artistic freedom

It's been about two weeks since I last wrote, but although I feel as though I must write an update, it feels as though nothing's changed. Oh, yeah: I had that meeting with Adam. The day before St. Patrick's Day, no less (to me St. Pat's is all about tradition--tradition that I'm happy with, that is--and yes, I'm part Irish). However, also on St. Pat's Day, I felt freer artistically: like all (or most) of the old ideas had fallen away, leaving me free to truly explore the world of visual art. I think what I really needed was someone from my school saying, "hey, it's totally cool--that's what art school is there for." And that's what I got. I'm meeting with him again a week from tomorrow.

Although I've been going to this school for almost a year, I still cannot get over how much support there is here. I think that's because my only other academic experience outside of homeschooling was at Athabasca University, which wasn't a good match for me: I don't like using the phone and email as a primary source of communication. They're okay if I'm setting up an appointment or just getting in touch with an instructor if I haven't met them in the hallways. But I don't like just talking to a voice--I need real, face-to-face communication. Plus, all the tutors, etc., are in the Mountain timezone--three hours behind Atlantic time--which meant that I had to be ready to talk to a tutor at nine or ten PM. Ouch. It works for some (AU has been in existence since July 1970, though not always as an Internet-based school), but it doesn't work for me.

This Friday my photography class was about developing contact sheets in the darkroom. We got the negatives developed at Harvey Studios (which is about a block away from the school) last week and then developed them in the NBCCD darkroom. Judging by how the sheets look, I'm very happy with how the photos turned out.

I found that the way that I went about taking photos was different: because I was limited to twenty-four exposures and I couldn't delete the photos, I felt as though every photo had to count. So I spent more time composing an image and making sure everything was juuuust right before hitting the shutter button. After I got used to it, I actually enjoyed using a manual camera. Maybe I'll even go back to it for some things (though I still consider myself a digital photographer). Maybe. I'd have to look into places where I can get photos developed. But then there's the fact that I can't post those photos online without scanning them first... :-P (Yeah, I'm a techie.)