Dirty Thirty, the Revenge

I edited some more pictures of my lovely and hysterical friend Myra this morning. I am so behind on my editing because of my computer issues.

Back when I looked through these pictures after our session, I found myself greatly disappointed in all the mistakes I'd made in doing the shoot. For one, it was in midday, which is not the greatest time to shoot. For another, many of the pictures were blurry or just fucked up in general.

As it turns out, photography is just like writing. When I'm writing or editing something that is particularly difficult (or for whatever reason it's just not flowing as it should), I have to sometimes put it away for awhile and then come back to it with a fresh pair of eyes. That is exactly what I did with my pictures of Myra, and once I looked them over again, I found quite a few of them to be wonderfully imperfect.

Take this one, for example.



It's incredibly blurry. The background could be better. It may even have too much contrast. Man, did I ever screw up this shot. But for some reason, I couldn't stop looking at it. The more I looked at it, the more I realized that I loved it. I love its ghostly quality; I love how it captures a moment in time. It might be my favorite from the whole session, but it's so far from being perfect it's laughable.

Here are some more from our session:











Last spring, when I was doing my internship in the creative writing class, my faculty mentor wanted the class to allow themselves to be amateurs, to be willing to take risks and keep an open mind. I cannot even begin to explain how helpful this approach has been when it comes to my own writing and photography. While I wouldn't call my photos "ground-breaking," I am evolving and doing things very differently than I did when I first started. And I am having a blast learning and experimenting.

In photography-related news:

1) I have a shoot lined up for this weekend, and I'm pretty excited about it!

2) My friend Jessica has casually asked me to shoot her wedding in May 2009. I recently turned down the opportunity to shoot a wedding because the prospect of being a wedding photographer has never thrilled me. For some reason, however, I am more open to shooting Jessica's wedding, probably because she's a friend of mine. The thought of being in charge of capturing all those really important moments kind of makes me feel like I'm going to crap my pants, but if this does come to pass, I will have plenty of time to prepare.

3) I need open-minded and fun people to shoot. I'm doing sessions free of charge and need some more people to practice on. Email me at leslie at bugweb dot net if you're interested (and if you live in the southern California area).