Run, Rabbit, Run

Hey guys, I haven't blogged in a few days, but I've been working on Art Dump and taking pictures. I suppose I should go in order, so here is my picture from Saturday–

Uh, okay, sooooo–

This weekend, friend Maya and friend David came over to my place and we ate gluten free snacks while watching The Wizard of Oz and playing Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon at the same time. There are scores of websites with atrocious layouts dedicated to the theory that Floyd's best album matches up perfectly with this movie, so David suggested that we test this theory, and there were definitely many eerie moments at which the music and movie aligned. For example, the track "Money," opening with a cash register sound effect, played exactly when Dorothy stepped out of her fallen house and into vivacious Munchkin Land. I seriously recommend syncing the two, and a little research is required to get it just right.

So, right, this image. I don't really know what I was going for other than I wanted to include the album's iconic rainbow springing from a prism, and this picture ended up looking like some sort of metaphor for demonic homosexuality?? If I were consistently pessimistic I'd dub this pic a failure, but I am situationally optimistic so I call it a baby step towards creative genius!

Yesterday I went ON A BOAT with friends and used an underwater camera, but I left those pictures at work so I'll post about them tomorrow.

When I got home today I was talking about The Cure with brother Michael, and he told me that my fashion sense often has that New Wave vibe, so I decided to play dress up. My outfit ended up being more punk than post-punk, although it is certainly Robert Smith-esque. 

Alright READ THIS PARAGRAPH BEFORE ENJOYING THESE GPOYS

I shot these in back of my house, a breeding ground for mosquitos. The blood suckers were everywhere, everywhere. On my legs, on my feet, on my face, in my hair, around my camera. They generally saturated the air with their incessant wining. And even though I inundated myself with bug spray IT DIDN'T DO SHIT, AND I WAS COVERED IN TINY DEMONS TRYING TO EXSANGUINATE ME WHILE TRYING TO FOCUS MY F/1.8 LENS. That last bit in English means that I had a very narrow area in focus, and because I was taking these pictures by myself, I couldn't auto-focus when I was in place, so I had to set my self-timer to go off six times in a row and move between shots to estimate where the exact sweet-spot of focus would line up. Taking fashion photos by yourself is TIRESOME AND MAY INCLUDE BUGS.

My take on Blue Steel, obvi.

I'm actually really proud of myself for taking these and figuring out the focusing. They're all pretty grainy because I shot them at ISO over 1000 because, even if you can't tell by these photos, it's really dark behind my house. In fact, my house in general is seriously lacking photons, and it drives me bonkers. 

Alright, so it's time for the Anxiety Attack of the Day

I got my first pay check today (can I get a Kidz Bop "heck yeah!" ?!) so I drove to the bank after work to deposit it, which made me feel like an Actual Adult. However, upon entering the parking structure, I was reduced to Clueless Teen because I could not FOR THE LIFE OF ME figure out a good angle to pull into one of the parking spaces. The lot was under a building so there were Pillars of Death placed strategically so hapless bank-goers accidentally annihilate their front bumpers, forcing them to spend more money on repairs. Now I'm convinced that our credit union is in cahoots with the Jiffy Lube down the street on this matter, and they share the profits made thanks to the parking impaired. 

LUCKILY, I didn't destroy my car (or anyone else's), but when I pulled in I was a good foot out of the stall on the left side. And to make matters worse, there was another dude who looked like a FELLOW YOUNG PERSON right across from my stall, standing by his car doing who the hell knows what at the bank. My brain is screaming GREAT JOB, RACHAEL, YOU'RE PARKING LIKE AN IDIOT IN FRONT OF A YOUNG FELLOW WHO IS PROBABLY CRITIQUING EVERY SPIN OF THE WHEEL AS YOU ATTEMPT TO CORRECT YOUR POSITION. Then I still didn't manage to get all the way into the stall, but I started off towards the entrance anyways, then I realized I had forgotten my check in the car, and I ran back to get it (back past the young dude), then dropped my phone and wallet in the middle of the parking lot while running back. 

MY LIFE IS A MESS. 

It's okay, though, because I successfully deposited my check, dropped off four rolls of film to be developed (EXPECT WONDERS), and bought an Iced Toddy to console myself. I got the coffee at this work-in-progress coffee shop at Ala Moana called The Curb. It's on the ground level in a space that was previously The Waxing Co., but unfortunately the storefront sign of the hair removal salon is still in place above the entrance, while a banner for the café is located inside. I learned at my last visit that they are waiting until the lease is up for the previous business to completely revamp the place. I've been searching for some sort of pun that has to do with the the name "The Curb" and waxing hair off, but I have a feeling that would be too dirty for this blog so I'm not going to go any further. 

PHEW! Thanks for sticking with me, whoever you are.

–Rachael

WELL...

...okay I didn't take a picture today, but I've been taking pictures in my mind, ripping up magazines, and  crafting a pan-flute out of broken mechanical pencils. I excuse myself thusly.
Now, enjoy a list of vocabulary words I've written down from the books I've read this summer along with sentences I've written to help me remember them.

effluvium: an unpleasant or harmful odor, secretion, or discharge.

The effluvia of baby barf resonated in my living room years after the incident with the slim fast and breast milk mix-up, and I vowed never to store my weight loss beverages in unmarked bottles again.

sylphine: like a sylph (a slender, graceful woman or girl) (this is a pretty archaic word)
At the street corner stood the sylphine silhouette of a woman, but upon closer inspection it was merely a lamp post, so I sat on the curb and wept bitterly. 

fey: giving the impression of vague unworldliness; possessing supernatural powers

Even though this elusive and fey sophomore strode the hallways clad in flowing black cloaks and spoke to no one, by 4 PM each day she was in her room watching Arrested Development like the rest of us.

crenulate (or crenulated): having a finely scalloped or notched outline or edge (esp. of a leaf, shell, or shoreline)

What a waste of a mollusk, I thought to myself, as the pugnacious six-year-old boy shoved the crenulated shell of a live scallop up my nose.

immutable: unchanging over time or unable to be changed

Winning the lottery doesn't alter the immutable fact that I am sixty-two years old with a thirty year-old son who refuses to move out of my house, let alone get out of his race-car bed frame.

poleax: to cause great shock to someone (or, noun, a sort of battle-ax, and in another verb form, to hack someone with said battle-ax).
Naturally, the DMV worker poleaxed the disoriented and now wide-awake customers when he poleaxed the young man (who made the vacuous decision to remark on the length of the license renewal line) with his recently sharpened poleax. 

garrote: to kill by strangulation, typically with a thin length of rope or wire

Typically if a violinist instills within his or her audience the urge to garrote said musician with their own violin strings, it is a sign that a career in the orchestral arts is not a plausible one.

exorbitant: unreasonably high
Despite a complete lack of necessity and square footage for a taxidermy Alaskan Grizzly Bear, Calvin purchased it with fervor in hopes of relieving his irrational fear of salmon.

ursine: related to bears
Unfortunately, the soul of this bear was only temporary suspended in ursine limbo and would soon reanimate and acquire a taste for neurotic humans.

atavistic: relating to or characterized by reversion to something ancient or ancestral

In an atavistic fit of despair, the starving mime quite literally pounced on the butcher's table of raw meat, startling the previously bored couples and impatient children at the open air market.

purloin: to steal

He managed to consume most of a lamb shank, staining his striped shirt in the process, before the authorities arrived and compelled him to purloin a bundle of meat and sprint into the nearest subway entrance.

Wow, I had more words but I got really tired. Maybe I'll do a couple at the end of every post from now on. Well, because I didn't take a picture today, I should rummage through my hard drive to find something to post for the sake of getting the attention of those who only look at my images...

My portrait of a conservative Circa 2009, that should do it.

zzzZzzZZzzzzzz

More anxiety, and words

Hey.

This image would be better if my body and face were as sharp as my hands and the low sugar, high fructose corn syrup free cherry pie filling. I'm glad my mom didn't see what I was doing in our garage, because however disturbing a final work of art may be, it will never be as disturbing as seeing the process, your daughter stuffing her face with canned fruit and spitting it back out onto the ground repeatedly.

I got home from hanging out with friends and immediately set up this picture, which is a visual embodiment of my anxiety. A phrase that I tend to insert into common conversation is "I'm gonna barf," which is an infantile way of expressing a complex tug-of-war running from one end of the slimy grey rope of my brain to the other. This picture is just a feeling, an effect of phantom conversations that move in waves of mental nausea and of terrifyingly saccharine pain (Stay tuned for Rachael's Mind, a small crowded closet where a paranoid forty y/o woman, wearing a bandana and eating a Special K cereal bar, sits at a traditional high school desk and tries to talk to her cat).

I'm tired and I recently finished cutting out the faces of female celebrities while thinking of relevant insults, and I want to wake up early, so here is a PREVIEW of what I will actually do on my next post with the words that I've been collecting from various books I've been reading:

admonish: to warn or reprimand someone firmly; advise or urge earnestly; warn of something to be avoided.

"Don't touch the burrito, you fool!" the young man admonished his grandfather, who was so crotchety at this point he was about to eat the overflowing bean sleeping bag just to punish his insolent grandson with violent flatulence. 

Just so I can remember them!

Alright, gnightgrkksdsldfmgndfk

More Lens Babies/The first idea I feel I can classify as "big"

 First I'll talk about this so I get it out of the way. If you actually follow my blog, you probably follow me around on Facebook, so you've already heard about this today, and if by some miracle you haven't, then Jesus H. click HERE and EXPLORE THE PAGE! People are already giving me ideas, I'm elated.
I'm not exaggerating when I say this pile of supplies has been building up for about five years. I've made lists of summer goals annually since I was in sixth grade, and I've rarely followed through with any of them. I try to keep up with crafty projects during the school year and over time I've noticed that when I'm making something for a specific person, I feel more motivated to create a unique, high-quality final product (I make the best frickin' birthday cards, ask anyone).
So now I am working under deadlines to create Top Notch artwork in an insanely short span of time to please other people! Sounds a lot like my regular school year at Iolani! It's true, sometimes I feel lost without the tortuous private school structure, a structure which often completely dismantles my desire to make art, or write, or read, or, you know, do anything else besides cry into my mattress.
HOWEVER, these deadlines are incentive to push myself to do what I love, and do it prolifically, instead of farting in my bedroom all summer.

I put up this huge map of New England in my room and made it into a calendar, indicating when I will start and finish my projects, while constantly reminding me of where I want to end up for college.

      

            

I know it's actually rather warm in New York right now but just let me have my frigid digits fantasy. Wow now I'm going to start a band called Frigid Digits. COPYRIGHT 2013!

I already have a lot of great suggestions, like picture frames made from my camera graveyard. I have to learn how to make a lamp, as well as an instrument (the type was not specific, so technically it could be an instrument of torture, but I don't think that's what friend Emily had in mind), and my goal is to try out as many new mediums as possible. These few months are going to make up for all the hours and years I wasted on playing Animal Crossing or watching movies from the Gay and Lesbian section of Netflix until three AM (well neither of those things are complete wastes of time, but I certainly didn't balance out my arting and vegging).

I've always wanted to do some sort of large project and get other artistic people to collaborate and just BE EXCITED with me, and I think I'm on the right track!
This is happening at the same time as my photo-a-day project (which I AM DOING, although my flickr needs updating), and my Fabric Barf Saga at work, and my ever-growing book queue, and my eventual plan to develop a more substantial writing portfolio. The writing part worries me. I've written creatively significantly less since starting this blog, and understandably so. But I've also been reading more and taking more pictures, so all is not lost. The prospect of starting to write more is contributing to my anxiety, and I think I'm going to start waking up at five again to write when my mind is fresh (at a certain point in the evening my eloquence shuts off and I try to write out words like "eloquencey" which don't exist, and get mad at spell check for telling me so).

Now that I have specific projects and goals, I don't feel like vomiting all my organs onto the floor out of anxiety over this Big Idea I got. By the way, I was inspired by Phil Hansen's Ted Talk. This guy creates wonderful works of art using outrageous materials that range from worms to his own used bandaids. His website is here.

NOW FOR TODAY'S PICS.

I accompanied the 8 AM and 10:30 AM photo classes on field trips to Waikiki and Chinatown, respectively, and brought the Canon with the Lens Baby again. Sometimes these photo excursions turn into an opportunity for these kids to buy off-campus beverages during school hours, but they produce images that are much more refreshing than those taken on the utilitarian Iolani campus. I walked around with Ms. U (Alison Uyehara-Ngo is her full name, I feel like I need to fully introduce someone who I am talking about) while the students gallivanted; they were out of our sight within ten minutes on each trip. In Chinatown Ms. U bought me a Thai tea smoothie out of the kindness of her heart, which nourished my penniless teenage soul (payday is coming, though!).

Again, it's extremely difficult to focus with the Lens Baby, but the Muse produces whimsical, lo-fi images that are quite endearing.

Ms. U and her new, vaguely Jane Fonda haircut

SELFIE1!!@!!@

I have several more complicated photo projects clanking around in my brain right now. Perhaps not clanking, for that implies I have empty thoughtspace, of which I have a scintilla. I have photo ideas shuffling uncomfortably in the crowded airplane aisle of my brain, probably trying to go to the bathroom or find an extra blanket, and I just need to schedule times to execute them.
One idea requires black and white film and a handful of volunteers who are willing to share a painful experience with me, take me to the location of that experience, photograph them, and print the image in the darkroom while removing their face from the print. I am trying to think of ways to get a wide demographic of people involved in that, so I don't know if I will execute it this summer.
My other idea involves broken enlarger lenses, my favorite forest, and my stalwart model Sarah Garcia. That is definitely going to happen, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, dudes.

–Rachael

MMmm, yes, my Irrational Social Anxiety

I was struck with an interesting idea today after watching this Ted Talk and subsequently destroyed the living room for an hour to take a picture, but I will be revealing things about that on the morrow.
Because I really didn't feel like taking pictures yesterday, I borrowed a Canon from school so I could shoot with the Lens Baby we have, in hopes of being inspired by this alternative technology. I don't know if I've mentioned that I'm a Nikon person, but using a Canon with little experience feels extremely awkward, like trying to talk with a retainer molded for someone else's mouth.

This is the lens I was using–

Wat.

This model is called Muse, has a fixed aperture with an accordion middle, and you bend/squeeze it to focus. It's sort of difficult to get a perfectly sharp spot in the image, but it's certainly fun to play with.

MR. MEOW MEOW

Alright, the past few posts have been introspective or taciturn, so I think I should write something a little more humorous.

Although my mother insists that I have a gift for making friends (which explains why I'm invited to Total Ragers every weekend and my calendar is overflowing with social events), there are small, seemingly harmless things that trigger social anxiety for me. I'll use my frequent trips to Coffee Talk as an example, because that is where I chilled, much like a villain, after work today.

I went there frequently during the spring semester, but there was a period of two weeks during which I didn't drive and didn't purchase my usual Iced Dirty Chai.

Wait. Will the barista still remember my order? Is he going to notice that I didn't come in for a few weeks? Will he be offended that I didn't come for my Dirty Chai? How do I greet this dude? How long do I hold eye contact? Do I say hello in a knowing sort of way or do I nod my head or curtsey or WHAT DO I DO?!

It really only gets worse when I'm paying for my drink. One time my debit card was rejected, which instilled in me the most violent sense of shame you could imagine in a small then-sixteen-year-old body.

Okay I will take out my card first and put it on the counter just so and now I will take out my stamp card WITHOUT THE LIBRARY CARD THAT STAYS IN THE WALLET okay the stamp card will go here I will sign the receipt now, oh god that's not what my signature really looks like, the guy working today is really cute I screwed up my signature CUTE GUY THAT'S NOT MY REAL SIGNATURE PLEASE FORGIVE ME.

You know in case I end up marrying Cute Guy and he watches me sign the marriage certificate with my actual signature and screams "THAT IS NOT HOW YOU SIGNED FOR YOUR DIRTY CHAI ALL THOSE YEARS, YOU ARE NOT MY WIFE, YOU FILTHY IMPOSTOR!"

There is little exaggeration going on at this point. My anxiety from today, while taking the Lens Baby shots, went like this:

I hope none of the baristas see me taking a picture of my cappuccino, I always hated That Asshat Taking Pics of Their Coffee, but now I am said Asshat. I mean it's not like I can take pictures of those women speaking Japanese over there. Did they just look at me? They are judging my asshat coffee pics. Okay coffee is gone let's take pictures outside NOT BY THE WINDOW I CAN'T LET ANYONE INSIDE SEE ME TAKING PICTURES AGAIN oh man I want to take a picture of this newspaper stand but this is a four-way intersection and there are so many people who are going to wonder why I'm taking a picture of a newspaper stand. Okay I'll walk down this way, cool, jesus christ that woman sitting on that bench stopped her conversation when I walked by SHE WAS JUDGING MY CAMERA, I'M SORRY I AM WALKING AROUND WITH A LARGE CAMERA, EVERYONE.

No, really, it's sort of debilitating sometimes. I also have problems with meeting up with people for Social Events the first couple times. I love being punctual, but I don't want to seem like an anal-rententive psychopath, so I get anxious to the point of nausea while trying to arrive somewhere fashionably late, routing and rerouting through traffic and unforeseen challenges constantly. Is this something I'm going to grow out of? Did I get stuck with the Detail-Oriented Anxiety gene? Dear god I hope not.

THX,

W-2POREWIKLF;WEROIGJ;FLKGAF

I'm really really sunburnt right now

All over my body, like, ohmygod-this-is-third-degree-that's-not-a-hyperbole sunburnt. But, it is a product of a day at the beach with new friends, so I welcome this rosy, painful, and temporary body suit.

Okay, I had an image in my head, and this is not it. I was frantically jumping back and forth, up and down the steps from my garage, attempting to creating a sinister walking motion, but it either came out too blobby or just stupid looking. I ultimately chose this one and morphed my legs into a cloak because I like what my hands are doing. Seriously, I have no idea how they got that way, but it's pretty cool.

There are some visible tropical plants on the right side and that just screws with my ambience, but I can't reconstruct the topography of my front yard area. I was exhausted after all that jumping (seriously I probably looked like one of those ghosts that haunts a house and repeats the same motion over and over again) so this is the picture I have for the day, even if I am not happy with it. And that is okay! Because we can't have awesome days every day. Nor can we have eloquent blog posts everyday, apparently. I'm gonna go read.

Thanks,

–––

just the twenty-first

Today I took several Average Photographs. First, I got lunch with friend Catalin after work, whom I haven't seen in a while, and like any pair of teenagers sliding into the summer doldrums we had no idea what to do, so we sat in a park that was hot. Very hot. Hot as balls, I believe.

I rate this as average not based on subject matter, Cat i luv u.

Then I got home and started reading a book and doing my laundry and it was raining and the rain was nice in the light, sort of pale yellow, and the sun was a bright splotch sitting on the edge of the mountains, and the puddles in the driveway created a fractured watercolour of the world, and the rain turned into a fine mist so I thought it would be a good time to take a photo. I ran inside to get my camera, but it was just a few moments too late, and the sun had ducked behind the edge of the valley, and the light was gone, so I took a dumb picture of a flower.

Edited to mimic the light, of course. Then, feeling perhaps a momentarily lapse in young adult propriety and a wistful childlike urge to become part of the environment, I lowered my face into the puddle.

And I look very tired, because I was, although not sad, just interested, like maybe I should put away my words and my lens and just feel the world with my hands and face and feet for a while, but it started raining again, and my camera was going to get wet, so I went inside, and I read more, and I left the world. The street you live on feels prosaic, presently. Maybe it didn't, once, because you had less to think about, and more room to observe.

I made food, I made french pressed coffee with homemade whipped cream, of which I have eaten half a pint in the past two days, with blueberries. 

Just a day, mundane, images. 

And I did start to type out 'maybe if you jam all three images together they will amount to an Interesting Image,' and then I thought, well actually I can do that, so let's see. I put them into Merge HDR in Photoshop, a feature which combines two or more images that are of the same thing but are exposed differently to get a higher dynamic range of light. It just mashes them together and gives you a list of preset effects to make it photorealistic or high contrast or whathaveyou. 

So I came out with this–

It doesn't look like it but all three images are in there. It's interesting, if anything. 

Perhaps I will compose something tomorrow, or in my sleep, or on the way out of it.

Cool, cool,

–Rachael