First Week, Second Quarter

Well the first week of the new quarter has officially come to a close, and I know you people are dying to know what my classes are like. So...here we go. I'll start with Tuesday since I have no classes Mondays :)

Writing Workshop: I think this class will be very very beneficial to me. It's basically going to be a practice on learning to edit masterfully your own work and others. We will spend class time reading our assignments to each other, editing our pieces and also explaining why it should be changed to this or that for a more powerful story for the reader. It'll be great for me and my writing. Cause quite honestly I dont think Im that great of a writer, I just love to. Our first assignment we were given the word "Empty" and we have to write a story in any form except poetry using this one word as our subject. So I spent some time thinking about it and I kept thinking of cheesy stuff like an empty heart, etc. The dictionary had a definition for the word that said "Absence of signs of life." So it made me think of the topic of "abortion." :) Which should be great since I love controversy haha. So I'm going to work on it this weekend. It'll probably start off with two heartbeats and end with just one. All of our assignments have to have 3 drafts. We have to write, read, edit, repeat all of that and then turn in one final copy. Should be fun.
Digital Design: I thought this computer class was just on the InDesign program like learning how to use it, etc. Which it kind of is, but to a grand extent. Our assignment this quarter is each of us has to design a 12-page brochure for a Drug and Alcohol Rehab Center. Even redesigning their logo. Each of us got a different location. Mine is Bridge House in New Orleans. So I had to research their place and start coming up with ideas. Not only that, but by this next class we have to have 50 rough sketches of logo ideas. Should be a nice change of pace for me to take a design class. The teacher is very cool, but seems like he will be brutal if he has to. I heard he likes to try and make students cry haha.

Wednesday:
Printing/Photoshop: This class I think will be really awesome! The teacher is a former student here and he will be teaching us a little bit about using the printer's at school to our advantage when it comes to making eye-popping prints of our work, but mostly the class is like an Advanced Photoshop class. Our assignment in that class is we have to make 3 or 4 photos into one. It's very hard to explain. You can look at the teacher's website here and look at one photo he has of a few mobsters beating up a guy in a chair. It looks like one shot, but it's actually five I think he said. You basically take a photo of the background, each person individually and do a lot of photoshop work. It's basically something we're going to learn. Interesting.

Thursday:
Art + Commerce: Thursday is going to be a long day. Before these two classes we have seminar. Ugh. This class will be a new course for me personally because it teaches us about Fine Art Photography and the market out there for it. We'll be taking a lot of field trips to museums, print shops, studios, etc to learn all about it as well as take photos ourselves for potential selling in this dept. of Photography. It's basically like all the artwork you see in hotels, building lobbies, you name it. It'll be a stretch for me just because I never really thought about this aspect to Photography before. But the teacher is pretty cool. His website can be found here. He told me I have a good Photojournalistic eye which is nice to hear since that's something I want to keep doing once I start my magazine.
Still Life: I think this has potential to be my favorite class of the quarter. Not only is the teacher really funny (which will keep me awake), he also has a very addictive laugh that makes you want to laugh when you hear it. Like nice and bellowy haha. The class is basically teaching us studio photography but with inanimate objects. Our first assignment we have to shoot the impossible (i.e. a feather holding up a bowling ball). We're allowed to shoot it creatively in the studio, or manipulate it in Photoshop after we shoot all the items for our shot. There is a lot of criteria for the assignment. It has to work for advetisements on billboards, transit ads, be educational and most importantly inspire the imagination. It also has to be something simple so it's understood when looked at. He gave an example of a wire wastebasket being full with balled up paper, but the shadow of it makes it still look empty. Something like that that is catchy and impossible. We took turns giving ideas and for some reason all I could think of was walking on water. Even though the Lord did it, I know we couldn't. He loved the idea but we can't use anything living, so it would have to be a car sitting on top of a lake or something. Ugh. My mind is still stumped. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

But that's pretty much it. Should be an interesting quarter and I'm looking forward to the challenge. It'll also be good practice of balancing school projects with weddings on the weekend. For instance, I'm getting ready to leave in two hours for Spartanburg to shoot my friend's wedding this weekend. That's time I won't have to work on school stuff. So needless to say, Sunday and Monday I'll be busy busy busy with school work. In other wedding news, I picked up two more weddings. One in March and one in August. The makes the total of weddings this year to 15 so far. I'm very pumped and excited about that! Please be praying that my car will hold on and last through these weddings and after.

Keep praying for my sister Rachel who leaves on Monday and will be gone for two years. You can keep track of her life also by visiting her site here. Thanks for the encouragement and prayers you guys. That's all for now. I hope 2009 is off to a bang for all of you! God Bless!

More to come...