During the last few days I have been thinking of this past year as many of us do at this time. Pondering the many things I have done with my photography and surprisingly as I think about it I have done a lot. Kate asked me what I thought my favorite or most important projects where, or maybe more to the point what did I enjoyed the most. Take the jump and I will tell you what I think of this past year and how it has helped me to really begin to define who I am as a photographer.
This past year for me has been filled with many accomplishments and when I sit down and think about it all I am truly amazed at how far I have come in such a short time. Many may not know but it has really been just a little over a year that I decided to take the leap and really begin focusing on my photography. My web site went online for the first time in September of 2008, I began this blog and I had two photo exhibits going on in town. Although the two exhibits I had going on were decent my first really organized well thought out exhibit, and one with an opening reception, occurred a year ago this December at Cafe V located in Chauncey Village. Since that exhibit it has been a non-stop roller coaster ride!
One of the major projects I worked on and has great rewards was commUNITY. This project Kate and I conceptualized in our living room one day as we were having one of our many great discussions and it snowballed from there. Within two months we took it from concept to physical existence. It was a crazy two months of finding people to photograph and a location that would be willing to display the exhibit on short notice. The concept was to create an exhibit that would celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage month which takes place in May. The focus was to highlight Asian Americans that lived, worked and go to school in our community. We wanted to bring awareness of these people, not only to show the struggles and stereotypes they face but to also celebrate them. At the same time we were working to find people, get them into the studio, locate a place for the exhibit and many other small details that needed to be worked out; I was also contracted to shoot the Purdue Fashion Associations annual fashion show that is held every April. So I had two very major projects to juggle not to mention my real full time day job. All-in-all we pulled off commUNITY in a major way. Not only did we complete all the portraits and other items we scored big time in having it displayed at our local Art Museum. Since then commUNITY has gone on to be displayed in two other major exhibits bringing its resounding success to three major exhibits within 6 months. The third exhibit at the University of Illinois at Ubrana-Champaign is still going on until early February and was the first exhibit to take it out of the state of Indiana. There is a fourth exhibit scheduled for May of 2010.
The other project that was just plain fun to do but also very rewarding was my Nikon Festival short film. The Nikon Festival was a contest sponsored by Nikon to highlight their latest DSLR camera with 720p HD video capability. I decided to give the contest a try and rented a Nikon D300s as it has 720p HD capability as well. The concept of the contest was to create a short film that fit into 140 seconds, 2 minutes and 20 seconds. The 140 second concept came from the number of characters allowed in a Twitter Tweet. My short film was going to be about the day I spent in Chicago with the Camera Club for which I am the advisor. I wanted to try and capture the spirit of the day, us walking all over Chicago taking pictures, eating at our traditional places, just enjoying the day and our time together. When I returned home I had several short clips of video shot, now it was time to sit down and put them together into something that made sense. For this, and other short films I have done, I use Final Cut Pro which is an awesome piece of software used for video post production; some pretty big name movies have been put together with this software. With this project I took the use of Final Cut Pro to a new level, I really challenged myself to dig into the core of this product, to learn how to use it like I had never used it before. I wanted a certain mood to my film, something that I had seen in movies. The other challenge was finding the perfect soundtrack for the film. I spent two days searching for just the right song, listening to countless sound bites to find the one song that fit the mood I was trying to capture. In the end I did not get selected as one of the top 50 finalists but I produced one of my best short films to date, at least I feel that way. So why is this one of my best projects of this year, well it has really put the film making bug into me. I really enjoyed the process of making this short film and I very much want to do more in the future. This is an area that I want to explore, grow and become better at doing. As I have mentioned before, as well as others out there, I feel like there is a convergence of still photography and video coming. As more DSLR’s are capable of doing video and the technology improves I think the gap between them will shrink. As seen on the cover of the June 09 issue of Esquire magazine, Megan Fox was not photographed with a standard still camera but with a Red One video camera, that’s right the image is a frame from a video camera! The first time ever that this has happened and I think in the future it will occur more often.
I would say though that the overarching achievement of this past year is the focusing of my photography. As we all start out many of us struggle with what we should photograph, in what area should we focus our efforts. I know for me this has been a long process, it wasn’t until the last few months of this year that I really began to figure this out. Two events began to solidify this for me and that was the Brown County Break Down and the Gravel Grovel. These two events reflect very much my interest in mountain biking and something I enjoy doing very much. I was able to attend both of these events as the photographer and captured some really great photographs. Photographing these events really was a true joy, walking through the woods with my equipment, talking with the riders, just sharing in our love of the great outdoors and riding. It really began to sink in that this could be what I wanted to do with my photography. The combining of my two passions, photography and mountain biking. Since then I have really began exploring the world of adventure sports photography and feel like this is the direction that was meant for me. I have already begun to put on my calendar the races and rides for next summer so I can plan on attending and photographing these events.
The other focus of my photography that I discovered is that of social justice. This was a realization I came to after thinking about commUNITY and other projects that are very similar to it I have brewing in the pot. I like the idea of being able to use my ability as a photographer to bring awareness to various issues using photographs to help tell the story.
So yes it has been a wondrous year for me and I believe 2010 is going to be even better. So I hope you will join me on this ride and hang on because it is going to be a wild one!
~ William