my new statement:
"we'll. all. be. fine. breathe."

i had to remind myself that i will be fine this morning. a friend had to remind me that i will be fine in the afternoon. and i had to remind a friend that they will be fine this evening.

yes. these are some hard times. but everything always works out.



this is the kid i've nanny'd for the past 5 years of my life. and the phone woman is her mother, my boss times two, for the past 5 years. this is us celebrating her 11th birthday in october of 2008 at a latin concept restaurant inside a mall in Washington DC.

both photos were shot with a vintage hasselblad. the bottom photograph is mike at work in his camera repair shop. he's the only certified hasselblad technician in all of florida. his shop is a gorgeous work of art. there are cameras everywhere and books on photography. i want to start heading to orlando on the weekends to learn from him.

today i retrieved my 12'' x 12'' x 4'' square wood box for my submission to the next Vitale art show.

and exactly an hour ago i received a ticket for my front left headlight being out. funny thing. i just replaced my front right headlight a week and a half ago. at the end i cried. then he felt really terrible. especially when i pulled ahead thirty feet and parallel parked outside my friend's loft.

i love bike rides at night. these are the fruits of my labor. tampa at night:

today my sister had her high school chef competitions. she carved a watermelon into a flower for a centerpiece in 45 minutes.

my mentor lives. and stays. today was the first time my bank account ever in my life has been "negative zero".

and today was the day, i realized driving down the road, consumption. consume. consuming. that's my voice. that's what it is all about for me. in every sense of the word. but i must deliberate more.




a week ago i tried my damndest to convince myself that photo #2 was art. it's because the moment i saw it, i fell in love with it. i stared at it sporadically all day. guess what...i came to the conclusion that it is not art. it just buzzes the membranes behind my eyes and my collarbone just so. the kind of so that makes me want to live there forever. but it probably couldn't convince anyone else to live with me in the far dim corner of a flea market bookstore.

sad day. my photography mentor, and the one who inspired me to go back to school, decided to quit photography and he can no longer speak to me or anyone else in the photography field. his preacher told him so. to save his marriage.

my sister is letting me borrow our mom's very old minolta electroflash while i have my minolta repaired. im going to start posting everyday.



he's the most anti-cigarette man i know. i forgot this while i was shooting him. he was devastated when he saw this print. how did i get him to hold one without us noticing the gravity?

this is also the only serious picture i've ever seen of him. this is him, taken by my buddy tim foster, in the same sweater, at a shoot with his airstream:

day 228

so i had the most incredible weekend. found out Meagan Sample was in town and invited her out to shoot a bunch of models with me on saturday. (i get all film from this weekend back tonight...7 rolls) sunday hung out in the country of citrus county around my boyfriend's parents house. meagan came out and we visited the flea market, explored an abandoned house, and laid in the grass and drank wine. it was nice hanging with her. refreshing.

and today i reapplied to my old college. tomorrow im going to sit down with them and figure out what's happening from here. i want to go full time. i've never been an advocate of school, and even went... but dropped out. i wish i had stayed. but not. i didn't know what i wanted to do. now i know. there's a goal. there's a plan.

here's how it goes with me and school:

either no schooling whatsoever VS. getting my BA and then my Photography MFA at an amazing art school

i can do it. i'm smart. and dedicated to photography. i've been putting this off for way too long. i've always said i don't care what happens in my life outside of photography. as long as i can shoot, i'll be happy. so hmmmm hello aj? why not go be a student?! its better than sitting in a cubicle wasting my life away. that's what i've been doing for the past 5 years and i have nothing to show for it... and it's def. not something i want to do with my life. just a means to an end. money.

so school it is. i just hope they accept my application after the whole getting arrested thing. if not, in 6 months it will be cleared off of my record and i'll apply again.

as long as i can keep the ultimate goal in mind, i will be fine. grrrrr, math. oh boy. this will be fun!

day 223

I want to make it clear what photography means to me because these days everyone is a “photographer”.

This all stems from a post on facebook from a local fellow photographer, and friend, Ashley Bates, that she is “retiring” her photography. I was flabbergasted. She wants to “close that chapter in her life” and focus on other things. It’s a shame. She’s a good artist. Then I really got to thinking and investigating on a psychological level. What would make someone quit photography? To me photography is as natural as breathing. How could someone NOT want to take pictures? But then I thought about how different everyone is and all the styles of photography and what people take pictures of and why and I realized... most people who start off in photography do it as a means to an end...the end result is almost ALWAYS money or fame/recognition. Whenever an art form turns solely into a way to make money, I believe it is a terrible thing.

I don’t do photography for money, for attention, to be hip, etc. It’s not a chapter in my life or some artist phase I’m going through. It IS my life. I am IN LOVE with it. I could care less if I get praise from the masses on how “hot” my photos are. I could care less about comments, views, lists, and likes. I DO care that my friends and like-minded artists encourage and uplift me. Photography is the constant in my life. It’s what I want to do until the day I die. It’s what I think about all day, its how I see things, it’s what I want to talk about, its what I want to learn about.

Everyone sees the world in a different light. And how they see the world is reflected in ones art. I see the real and the fake and the rich and the poor and the happy and the sad. Everyone wants to photograph well-lit, fancy dressed females in clever situations that everyone is going to praise because that’s what the masses want to see... and want to be. That is all well and great. Even I like to do it every once in awhile. But that is not what it is about for me. Its all about the emotion. Even in inanimate objects. Its about the life captured. The simplicity of capturing things that you see every single day, but never thought enough of it to snap a moment of. I guess this is why my inspirations and influences are people who like to shake it up, shock people, anger people, awe people. People who use their art to bring out the emotions in people that aren’t always favorable. People who use their art to make fun of the people that love it. Artists who never receive fame or recognition until after they are dead....spending their whole lives dedicated to their projects and craft because it IS their love... their life... their madness and passion.

I know that I will always love photography even if I never make a cent off of it. It would be amazing to have a job related to the thing I love, that I can't deny. But it is a hard thing to sacrifice my artistic freedom to take a picture of something I haven't fallen in love with. I guess that 's why I consider myself an artist and not a photographer per se. I would gladly sell my car and my belongings to have no bills and do the thing I love all the time.

day 217