sensitive yet very, very masculine....

ok. so i've just gotten home, its kinda late (the tube is still running but its been a long day...), and i've had some truly lovely times with a very amicable group of young photographers. as always, the best bit came at the very end.... tina and hubert the only witnesses. one image to leave to posterity....

this is me playing with the digital camera....

....LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.... THIS BLOG IS A DIGITAL VIRGIN NO MORE...

its all over, and yet....

so, finally all has been handed in, people who were way less organized than me spent the wee hours of the night writing their essays, and the morning printing, pasting, organizing... thank god I had everything taken care of... thank god I am the organized anal retentive individual that I am... nice one!!!!
alright. I go to school, meet my buddies, have a chat, hand my stuff in, and yet, somehow, I don't feel the relief of having ridden myself of this massive burden... the sun is out, my classmates enjoy the view of the spring coming out (the skirts, the tank tops the wonderful lightness and gentle bounciness of the newly arrived sun). I, however, feel compelled to retreat in my little tunnel of darkness and disgrace, the chemical fumes pounding at my nose like a cuddle by iron mike. yes, stupid me, I cannot control the urge, and go down, and print some more. I print till there is no more paper to print on. I feel like i am developing a strange and sick relationship with that poodle of darkness... i am enjoying the printing process. oh, god... save me.

images

by the way, I am not sure if anybody noticed, bit there are no images on this blog... I am happy to announce that my digital camera has made its way from the good 'ol US of A and is travelling to its (proud) owner as we speak.. hope to get it some time this week. keep looking... the digital revolution is nigh.

comments....

It has been brought to my attention by one of the members of my fan club that due to a technical-maintenance error on our servers it has been impossible to post comments on this blog. I have promptly rectified the issue, and encourage all those who wanted, but were not allowed, to post comments freely.

darkroom...

I am quite happy with the way I managed to shoot "old_school' and manage the process. I was able to hand print 15 images, to a fairly decent quality. There was a lot of dodging and burning, which I though was quite an indication to my skills as a printer, but somebody cleverly pointed out today that it is more of a hint to what a sh#t photographer I am... Anyways, might use them all, or might cut it down to 13-14-12, don't know yet.

I has not been easy, considering that the only days I could use the darkroom (due to the vii seminar) were tuesday, wednesday, and thursday, that the darkroom closed at 5 o'clock sharp (actually, 4.45 since at 5 the room has to be physically locked, and we should all be halfway down the stairs of the main entrance), and that tuesday morning when I showed up at 9.30 sharp, the black and white darkrooms hadn't been serviced, so had to wait till mid day to use them. In my angry ramblings, I usually say 1.30, but Tonks correctly pointed out that it was more towards 12ish...

Having said that, it was a great three days... just me, my ipod, and JT... and when I say JT, I mean the Tonks man, not Justin Timberlake!

stay at home fathers finally taking shape...

Ok. Lets talk a bit about my work... Spent a week shooting around London in my Vespa (exactly how cool-not-so-retro-italian am I?!?!) photographing fathers who stay at home and look after the children while their wives go off to work. WOW, what an experience! Coming from a very "machistic" society, it was very hard to imagine men leaving the "winning the bread" job to women, but it happens, and it works perfectly... These dads have nothing to be ashamed of, they performa full time job, and develop an extraordinary relationship with their offspring. And last, but not least, don't have to deal with @##holes in the office (sorry, had to do that to keep this PG13).

So I shot the project in black and white cause I thought I was going into a battlefield, and wanted to follow in the tradition of the best combat photography, unfortunately, it was more like going into a hyppie village full of stoners, these kids were so well mannered. No crying. No whining. No ball breaking for no good reason. Perfect little kids, happy, polite, and generally lovely! I had started the whole thing in black and white, and kept consistent.

Out of the 3 families I shot, I decided to use only one for my essay, and make a kind of a "day in the relationship between a stay at home father and his daughters" story. I have plenty of great (great is a big, complex word) images from the other fathers too, but wasn't quite sure how to work them into the story. I will keep shooting them, and see if I can develop the essay further. I am quite intrigued. The fathers themselves seem quite happy to have me around, and hopefully they still will, even after they see the pictures.

All in all, I am quite happy with the project.

Well, I think it is about time for a second posting... I've been waiting because I wanted to put some images on the blog, but haven't scanned anything, and have not yet received my digital camera... So this will be a photography blog without any visuals... for the time being... sorry.
After quite e bit of courting, I have finally managed to follow two home dads in their daily routines. The first, Matt, has two daughters (Amy, 4, and Izzy, 18 months), and Cullen also has two daughters (Roxanne, 5 and Tallulah, 2 and a half). They are all very nice, and funny which quite helps the project, especially when you are spending 7 hours a day with them...
I spent two days with Matt, a rainy one indoors, and a sunny one outside. I was with Cullen just today (terrible weather, which we spent outside), until we had to go pick up Roxanne from school because she got chickenpox. At this point I have to remember to ask my mom if I've gotten chickenpox as a child cause I really don't want to get it at 29...
Basically I just follow the day as it progresses, I meet them for their walk to school (haven't done the whole getting up and getting ready shoot, although I look forward to it!!!), and then spend the day with the dads and the smaller ones, cooking, eating, the park, shooping... all very normal. I have to be quite careful not to go close to the schools at all, so I kind of lurk on street corners close to the schools (which might actually make me look even more dodgy). All in all it has been very interesting so far. I got back the first set of images (from the rainy day indoors), and there are some decent images, so I hope that the days with better light will provide more interesting pictures. We'll see on thursday.
... That all folks... (kids brought my bugs bunny days back to life, all at once...)