Of Shadows and Steel

I initially did some shooting of the intersection right by my apartment, but as I was walking out towards the SWKT late one evening, I was enthralled by the moodiness of this entranceway and took some quick shots...



I particularly liked the intersection of the darkness with the warm amber shades of the interior lighting. The glare from the exterior lights created some interesting highlights on the polished metal, and the reflections in the glass doors mirrored back the outside world.

As I started shooting this series of photographs, I considered myself an insider to the place I was portraying. Before being admitted to the film program, I was an IR major and spent a lot of time in the SWKT. I've been through every door and around every dead-end corner in the building, and during winter I often plot my home-bound course through the SWKT to have a few moments of warmth before heading back out into the chill. Even my work office was in the building. I felt like the place was almost a legitimate second home for me. During shooting, however, I encountered a number of individuals who seemed to question my purpose and intentions, and I realized that the students who trickled out of the building with geography and political science textbooks in hand viewed me as an outsider, viewed me undoubtedly as a troublemaker who needed to be given some homework to do. The students who had just completed class or were heading home after finishing work and studying likely viewed me as a curiosity, if not a minor inconvenience to their departure (although honestly, while I was shooting, only one guy out of the ~30 people who entered and exited those doors checked to see if they were messing up my shot or if it was ok to walk in front of me).

Shooting this photo essay helped me understand a little better what it means to be an outsider, whether that's in relation to a person, a process, or a place. Maybe if I had done my shooting while I entered and exited the building, I might have been telepathically scolded a little less...ehh, prolly not.

The Seventh Wonder of BYU Campus

This semester I have had to come to terms with the fact that I basically live in the dearly beloved HFAC. Although I wish this was an understatement, I have realized that the HFAC is not a bad building to have to "live" in. Since I spend every day of the week here, I have noticed that this building is its own community from the music majors who sit by the entrance staircase to the TMA students who work at the far staircase (when you study there every day, you realize that we've separated ourselves accordingly). Additionally, after seeing several friends, acquaintances, and faculty members run around the building and constantly go up and down the stairs, the feeling that this building is alive with creativity struck me and has not left me since. Similarly, when you spend hours on end and day after day here, it becomes pretty obvious that many interesting events in this larger-than-life building go unnoticed. So with my photo essay, I tried to give a voice to artists who could be viewed (or at least I view them) as the unsung heroes of the HFAC.

This assignment helped me realize exactly what parts of my life are included in my community. As a result, I've been able to understand this community and interact with it on a more personal and less passive level. Taking pictures really prompts a different connection or perception of your subjects. The music students I photographed were more than willing to rehearse as my camera clicked obnoxiously. I also noticed how courteous HFAC students and faculty members are about photography -- many passersby were afraid to ruin my shots (maybe this trait isn't limited to HFAC attendees, but I like to think that they just understand art). I really enjoyed taking a building I reside in every day and allowing it to become something more than just a place.

Enter the Harris Fine Arts Center, a building on BYU campus that looks just as typical as its other buildings.

The hallways and classrooms appear like any other building's rooms...

But the main open corridor of the HFAC hints at the creativity contained within its walls. Not sure why this text decided to be all linky.

It's not unusual to see dedicated music students practice together on their own time.

But the underbelly of the HFAC holds many secrets. What kind of secrets, you ask?

Take this scenic design, for example.

Or this advanced make up student who made a life cast of her sister.

Or even these costumes created by the costume shop.

However, no matter the medium, there is always some kind of performance waiting to be appreciated.

Photo Essay

The idea of "community" is somewhat ambiguous in my opinion. I think that it is difficult to pinpoint the specific reasons a community is the way it is. I suppose that it really comes down to the individual. For this reason, I find the home to be perhaps the most important and compelling part of the community. Being in college means that we are all (most of us) away from home and attempting to recreate that sense of home we lack in our cheap and non-personal student housing. This school year, I moved into a house with a handful of my friends, and it has been really awesome. There is a whole different atmosphere and sense of community when living in a house. Apartment living lends itself to an entirely different community lifestyle. Everyone in your complex kind of melts into one big group, and everyone is always moving out, and new people are always moving in. In a house, there is a more permanent feeling. Depending on your landlady/lord, you can generally get more freedom and a longer leash. You aren't ever bothered by your upstairs neighbors or by the constant house-guests who so easily and often bombard apartments. When you live in a house, your community stops being people who live on top of, beside, under, and all around you. Instead, your roommates become your community. Your house becomes your personal playground of expression and individualism. For my photo essay, I have taken a few pictures which embody the feel and personality of our home.

One of the pictures is a portrait of my roommate Kate, done by her ex boyfriend. We affectionately call the painting "Bald Kate", because he painted your usual normal-head-of-haired self completely bald. It's creepy. And we like it.

Another picture is of a big domed-glass portrait of a baby. We tell everyone who comes over that it is president Uchdorf. They almost always believe us. I don't know why they are so gullible, but we really get a kick out of Baby Dieter.

There is also a picture of the outside of our house. Because our family room has two huge windows, everyone can see everything we are doing from the inside. I think this is an interesting way to be a part of the community. In one way, it includes us in the community by putting us in the spectacle. On the other hand, I think it separates us. Like we are our own thing, and we can look out and see the rest of the world and distance ourselves from it. When taking the pictures, I chose not to clean anything up. I wanted to give everyone an accurate and genuine representation of our home. So I'm not proud of the mess, but I am proud to call this place home. I feel happy, comfortable, and involved here. This house is my community, and I love it.

Enemies of Metal: Your Death is Our Reward

This photo essay is of my living quarters. I consider my community to be the places that surround me and that I interact with and this is what I wanted to explore in my photo essay. I wanted to capture the things that I figured an outsider, someone from the community, would first notice. This demanded that I take a step back and really look at what my house was like. I couldn’t just do my normal thing; I had to try to have a new perspective on something normally rote for me.

Usually I just go into my room and hang my coat up, set my things down, and do homework or watch a movie, but in thinking about it I realized all the things that are unique to my space – things that were pieces of me. I didn’t want to be in any of the pictures because that could influence how people perceive who I am. I wanted them to try to understand my identity through my room. I once heard that someone who spends 5 minutes in a stranger’s room has a better idea of that person than their friends, because they don’t let archetypes, stereotypes, and prejudices get in the way.

I think this relates to the photo essay in the reading this week of the urban cities project. I liked how the photographer took pictures of store fronts because they vary a lot from store to store, area to area. They say a lot about the shop, not just what it sells or does. I picked the pictures I did because the subjects are unique (or so I thought when I tried to view them with my “outsider glasses” on) and add a sense of identity and perspective to who I am. They add personality. 

 I like pictures of cats because they are funny. 

 I work at a restaurant and like to save my change. One is for quarters, the rest is for anything that isn't a quarter. Also there are cat pictures on the right and dark chocolate covered almonds on the left.

 I'm not sure what these are for.

 I like playing guitar, specifically, shredding.

 I sleep on this futon and watch TV and movies from it. Deal with it.

 This was a gift.

This was also a gift.

Photo Essay Hooray!

 Recently I bought a sweet new camera, and although I had plans to use it, it hadn’t happened yet. Enter photo essay assignment and here is my first use of my new camera, and consequently, engagement in my community! As seen my photo essay is a process- specifically dinnertime. As everyday as it seems, Dinner (can be) a great event, for me it is. I like cooking. I like the creation aspect, I love the flavors, I like experimenting, and I like eating food. Our lives seem to revolve, partially, around food and in turn, as do our environments/communities. This assignment was conducted completely in my kitchen, making my community interactions really out of the ordinary, but still awesome.

I chose my kitchen because it was relatively easy and accessible, yet still interesting.  I was also considering doing “A day in the life of my chap stick,” which I gave up on and got frustrated with because I couldn’t take a wide enough photo of my self, and “trees” which really didn’t seem a person, place, or process, and didn’t seem to posses enough potential for story telling, therefore, I dropped it and took on dinner time.

Ideally I would have had more structure to my photos- stage one, washing the food. Stage 2 cleaning, chopping it, etc. something like that. But themes my photos did have were creation, mess, sporadic, chaos, disorder, confusion, array, conception, and other good adjectives. I would have liked to had a final product- a dinner plate with a completed meal, but alas, it was not to be. I wasn’t that handy with my camera. Nonetheless, my photos did have some structure, and definitely common themes within their processes.

If I had more time, I would have done “Day in the life of Tasso family ski day” and taken my camera skiing and gotten some INSANE shots of my little brothers doing sweet tricks. Alas.

In conclusion, I engaged in my community (my kitchen) in a new way because I looked at details- details of mess, of fire, and of fun. Also, I had the lights off half the time which made me pay more attention to my surroundings. 

The Sampler Section

For my photo essay I decided to focus on a place. In the readings, I really liked the photos of students’ living spaces, because you learned a lot about them by what they had on their desks and walls, etc. So, I tried to think of a place that said something about me, and decided to photograph the Sampler Section of the library.

Yes, I like to read, but that’s not the only reason why I wanted to document this special room in the library. I wanted to document it because it’s my favorite place on campus. It’s the one place I can go to sit in a comfy chair, relax for a minute, and have a little peace and quiet in the middle of a busy school day. It’s not even out of my way because it’s right on the main floor of the library. Plus, it’s fun to be surrounded by stories, even if I will never have time to read them all. Just being near them makes me want to be a better writer and think more creatively. I have discovered some of my favorite stories by just wandering around glancing over the shelves. The science fiction and fantasy shelves are my favorite. I always find something interesting there.

I think this experience helped me see the value of this little cozy room. It made me grateful that someone somewhere said, “Hey, let’s make a room full of popular novels,” and that I found it on practically my first day at BYU. It also made me think about the other people that hang out in there, because I’m not the only one who finds a haven among the books. There’s definitely a time to go socialize and be in the middle of the hustle and bustle of campus, but I believe there’s also a time to escape inwardly and de-stress a little. That’s why I love the Sampler Section.