Formal 2008

Formal = Prom done right

Since I started this blog, I've had a chance to shoot photos of all sorts of things. In fact, one the only major subsets of professional photography that I had yet to mess around with has been formal event photography. One of my goals has been to set up my own business as a freelance photographer in Athens, and my best shot at getting work will probably be either greek events or concerts. My own fraternity's formal offered the perfect opportunity to experiment without any pressure, and professional goals aside - It was an incredible weekend. I hope the pictures show it.

People Sketches:


Couples:

My girlfriend Alisa and I

Jessie and his sister

Getting Down:

Alisa had an amazing dress on

The truth is that I wasn't really fixated on photography during the weekend because it was after all my formal. I was with all of my brothers and my beautiful girlfriend and in the end, I didn't even bring my D70 to the dance itself. With the exception of the last 3 pictures, every one of these photos was taken in the two hours leading up to the actual event. If only I had been able to have my cake and eat it to... I can only imagine what the photos from the actual formal would have looked like!

Group Shots:

The initiated members of my pledge class

Band of Brothers

I'll just consider this a shameless plug. If anyone has an event for which they would like photos like these (or better), I'd be willing to shoot them, time permitting. Just message me.

Fun, Friendship, and possibly Glory

With the words "fun, friendship, and possibly glory" we started our day, or rather our morning. I had been wanting to try out this idea I've been playing around with, namely going to bed early friday night (I know it sounds lame but just you wait) and then waking up at 4:30 in the morning on Saturday instead. I call it an alternative friday night, and the whole point of it is to enjoy a single day from beginning to end, and more importantly, to watch the new day be born.

The time just before and after sunrise is a special time, and when shared with special people in a special place, it might be just that thing you need to refresh your body and mind. In my case, my roommate Richard, his girlfriend Devon, and Pholksinger Josh were along for the ride. Adventure bags ® packed, we left our dorms just before five in the morning headed for Lake Herrick on the southeast side UGA's campus. We had been having some wierd weather and I was amazed to see fog and mist blanketing everything. Since we were heading for the woods and a lake, I couldn't help but start to get excited. The hour or so of darkness we enjoyed in the forest was amazing in ways that are hard to explain, and since I couldn't properly expose pictures then, I'll have to start off with this picture I took, moments before the night switched to day.

This shot is taken from the dock which we made our home base for practically the whole day. You could effectively use the word "nesting" to describe how it went down. In our adventure bags we had everything you could need for a hippie day outside. iPods, music, balls, a frisbee, paper/pen, food/water, Devon's bike, and of course my camera. The adventure bag basically serves as a bag of goodies to play with. I spent a good 20 minutes on the dock rocking out to the Allman Brothers, juggling as Richard took pictures of me doing it. As I said in the last blog entry, the subject does half the work, and I would have to say I did a good job. Well all I did was juggle but...

This last picture gives a little bit better perspective as to exactly where it was that we spent the day. You can also tell that not much time had past based on the negligible change in lighting and the still apparent reflections off the water that disappeared later in the day.

These photos are really interesting. I know they look abnormal but it isn't as a result of heavy picture editing. In actuality, both of these pictures were originally exposed upside down, reflected off the water. The water was so calm that it is almost immpossible to tell from looking, but once I flipped them rightside up, I noticed that the inverted light makes for some striking images. I shot a ton, but these were my two favorites.

This next set of images are the best from the day. Not to get your hopes up but I think they speak for themselves. I've organized them in a way to give a little bit of insight into how I arrived at the final product (the last 2 images).

These are two examples of the MANY single images I shot around 10:40 that morning.

Here are 16 of the better images, laid out side by side. I really like making collages, especially when the colors and subject matter play so well into the composition. Using powerpoint to resize and layer these 16 pictures, I arrived at two different but similar images that I will consider final products, at least for the time being.

I would be really curious to know not only which one of the two people like better. I know which one I think is best but I won't say.


One of the advantages to a day revolving around the outdoors and photography is that you never miss a beat. You're always ready to shoot and being prepared results in more good images than almost anything else. So far all these images have been posted in chronological order throughout the day but I am going to take a short break from that to post a few portraits of my fellow day trippers.

What I find really strong about these images is how the background almost appears to be in black and white, while it is clear that Josh himself is portrayed in living color. No editing though. Thats just how they turned out.

As you can see, these glasses really were popular. They belong to Josh, but Richard wore them for a while, and I took tons of pictures through them. I wish I had a pair of my own.

We didn't spraypaint that wall but somehow it seemed right to take a picture there since we did stumble onto it. Devon was the only girl with us so it was her job to stand there while I shot a series of photos.

Here you can see my three companions all in one frame. Quite an interesting group we made.

A day outside just wouldn't be right without some excersize, and along with excersize comes action shots. If I wasn't worried about boring you then I would post the full sequences, but with that in mind, I decided to leave them out because of the already formidable number of images already in this blog entry.

Out of all the things I did during the 12 of so hours we spent at Lake Herrick, spraypainting Devon's car was probably the most fun. She has an '86 Toyota Tercel that doesn't like to start all the time, so being the person that she is, she decided to turn it into a work of art. I had never made anything with spraypaint before, but I had never sculpted anything until last week so I gave it my best and what you see is what I came up with. I only had 5 colors (including a similar white and silver) but I am still really proud of this first effort. Hopefully there will be more murals to come.

In the end, we definately achieced glory, just as we set out to do. If the pictures don't convince you then I have nothing else to say, but those of you who know us know that we did. I offer up a big thank-you to Josh, Richard, and Devon for agreeing to wake up early on a Saturday for what may have been my best single day of 2008 so far. I think we'll be doing this more often and remember: G is for Glory.

The Face of God

A few Saturdays ago I had an amazing day out in the woods that really did inspire me to be creative. My roommate Richard, Devon, and I spent about 8 hours in this creekbed just enjoying the day. It was beautiful. I didn't wear a shirt all day, and with a white ribbon tied around my head, I sculpted a face out of the earth using dirt I mined myself from the streambed and I adorned it with pretty things I sampled from the the woods. It was really a cathartic experience. Making a piece of art with living things from the woods forces you to realize just that - that everything around you is so alive. I felt like primal man out in the woods, shirtless, hacking into the stream's banks, and scooping up handfulls of dirt filled with squiggling insects.

This will be a different sort of entry I suppose because instead of me taking all of the pictures, all of the pictures are of me at work. I had originally intended to post only my photography on this blog, but I realized at some point that the subject is always at least half responsible for the quality of the image. Check out the pics: Photos taken by Alisa Wei

A nice portrait of me

That's Richard on the right gleefully feeding me a banana.

At work, existing within my canvas

My own hands working the earth

I said earlier that I drew a lot of creative inspiration from this day, not only in respect to sculpture, but also with my writing. I decided to draw from my experience working the earth and I ended up with this short story using the face I made as a sort of central theme.

The Face of God

In the early throes of morning, a handsome young businessman in his mid to late thirties staggers into a quiet glade and collapses under the weight of the world. A striking figure he is in his pressed shirt, freshly wrinkled, face down in the mud, his patterned tie cinched tightly around his neck, a shining serpent choking the life from his body. His face, if you could see it, a picture of agony, eyes clasped tightly together, his mouth misshapen, fixed in a silent scream. His sorrows, drowned in a flood of aspirin and cranberry juice. On the verge of death, he writhes helplessly… alone. The world won’t remember another corporate suicide.

He is blinded by a white light before him. His body floats like a plastic bag dancing in the wind, as his consciousness enters a world of undeniable beauty. A forest of sorts as full of life as anywhere on earth bathed in a golden benevolent light. Alone, he wanders through an empty streambed, the earth below his bare feet a rich orange (the sort color that looks as though it would taste good). Just beyond his fingertips is a palette of hues fit to satisfy any artist. Living color, a breathing mosaic of tones splayed out across the color wheel.

It dawns upon him slowly like waves breaking on the shores of a distant lake what must be done. Stabbing madly into the ground, chunks of earth take flight, shining seams of mica rain down from above. The earth is alive, even as it is broken, removed so unceremoniously from its home. Like a madman, he reaches into this mass of sifting earth, screaming aloud as imagined(?) insects bite into his flesh. Particles of clay stain his hands, swarming like bees, entering his very pores. His skin is almost translucent stretched tightly across pale blue knuckles, bony, a network of purple veins breathing life into his fingertips. He is primal man.
His hands, no longer mere appendages, rather instruments of creation.

Brought to his knees, as if by command, he begins to work the clay. His eyes trace the outline of a face: the face of god. His fingers bring forth meaning from the earth in the form of a gnarled nose twisted with age, his thumbs busy at work shaping vacant eye sockets. He gives him sight with a pair of almond shaped skeletons of leaves once living. His left pupil a white germinating seed, his right a brilliant piece of mica mined from the earth. His sunken mouth gapes from behind red rose(y) lips and rows of fern leaves double as teeth. His beard of moss belies his infinite wisdom. Who could say that this face - yes face of the earth -was not alive?

As if swallowed by the ground, he is jerked abruptly from his dream world by a torrent of rain falling from the heavens. Disoriented he rolls over in his soiled clothes only to see a work of art of undeniable beauty. The face from his dreams, with its unquestioning gaze, now looks him up and down, sizing him up. The creator has been recreated just as he was once molded from the very same clay.

The rain continues to fall as cascades of water begin to rush through the streambed, destroying his creation before his very eyes. The face of god… A man reborn, the man shoulders the weight of the world and staggers to his feet. Emerging from the woods he moves forward with a purpose, like a hunter stalking his prey. With his life in shambles he knows now that there is still reason to live. Perhaps he will leave this city. Maybe he will move to South America, and spend the rest of his days on the beach with scantily clad brown women and cold drinks with little umbrellas in them. Perhaps he will become a writer or a painter or even a sculptor.

Lost in his thoughts, he wanders onward through the rain, cutting through back yards, crossing streets with reckless abandon. Suddenly, he is blinded by a white light before him. He squints his eyes to the tune of screeching tires on wet pavement. Thrown violently into the air, his body floats like a plastic bag dancing in the wind, as his consciousness enters a world of undeniable beauty. Just beyond his fingertips is a palette of hues to satisfy any artist. His body collapses, broken under the weight of the world. The rain continues to fall in torrents and his blood (the sort of color that looks as if it would taste good) is washed away before his very eyes - the eyes of god.

Zwischen Alexanderplattz und Seestraße

Because this is a blog about what I'm doing now, I will generally refrain from posting anything from the past but I will have to make an exception here. I've been taking a creative writing class here at the University of Georgia and I wrote the following poem from an old picture I took during my exchange year in Germany. The photo was taken with my point and shoot camera, not my D70, and I don't consider it an example of my photography, but with that disclaimer I'll still post it to help people understand the poem better. Just so you know, none of my classmates will be able to see the picture so try to imagine what this is before you see the photo.

Zwischen Alexanderplattz und Seestraße

Deep beneath the city the ground is alive.
Alive with the blurred faces of those below,
frozen in their silent animation.
Alive in the way their eyes shimmer,
squinting in an unsuccessful effort to regain composure,
every lip curled up, soft smiling mouths, revealing rows of gleaming teeth.

Alive in the way their torsos lurch back and forth,
heaving and rolling like an elephant on a waterslide,
slipping and sliding like a hungry puppy, bolting across an oaken floor,
Alive they are together, like the arteries and veins inside a clinched fist,
Alive like the blood rushing through its vessels: the cities vessels.
Together we ride, listing back and forth, listening to the silent roar of time frozen still.

Time, once frozen, ceases to exist but life...
Life exists in every fit of laughter, and in every sprawling mass of flesh and blood.
Life exists in memories long forgotten and in dark photographs, burned around the edges,
moth eaten holes where the faces should have been.
This city is alive, I know because I was there.
I have felt it. We have felt it.

So I know this photo is blurry but if you had been there you would know why. All of the people you see are from the same exchange program as I. After our entire year in Germany, and everything we had been through, all 52 of us met in Berlin for our end of year meeting. Saying goodbye is hard but if you have to do it, you should go out with a bang. Most specifically, this photo was taken on the U-bahn (subway) in Berlin. We had been out all night and on the way home, something happened, and I don't think any of us know exactly what but all of a sudden it was pandemonium. We went crazy. Everyone was laughing and yelling, falling down and running into each other as the train hurtled around curves. All the Germans in our traincar left appalled but I wouldn't have had it any other way. Look at the faces and you will see.