The End is Coming...School, not the World.

So it's been a while since I've actually updated about school life and how things are going for me. And quite honestly, I couldn't be more thrilled! At the start it was a little hard to find my place and to get in the flow and get over personal hurdles I needed to. But here I am and I am absolutely loving it and feeling blessed that God has brought me so incredibly far. Looking back over this last year seriously just floors me. I'm so encouraged.

School has been terrific. I can see why people have said Portfolio Center is the best part of their life. It's not just that I'm getting valuable training here for my future, but I'm meeting some amazing people and making great friendships...even with teachers...that I know will last forever after these two years here in the program. I'm really enjoying the challenges and obstacles certain assignments create. I'm doing my best to rise to the challenge too. For one class one assignment (which I have yet to shoot) is "motion." We basically have to capture motion in our shot. A lot of the students in the class seem to just be turning in this abstract-looking photographs. And thats really fine and their stuff looks great, but really all that's going on is they are opening their shutter speeds for a long exposure and shaking their camera in the process to get a blurry photo. And the stuff looks cool, but Im just not that abstract kind of person. So I've been coming up with an idea for mine to try and have a story. So this weekend I'll be shooting my friend Eric at the train station and I'm hoping that he will be in focus while people walking around him and on/off the train will be blurry. And I'll have him listening to an iPod or something. My other shoot went really well! We were assigned a year and told to shoot a subject with natural window light. I got 1945 and chose to shoot a WWII widow. Here is the final result...

I really love this shot idea too. I got all of these props from online and shot it at my apartment. Unfortunately I have to reshoot because I'm an idiot and didn't pay attention to certain detail, but my professor really loved my concept and idea and composition. So I'm looking forward to nailing it even more at the reshoot in a week or so. For one of my other classes we had an assignment called "Fruit" and we are to make fruit be something else. I chose to do bowling...

I made the bowling alley out of graham crackers, the bowling pins are summer squash and then I used a watermelon as the bowling ball. My professor for this class really loved my concept and idea too. A lot of the other students had really awesome ideas for theirs too. One student had radishes cut and painted to look like sperm and then a tangerine as an egg hahaha. It looks awesome!

Critique week is kinda like finals week and it is coming very fast. We're pretty much done with this quarter. Once we come back from Thanksgiving that week is called Studio Week where we finalize all of our projects and make sure everything is perfect and then that following week is Critique Week where you are assigned a time and you go in a room in front of a panel of outside professionals in the industry and they judge your work, or "Deliverables" that you present to be judged/critiqued. Sounds intense, I know haha. Of the four classes I have, I have 16 total Deliverables to present. 12 of which are different photo assignments and the other 4 are writing assignments from my writing class. Of the 16, I have roughly 3 of them completed and ready to print. A lot of the other work for the other deliverables is shot and stuff, it's just a matter of tweaking and adjusting to perfection. So crunch time is upon me.

I met with the head instructor for the writing dept. this morning just to dicuss my future goals regarding my magazine and my long-term dreams and vision I have. He was really amazingly supportive and encouraging about it and had a lot of great advice. It's something that blows my mind getting used to the fact that all of the instructors here are really here for us at any time of the day and they seriously bend over backwards to help us out. He was basically telling me they may have to create a separate curriculum for me because they have never had a Portfolio Center student want to do something that I want to do. Which is really cool to hear, but at the same time a little nervous knowing I'll be a guinea pig in a lot of ways. But I'm very open-minded about it and looking forward to what these next quarters have to offer. I have a feeling these two years here is going to fly by! Continue to keep me in your prayers as I know you will be. 1 Quarter just about over and 7 more to go haha.

I'm really looking forward to going home for Thanksgiving in two weeks! I'm taking an Amtrak train home because it's actually cheaper than driving. So that should be fun. I can't wait to see my family and my niece and nephews! I freakin' love my family and the holidays! This year will be a little bittersweet because my sister Rachel will be leaving us at the New Year to be a missionary for two years and we won't really see her until she returns. Weird feeling. I'm so proud of her though. It's weird to think that when she returns, I'll be done with school and working Lord knows where! Awesome! The Hamptons are taking over! Hahaha. But I'm very much looking forward to the holiday season and recharging my batteries. I really want to find work or something over the break to make a little cash. Hey I can always "wrap" presents at the mall haha. Luckily wedding season is upon me. The first one in January. I have about 12 weddings in 2009 so far and I'm very blessed that is going so well. If you guys havent checked out my site, www.redbulbphotography.com please do so. I keep some other grad school shots on there also.

For now I think thats about all the update that I have. Keep me posted on how all of you are doing and I look forward to seeing you all soon! God Bless and thanks so much for your continued prayer and support!

More to come...