lot of time and even more critical creative thinking to figure out which I wanted to remove from the big-print list and which I wanted to remove from the exhibit entirely. I ended up getting rid of only nine, while putting the rest that were "on the fence" onto the small-print list - they'll be either alternates or space-fillers, whichever is necessary.
There are eight 12x18s and two 16x20s which will be hanging on the walls but not in frames, and seven 11x14s that will be framed. My finances are much more secure than I thought, too. Originally, this was all going to cost me $240 or so - much more than I could or was willing to spend. Now, I just spent about 1/4 of that on prints, and instead of the initially projected cost of $78.00 for frames, I don't need to buy frames at all. In fact, I'm just reusing the frames from The Mind Dynamic.
This also helps with filling the gallery more, since the photos from TMD are still lying around (and still for sale, by the way...), so I can put them up too if need be. I've even got a bunch of spare 8x10 frames for the small-print list stuff that I may want to frame.
Saturday, I begin installation. I'll have pictures up here and on Facebook as well.
Speaking of Facebook - If you have one, and are in the Main Line area, check out the Facebook page I made for this event. Main Line First Fridays (March 5th) will be in full swing, and mine is one of several art openings that night. Shuttle buses will be going up and down Lancaster Avenue stopping at all the venues, and The Haverford School's Centennial Hall Gallery is one of them - and will be full of my photos.
The exhibit runs from the 1st to the 25th of March, but the official reception is Friday March 5th from 6 to 8 PM. I will be there to answer questions, take comments, make sales, and pretty much anything else (artist networking? great!). Additionally, I'll be taking commissions for photo-restorations and have some samples of my work available, so I'm going to be representing pretty much every side of my photographic adventures.
That's all for now - next post will likely be a final wrap-up of information, probably when I finish preparation completely. Maybe I'll even have some photos of the installation (in progress, finished exhibit, etc).
I'm pretty excited, to say the least. :)
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Anywhere Left to Turn - Pt.2
After six days off from school, I'm back and shifting exhibit prep to the top of my priority list.
As of now, there are 69 items lined up to be in the exhibit. I'm at a bit of a loss as to where to go next, though. See, printing and framing is a bigger issue than it ought to be (par for the course). Some photos, as I mentioned, will be printed at school - this is beneficial because it's free and those 20 or so pictures either don't need to be framed or can be put in frames I already have.
But the Costco prints, there's a challenge. See, it's really cheap and convenient and all, but there's still the fact that I'm printing (theoretically) 40 pictures there at 12x18. That works out to $120 for the printing alone. Then there's frames. The ones I use are basic and rather boring and happen to cost as much as each print, so there's another $120 roughly. That's a total cost of $240. $240 I'm not necessarily willing to spend. I'd much rather save wherever I can.
I have all the TMD stuff sitting in my room. 3 of them are going in the exhibit already, which leaves 12 frames I could salvage (read: reuse), saving me $36.
So that's $204.
Also, what's to say I really am going to print 40 pictures at 12x18? I've yet to actually scope the gallery itself, measuring the walls and all. For all I know, it's more efficient to have a bunch of unframed 8x10s or 8x12s pinned to the walls and maybe 20 12x18s. I know for a fact that 40 12x18 framed photos would take up much more space than I have! And given the duration of the exhibit...nah.
Notice the stream-of-consciousness writing tactic implemented above. See why long-term projects stress me out. Good. Moving on.
There you have it - the cartoony, colorful, and much-anticipated (I hope) poster advertising the exhibit. I just printed 20 of 'em and I'll start hanging them as soon as I can. Maybe a Facebook album of their locations will ensue. If you live in the Main Line area, be on the lookout for them. :P
In the near future (read: when I'm done with Astronomy homework), I'll be going through the "Costco Prints" folder and narrowing down my future 12x18 prints. With any luck, I'll cut it in half. That might be hard, but at least I'll still be showing the others at a later date. ;)
Total cost: $144
Each 12x18 print will be selling for $45. The others, of various sizes, will be of various prices...yet to be set.
I'll have a Guestbook format finalized very soon, along with an aesthetically pleasing price list. I have already made labels for each photo, but haven't printed them because I don't know which will be in the final exhibit. For reference, I can begin "installation" on February 27th. So I've got time. But as we all know, time is money...
I'll keep you posted. Stay informed. :)
As of now, there are 69 items lined up to be in the exhibit. I'm at a bit of a loss as to where to go next, though. See, printing and framing is a bigger issue than it ought to be (par for the course). Some photos, as I mentioned, will be printed at school - this is beneficial because it's free and those 20 or so pictures either don't need to be framed or can be put in frames I already have.
But the Costco prints, there's a challenge. See, it's really cheap and convenient and all, but there's still the fact that I'm printing (theoretically) 40 pictures there at 12x18. That works out to $120 for the printing alone. Then there's frames. The ones I use are basic and rather boring and happen to cost as much as each print, so there's another $120 roughly. That's a total cost of $240. $240 I'm not necessarily willing to spend. I'd much rather save wherever I can.
I have all the TMD stuff sitting in my room. 3 of them are going in the exhibit already, which leaves 12 frames I could salvage (read: reuse), saving me $36.
So that's $204.
Also, what's to say I really am going to print 40 pictures at 12x18? I've yet to actually scope the gallery itself, measuring the walls and all. For all I know, it's more efficient to have a bunch of unframed 8x10s or 8x12s pinned to the walls and maybe 20 12x18s. I know for a fact that 40 12x18 framed photos would take up much more space than I have! And given the duration of the exhibit...nah.
Notice the stream-of-consciousness writing tactic implemented above. See why long-term projects stress me out. Good. Moving on.
There you have it - the cartoony, colorful, and much-anticipated (I hope) poster advertising the exhibit. I just printed 20 of 'em and I'll start hanging them as soon as I can. Maybe a Facebook album of their locations will ensue. If you live in the Main Line area, be on the lookout for them. :P
In the near future (read: when I'm done with Astronomy homework), I'll be going through the "Costco Prints" folder and narrowing down my future 12x18 prints. With any luck, I'll cut it in half. That might be hard, but at least I'll still be showing the others at a later date. ;)
Total cost: $144
Each 12x18 print will be selling for $45. The others, of various sizes, will be of various prices...yet to be set.
I'll have a Guestbook format finalized very soon, along with an aesthetically pleasing price list. I have already made labels for each photo, but haven't printed them because I don't know which will be in the final exhibit. For reference, I can begin "installation" on February 27th. So I've got time. But as we all know, time is money...
I'll keep you posted. Stay informed. :)
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Anywhere Left to Turn - Pt. 1
My next exhibit will be in March, at my school's art gallery. It's a sizable space with plenty of room to hang photos. Which is good, since I've got together about sixty photos I want to put in the exhibit.
They're of various sizes and styles...got some HDR stuff, some black and whites, some Thought-Process drawings, and some other weird and wonderful photographic art. It'll be cool to see it all in one place.
As of now, I've got a folder of stuff I'll print with my own resources and a folder to print at Costco (great prices and great quality). Luckily, I've already got a bunch of 12x18s left over from The Mind Dynamic and some other 8x10s that were alternates. Some of the photos I'm going to put in the exhibit will be printed small anyway (5x7 or 4x6) because that's how I want them. So it'll be a cool meld.
At this point, what's left is finalizing a poster design, printing it, and hanging it all over the place. Also, I've got to find out specific details on the exhibit space (as in how I'm gonna hang stuff - nails in the walls? - and how many exactly) because I'm new at this...I've seen exhibits at the gallery before, and know how they work and all, but I've never been in charge of setup and arrangement and such! I'm going to have a guestbook, of course, and I look forward to reading people's comments and such.
Also, I'll be selling pretty much everything at the exhibit. The experiences I had with TMD have taught me that my approach to selling isn't quite correct. Two people "bought" prints from TMD and never followed up. It was as good as saying "Hey, I'll buy this!" and then forgetting about it...
So that's part one. Fair and simple.
They're of various sizes and styles...got some HDR stuff, some black and whites, some Thought-Process drawings, and some other weird and wonderful photographic art. It'll be cool to see it all in one place.
As of now, I've got a folder of stuff I'll print with my own resources and a folder to print at Costco (great prices and great quality). Luckily, I've already got a bunch of 12x18s left over from The Mind Dynamic and some other 8x10s that were alternates. Some of the photos I'm going to put in the exhibit will be printed small anyway (5x7 or 4x6) because that's how I want them. So it'll be a cool meld.
At this point, what's left is finalizing a poster design, printing it, and hanging it all over the place. Also, I've got to find out specific details on the exhibit space (as in how I'm gonna hang stuff - nails in the walls? - and how many exactly) because I'm new at this...I've seen exhibits at the gallery before, and know how they work and all, but I've never been in charge of setup and arrangement and such! I'm going to have a guestbook, of course, and I look forward to reading people's comments and such.
Also, I'll be selling pretty much everything at the exhibit. The experiences I had with TMD have taught me that my approach to selling isn't quite correct. Two people "bought" prints from TMD and never followed up. It was as good as saying "Hey, I'll buy this!" and then forgetting about it...
So that's part one. Fair and simple.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Winter Landscape Lull
Well, January is ending almost as quickly as it began. It's interesting how time passes so fast when I'm not in school nearly as often as a normal school month. See, midterms came and went uneventfully - I wasn't really able to post anything here, upload anything to dA, or even really work on much photography stuff. But, oddly, it's not because I was studying like a fiend...if anything, the school vs. artistic leisure dynamic didn't even come into play and hasn't for awhile.
Midterm exams were actually a bit surreal. See, as a senior, I don't have to take final exams unless I get below a B (or B+ in honors courses) so, the way things are looking now, these midterms of a week or so ago were the last exams I will ever have to take as a student at this school. You could say I went out with a bang - got the results back Monday, and I was thrilled. This time last year, I wouldn't have anticipated the grades I ended up with. In years past, I've walked out of the exam room and instantly started wondering (often somewhat pessimistically) what I got wrong and how I ultimately did. Usually my reception of the grade was bittersweet...I've been a B and C student up til this year, and now that's all changed for the better. I left each exam this year totally indifferent, to say the least. This is, I suppose, a good segue into a little anecdote about my tumultuous freshman year...
For Christmas in 2006, I got a MacBook. I was thrilled. I'd been begging my parents for a laptop ever since 3rd grade, when a friend got one and wouldn't stop talking about it (in 2000, I suppose, a laptop was a big deal for a kid). My parents had the common sense to not get me a computer of my own at that age, and through middle school I had to use the family computer to do homework and play games, often staying after school to play internet games and such since we had dial-up at the time (:P). The first semester of my freshman year was marked with struggles against what I viewed as an overwhelming workload from teachers who tried to foster a love of learning while simultaneously making us work to the point of hating the subject. Now, that's definitely not the case, but I certainly had no love of writing proofs in Geometry or long compositions in Chinese (in pinyin no less). That was the Jimmy of the past, the awkward 14-year-old with too-short hair, undiagnosed ADHD, and an affinity for prog metal and Nightwish. But when I got that computer, I was finally able to pursue my flawed priority pastime of RuneScape, and with the addition of an AirPort router and DSL service to the house, I barely left my room and certainly barely got off my new computer. Needless to say, my midterm grades were awful because I did almost nothing but train my RuneScape character. Maybe I glanced at some notes the night before exams, but I honestly barely remember the midterms of my freshman year beyond the poor grades I got. In the eyes of my parents, I bombed them. In middle school, I'd been a straight-A student - but one without a computer, and so it wasn't too hard for my parents to blame my sub-par exam performance on the presence of a wireless-ready laptop in my life. In retrospect, they were right.
Fast-forward...In the weeks leading up to senior midterms, I played a ton of OpenArena (open-source Quake III Arena with a great multiplayer community) and if I do say so myself, got quite good at Capture-the-Flag, and even found the time to bolster my own fledgling clan. But I barely studied. In the past, I operated on the mentality that studying would only stress me out because I'd just keep finding stuff I didn't know, and ultimately freaking out because I clearly was going to fail, and didn't really know anything! Of course, that wasn't true, but it didn't stop me from doing the bare minimum in terms of exam review. Now, knowing what the real problem was, I can't 100% blame video games but can certainly blame the combination of video games and the untreated ADHD that no one knew I had.
Why share all this? Because it's oddly pertinent to the landscape of my life at the moment. My senior midterm grades were astounding, to say the least - "A"s across the board. In fact, I got 95s on all but two of them (didn't do as well on Chinese as I'd have liked, and I don't know exactly what I got on my Statistics project, but it was between A- and A). My Latin teacher, who also taught me in my beleaguered freshman and sophomore years, said that my sight translations (of Cicero) on the exam were the best she'd ever seen from me and indeed some of the most precise in the class. I didn't study a bit. I didn't tell her that, of course, but that doesn't matter...I mean, I did the readings and translations, knew what was going on in Cicero's life and political career, and by this time in my Latin career (this is my 6th year) I can translate anything because I know all the grammar and such...
The English exam essay was the only thing I really prepared for, truth be told. We were to bring in a paper with only quotes from two readings (classic compare-and-contrast-two-characters topic) and then write the essay with no outline. Naturally I thought about it beforehand, but only somewhat. Hamlet and Satan (as represented by Milton in Paradise Lost)...how to relate them? It wasn't that challenging but I'm a slow writer...I ended up with 25/25 on that section and 95 on the exam. Thrilling, to say the least.
That Psychology paper I may have been complaining about? The 8-page one? Highest grade in the class.
The Chinese exam was a doozy...took all of 210 minutes, and as I mentioned...it was a bit of a disappointment. Serves me right though. Has nothing to do with racking up mad frags in CTF matches...it's more my general ambivalence towards improving my writing ability. Given how I did on English and Latin, both of which required concise analytical writing in English, my Chinese exam grade does not reflect my "writing ability"...just my ability to write detailed and concise stuff in Chinese. I'm on it, don't worry. I'm gonna be fluent, just you watch.
Enough of that. Let's just say...video games+freshman year = bad, and video games+senior year = just fine, thank you. My GPA is 1.1 higher than it was this time last year, and 1.5 higher than it was my freshman year. Progress? I think so. Hence the Dickinson acceptance. I'm going places.
-
Winter has always been my favorite season, and I can't really say why. Perhaps it's the weather or perhaps it's the large amount of free time it entails what with break and all. Indeed, I barely had to go to school during exam week (except for two hours on three days to actually take them :P) but still, I regret to say I haven't really done any shooting in a loooong time. In fact, the last time I used my camera for artsy stuff was last year!
This probably isn't a problem, though, since March will see the biggest and best exhibit I've yet done. The person in charge of the art gallery at my school's auditorium (the one I work at) has graciously granted me 28 days in March to make the gallery all my own. I'm going to plan out a definite 'scape for the place in the near future - I'm thinking 16x20 prints right when you walk in the door, and 12x18s down the walls on either side and on the back wall as well. The space lends itself well to being an art gallery, since it's an oblong and people going into the auditorium have to see all the art no matter what. And of course, we have assemblies in there so all the students will see my photos, and the musical (Damn Yankees) is in March as well - that means that people who wouldn't ordinarily be there will see my stuff as well. I'll definitely be selling the prints, but that's the least of my organizational concerns at the moment.
See, the way I've framed stuff in the past is a simple three-step process. 1. Buy a boatload of $3 "Ram" frames at IKEA (plain pine). 2. Order prints at Costco for $3 each, pick 'em up, cut them if necessary. 3. Put the prints in the frames, get the hardware in, and hang them up. Total cost: $6 per print. It sounds a bit ridiculous, I know, but then again, so does $15 per print at Ritz or somewhere where the quality is exactly the same...
This time, I'll likely either stain the frames or do mattes of my own design. This will probably take a bit more time, but that's what February is for. My ideas at this time are very preliminary. That's what I've got a blog for...expect more updates on the status of this exhibit.
For instance, I still don't know what to call it. "The Mind Dynamic" wasn't a flop, but it was kind of a silly name and (unbeknownst at the time) I picked a bad time to have it. The café is fully renovated (if you remember, that's why my stuff's not there at the moment and hasn't been for months) now and the owner said I can put stuff back up there, but I don't know when or if that's going to happen. I'm certainly not opposed to having photos in two places at once, but the school exhibit does take precedence.
And once I figure out a good name (suggestions welcome), I need to design a poster to advertise it! Ideally, that'll happen in a week, since February really ought to be devoted to getting my name out there and drawing people to my exhibit when it opens. I have commissioned the help of a really talented artist on this, but she can't do anything until I have a name down and of course it's down to me to figure out what I want on an advertisement poster. None of that Cochin font over an artificially grained semi-transparent photo of terraced Chinese farmland. (what was that all about anyway?) This is going to be cool - once I get my stuff together! :)
So that's that for now...now for the usual plugs: I take commissions for photo-restorations; watch me on DeviantArt; fan me on Facebook.
J.B
Midterm exams were actually a bit surreal. See, as a senior, I don't have to take final exams unless I get below a B (or B+ in honors courses) so, the way things are looking now, these midterms of a week or so ago were the last exams I will ever have to take as a student at this school. You could say I went out with a bang - got the results back Monday, and I was thrilled. This time last year, I wouldn't have anticipated the grades I ended up with. In years past, I've walked out of the exam room and instantly started wondering (often somewhat pessimistically) what I got wrong and how I ultimately did. Usually my reception of the grade was bittersweet...I've been a B and C student up til this year, and now that's all changed for the better. I left each exam this year totally indifferent, to say the least. This is, I suppose, a good segue into a little anecdote about my tumultuous freshman year...
For Christmas in 2006, I got a MacBook. I was thrilled. I'd been begging my parents for a laptop ever since 3rd grade, when a friend got one and wouldn't stop talking about it (in 2000, I suppose, a laptop was a big deal for a kid). My parents had the common sense to not get me a computer of my own at that age, and through middle school I had to use the family computer to do homework and play games, often staying after school to play internet games and such since we had dial-up at the time (:P). The first semester of my freshman year was marked with struggles against what I viewed as an overwhelming workload from teachers who tried to foster a love of learning while simultaneously making us work to the point of hating the subject. Now, that's definitely not the case, but I certainly had no love of writing proofs in Geometry or long compositions in Chinese (in pinyin no less). That was the Jimmy of the past, the awkward 14-year-old with too-short hair, undiagnosed ADHD, and an affinity for prog metal and Nightwish. But when I got that computer, I was finally able to pursue my flawed priority pastime of RuneScape, and with the addition of an AirPort router and DSL service to the house, I barely left my room and certainly barely got off my new computer. Needless to say, my midterm grades were awful because I did almost nothing but train my RuneScape character. Maybe I glanced at some notes the night before exams, but I honestly barely remember the midterms of my freshman year beyond the poor grades I got. In the eyes of my parents, I bombed them. In middle school, I'd been a straight-A student - but one without a computer, and so it wasn't too hard for my parents to blame my sub-par exam performance on the presence of a wireless-ready laptop in my life. In retrospect, they were right.
Fast-forward...In the weeks leading up to senior midterms, I played a ton of OpenArena (open-source Quake III Arena with a great multiplayer community) and if I do say so myself, got quite good at Capture-the-Flag, and even found the time to bolster my own fledgling clan. But I barely studied. In the past, I operated on the mentality that studying would only stress me out because I'd just keep finding stuff I didn't know, and ultimately freaking out because I clearly was going to fail, and didn't really know anything! Of course, that wasn't true, but it didn't stop me from doing the bare minimum in terms of exam review. Now, knowing what the real problem was, I can't 100% blame video games but can certainly blame the combination of video games and the untreated ADHD that no one knew I had.
Why share all this? Because it's oddly pertinent to the landscape of my life at the moment. My senior midterm grades were astounding, to say the least - "A"s across the board. In fact, I got 95s on all but two of them (didn't do as well on Chinese as I'd have liked, and I don't know exactly what I got on my Statistics project, but it was between A- and A). My Latin teacher, who also taught me in my beleaguered freshman and sophomore years, said that my sight translations (of Cicero) on the exam were the best she'd ever seen from me and indeed some of the most precise in the class. I didn't study a bit. I didn't tell her that, of course, but that doesn't matter...I mean, I did the readings and translations, knew what was going on in Cicero's life and political career, and by this time in my Latin career (this is my 6th year) I can translate anything because I know all the grammar and such...
The English exam essay was the only thing I really prepared for, truth be told. We were to bring in a paper with only quotes from two readings (classic compare-and-contrast-two-characters topic) and then write the essay with no outline. Naturally I thought about it beforehand, but only somewhat. Hamlet and Satan (as represented by Milton in Paradise Lost)...how to relate them? It wasn't that challenging but I'm a slow writer...I ended up with 25/25 on that section and 95 on the exam. Thrilling, to say the least.
That Psychology paper I may have been complaining about? The 8-page one? Highest grade in the class.
The Chinese exam was a doozy...took all of 210 minutes, and as I mentioned...it was a bit of a disappointment. Serves me right though. Has nothing to do with racking up mad frags in CTF matches...it's more my general ambivalence towards improving my writing ability. Given how I did on English and Latin, both of which required concise analytical writing in English, my Chinese exam grade does not reflect my "writing ability"...just my ability to write detailed and concise stuff in Chinese. I'm on it, don't worry. I'm gonna be fluent, just you watch.
Enough of that. Let's just say...video games+freshman year = bad, and video games+senior year = just fine, thank you. My GPA is 1.1 higher than it was this time last year, and 1.5 higher than it was my freshman year. Progress? I think so. Hence the Dickinson acceptance. I'm going places.
-
Winter has always been my favorite season, and I can't really say why. Perhaps it's the weather or perhaps it's the large amount of free time it entails what with break and all. Indeed, I barely had to go to school during exam week (except for two hours on three days to actually take them :P) but still, I regret to say I haven't really done any shooting in a loooong time. In fact, the last time I used my camera for artsy stuff was last year!
This probably isn't a problem, though, since March will see the biggest and best exhibit I've yet done. The person in charge of the art gallery at my school's auditorium (the one I work at) has graciously granted me 28 days in March to make the gallery all my own. I'm going to plan out a definite 'scape for the place in the near future - I'm thinking 16x20 prints right when you walk in the door, and 12x18s down the walls on either side and on the back wall as well. The space lends itself well to being an art gallery, since it's an oblong and people going into the auditorium have to see all the art no matter what. And of course, we have assemblies in there so all the students will see my photos, and the musical (Damn Yankees) is in March as well - that means that people who wouldn't ordinarily be there will see my stuff as well. I'll definitely be selling the prints, but that's the least of my organizational concerns at the moment.
See, the way I've framed stuff in the past is a simple three-step process. 1. Buy a boatload of $3 "Ram" frames at IKEA (plain pine). 2. Order prints at Costco for $3 each, pick 'em up, cut them if necessary. 3. Put the prints in the frames, get the hardware in, and hang them up. Total cost: $6 per print. It sounds a bit ridiculous, I know, but then again, so does $15 per print at Ritz or somewhere where the quality is exactly the same...
This time, I'll likely either stain the frames or do mattes of my own design. This will probably take a bit more time, but that's what February is for. My ideas at this time are very preliminary. That's what I've got a blog for...expect more updates on the status of this exhibit.
For instance, I still don't know what to call it. "The Mind Dynamic" wasn't a flop, but it was kind of a silly name and (unbeknownst at the time) I picked a bad time to have it. The café is fully renovated (if you remember, that's why my stuff's not there at the moment and hasn't been for months) now and the owner said I can put stuff back up there, but I don't know when or if that's going to happen. I'm certainly not opposed to having photos in two places at once, but the school exhibit does take precedence.
And once I figure out a good name (suggestions welcome), I need to design a poster to advertise it! Ideally, that'll happen in a week, since February really ought to be devoted to getting my name out there and drawing people to my exhibit when it opens. I have commissioned the help of a really talented artist on this, but she can't do anything until I have a name down and of course it's down to me to figure out what I want on an advertisement poster. None of that Cochin font over an artificially grained semi-transparent photo of terraced Chinese farmland. (what was that all about anyway?) This is going to be cool - once I get my stuff together! :)
So that's that for now...now for the usual plugs: I take commissions for photo-restorations; watch me on DeviantArt; fan me on Facebook.
J.B
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