Messiness is art
March 2nd, 2007
Here’s a portion of my life: on some days I am driving and I see something happening. Two questions immediately pop into my head. 1) Is the issue/circumstance that I am seeing newsworthy?, and if so, 2) Where do I stop?
I used to have to ask myself if I have my camera with me, but now it’s usually always with me. I always have quarters with me so I can meter it in Los Angeles if I have to, but all in all I’ve heard other photographers say that photojournalists in LA are also called “drivers who navigate through traffic” because one of the biggest components of taking that picture is getting there.
Then I’m rushing to the scene with my notebook and my camera, and half the time I am running and trying to catch my breath because everything is going so fast. There’s police, and if they’re after someone I follow them but I have to make sure I’m not getting in their way. Sometimes I lose the person they’re after in the parking lot, and at other times my camera goes off and security people get really angry and then I have to say sorry and then smile the “I’m a little girl that’s lost can you help me tee hee” smile (but at least I got my picture).
But on the other side of things, there’s the daily grind. Most of the time it’s not adrenaline pumping, and yesterday I got to relax a bit and take pictures of a junk drawer exhibit at the Unurban Coffee House. It’s an exhibit with about 10 pictures of junk drawers, and when my editor gave me the assignment I was a bit confounded but when I went there the room was really neat and it’s a semi-absurd but fascinating idea that what’s in our desk drawers, and how it’s organized, can be one way of defining who we are.
It gave me time to think about things and photograph under low light, so it was relaxing, and enlightening too. I think my ultra organized husband might think differently of this exhibit, but this exhibit makes me feel better about being messy, cause it’s artistic to be messy right?
Valentine’s Day
February 15th, 2007
Valentine’s Day keeps on getting better and better for me. I started off the morning with about 20 men singing a cappella to me and ended the evening babysitting a cute l’il boy and enjoying chocolate covered strawberries and champagne with my husband while watching a movie.
The neat thing about covering this feature is that I got to see them serenade people from all walks of life: from stockbrokers at big corporate buildings to the Albertson’s check-out lady above.
What is a photojournalist?
January 17th, 2007
…and other questions too. This will help you get to know me and what I desire and aspire to be by being a photojournalist. All of the following below is written by Mark Hancock on his blog (http://markhancock.blogspot.com/) and in reading it I agree with many of his principles and he has stated it with much conciseness and eloquence.
1) What does it take to be a great journalist?
A great journalist cares about people and an ideal world. A great journalist can approach a topic as vast as the universe and make it simple and interesting to both Einstein and the new immigrant, who is trying desperately to learn the language.
A great journalist cares about people and an ideal world. A great journalist can approach a topic as vast as the universe and make it simple and interesting to both Einstein and the new immigrant, who is trying desperately to learn the language.The written word has power. With skill, reporters can expose the evil of the world and bring it into the light. However, journalism is limited to non-apathetic, monolinguistic people with some time to kill and a few neurons still firing.
Enter photojournalism. It destroys almost all barriers. Justice can draw its sword in the time it takes an eye to scan an image. An image has no age, language or intelligence limits.
2)What is a photojournalist?
A journalist tells stories. A photographer takes pictures of nouns (people, places and things). A photojournalist takes the best of both and locks it into the most powerful medium available–a single frozen image.
A journalist tells stories. A photographer takes pictures of nouns (people, places and things). A photojournalist takes the best of both and locks it into the most powerful medium available–a single frozen image.Although photojournalists can take properly exposed and well composed photographs all day long, they hunt verbs. They hunt them, shoot them, and show them to their readers. Then, they hunt more.
To tell a story, a sentence needs a subject, a verb and a direct object. News photos need the same construction. Photojournalists tell stories with their images. Also, words are always used in conjunction with photojournalist’s images.
To be a photojournalist, you must understand the relationship between the image and these basic elements of language (all languages–worldwide).
The girl (must) hit (or miss) the ball. There are no other options.
The girl is easy to photograph. The ball is easy to photograph. The verb is the hard part.
As a servant of the citizens, it is the photojournalist’s OBLIGATION to capture the entire sentence involved in EVERY event. There are no excuses. It is hit or missed. Some photographers don’t care. They have a picture of the bat. “Hey, that’s what tried to hit the ball.” They just don’t get it.
3) More on the photojournalist
A photojournalist is a visual reporter of facts. The public places trust in its reporters to tell the truth. The same trust is extended to photojournalists as visual reporters.
A photojournalist is a visual reporter of facts. The public places trust in its reporters to tell the truth. The same trust is extended to photojournalists as visual reporters.This responsibility is paramount to a photojournalist. At all times, he has many thousands of people seeing through his eyes and expecting to see the truth. This truth, unlike written words, has no language, age or intellectual boundaries. Most people immediately understand an image.
In today’s world of grocery store tabloids and digital manipulation of images, the photojournalist must still tell the truth. The photojournalist constantly hunts for the images (or verbs), which tell of the day-to-day struggles and accomplishments of his community. These occurrences happen naturally. There is no need to “set up” reality. There is no need to lie to a community that has bestowed its trust. In a nutshell: If a photojournalist is not going to fake a fire or a street stabbing scene, why would he set up “person A” giving “person B” an object (award, check, trophy etc. …).
The photojournalist simply wants to hang around, be forgotten and wait for the right moment. Then, the hunt begins anew.
Like the police officer or firefighter, the photojournalist’s concern is his community even if that means sacrificing comfort or life. Many photojournalists die every year in the process of collecting visual information, which lets the public know of atrocities, dangers and the mundane.
4) Personal views on the job
This is not a “glam” job. A photojournalist is a servant (like a waitress or a sanitation worker). They are expected to be on the job around the clock to serve the public.
This is not a “glam” job. A photojournalist is a servant (like a waitress or a sanitation worker). They are expected to be on the job around the clock to serve the public.News never stops. Again, NEWS NEVER STOPS. You sleep when you can. You eat when you’re done. You are never really off the clock.
Photojournalists are role models. They don’t want to be, but they are.
At a mid-sized or small newspaper, a photojournalist cannot have a night on the town and neglect his or her city. Everyone from the little tykes to the senior citizens, from the street people to the debutantes, knows the photojournalist. The photojournalist is the visible portion of the newspaper. Reporters can handle everything by phone. Editors can stay in their office and never talk to a soul. Pressmen (generic) and graphic artists can go strait to the bar after work if they choose. However, the photojournalist must crawl through barnyard dung for one shoot and arrive at the annual celebrity gala an hour later.
I grew up here. I love this city and the people who make it the wonderful place it is. For the most part: houses do not catch fire, everyone looks out for each other, nobody goes to bed hungry, kids go to college and become CEOs (or photojournalists–that’s a long, bizarre story), the arts flourish, the city leaders are respected, and red-light running is the biggest crime.
I love my job.
Hello
December 1st, 2006
I apologize for not having posted lately. It’s been hectic finishing the semester, and I am currently shooting my final project for my class. I get to cover the fashion show at my school, and it’s a new world for me; every dress that I photograph has to be identified by designer, so this gives me a chance to improve on my fact finding skills.
I’m also looking forward to next semester because I’ll be taking a philosophy course and doing some documentary photojournalism on my own.
Meanwhile, if you want to see what inspires me and also my competition pool in the photojournalism world, check out the recent winners from the College Photographer of the Year Website:
More updating as soon as I finish this fashion show.
Let’s play
October 26th, 2006
When I was little I didn’t go to recess for a bit during elementary school. Most kids looked forward to recess, but I wasn’t very outgoing, nor was I looking to fit in. Why bank on the uncertainty of recess? I was afraid of people. And I was afraid of sports. The tether ball looked scary.
So when in third grade a teacher let me help her out during recess, I was hooked. I love being busy, and I loved being productive and not having to worry about fitting in to a group of kids and worrying about them liking me or thinking that I was strange. I went to her classroom as many times as she would allow me and I did all sorts of work, cutting transparencies, for example, and saving some of the leftover clear sheets so I could take them home to my sister and she can write on them with markers and pretend she was a teacher (besides ourselves we had a class consisting of stuffed animals).
Now I’m wondering if I’m compensating for this. As a photographer I feel I’m making up for lost time and going to recess all over again. This time, though, it’s different, and fun too. When I smile and ask someone if they want to “play”, usually they see my camera, and more likely than not, it’s a yes. You can take pictures of me. It’s been so much fun to explore the world with my camera, and now I have a hard time sitting in an office. Thank goodness my husband likes the office. Someone in the family has got to like the office in order for us to survive.
Can’t wait to show all of you more pictures. This weekend I will be at the Valley of Fire in Las Vegas shooting a wedding, and it looks like it’s going to be a gorgeous weekend.
Welcome to the new website
September 29th, 2006
The website is done. I remember when it was only wishful thinking, but finally, here it is.
About a year ago in October I was still thinking about a website and a business, but I told myself it would probably be a few years before I started everything. I was engaged, living from paycheck to paycheck, and paying my graduate school loans back (still am!). I looked at prices to build websites and they were off the wall. After church one evening I was walking to the parking lot and Andrew Lin (he’s my web guy now) and I got to talking about our jobs and our dreams. Andrew loves his job but deep down inside he wanted to do something else involving graphic design. I loved what I was doing at the time too, but I knew that somewhere along the line photography is supposed to be a bigger part of my life.
Andrew and I are about the same age, I’m 27. Dreams come in a different package at this age. If I were 19 and out of high school, or still in college, I would just go for it. Earn $11 an hour at a grocery store and work very hard, go to school all the way and focus solely on achieving my goal. I did do this in the past to write the first draft of my book, and at that age, I wouldn’t have done it any other way. Not to say that I am old now, but now I have different priorities, and we both talked about this and how now’s the time to think faster and smarter. Dreams are achievable at every age, but methods to reaching your goal become different.
Andrew out of the blue says that that he can design a basic website for me, and I made him repeat himself several times because he wanted to do it for me for free, and I couldn’t believe him at first. Yes, free! It’s simple, he says at 11pm in the church parking lot. I can help you do this. Eventually I had enough money to pay him, and my friend Ethan helped me all the way from Alberquerque by scripting the website for me and finding programs to showcase my pictures. So with the help of my friends, here it is. With my husband and my family and all of my friends listening to me talk about beginning this business and supporting me, here it is.
Just the beginning.
My Wedding
September 6th, 2006
Here’s my post as a customer. I finally received my wedding albums in the mail (I got married this year, in March), and they’re really professional and lovely. Queensberry did an excellent job, their albums are hand assembled in New Zealand, and though I paid an arm and a leg for the albums, they’re definitely worth it.
The thing about my wedding is that I thought it was one of the most stressful things I have ever gone through in my life. A lot of people wish they could get married all over again and go through all of the excitement, but for me it was really nerve-racking, and usually when people ask me how it was I say that it was the most stressful thing in my life, and thank God I am only planning to get married once. We were on a budget, I couldn’t get days off at work, and most of all, I felt like everything was compressed and sometimes I felt like I was missing the point of it all but there were so many things I had to get done.
Though I couldn’t shoot my own wedding, we found someone who did: Darcy Padilla, and when I saw her credentials and her pictures, my husband and I knew she was the one. By hiring her to shoot our wedding, she taught me much about what it means to be a wedding photographer, and it’s more than the pictures. it’s how you interact with people, it means being supportive, and it means taking on the full responsibility of capturing a couple’s milestone.
Now that I think about it, we spent about a third of our wedding budget on photography, but it’s all worth it. Now when I look at my album (she took the pictures, I designed the album), I get to relive my wedding, without all of the stress and the fuss. I get to dwell on colors, and people, and when I see the album I see the main point of the wedding and the important things, like friends and family and a lifetime promise. Even the pictures on the beach are stunning, and I only remember slightly that I was in a strapless dress and it was 40 degrees and a thunderstorm seemed imminent.
Check out Darcy’s website www.weddingsbydarcy.com. She was a great deal when she shot our wedding, though I’m not sure if she raised her prices. I know that part of my business is shooting weddings, and if I shoot your wedding I’ll do my best, but if you can afford Darcy, I would recommend her, she’s really good. If you do consider her tell her I said hi.
The other thing that I realized is that alot of you don’t know what I look like. I know that for many of you the blog is the only thing you know of me in this Internet era, so if you go to www.weddingsbydarcy.com, and click on “my wedding portfolio”, my own wedding pictures will be in her portfolio, under Carmel.
I’m back
August 29th, 2006
I’m back and adjusting. Jetlag has punched me in the eye and left me for dead. I’ve been waking up at odd hours, cleaning my entire kitchen at 5 in the morning, and becoming non-functional by 8. It’s nice to be around my husband again, he has been taking good care of me. We usually do alot of things together, so it has been nice hearing about his adventures and then telling him about mine. It’s as if we get to live two lives at once. I’ll write more about my trip to China when I get my photos together and posted.
There are many things to do, but I’m taking it easy and resting up a bit after my trip. Unless something comes up at the last minute, the next wedding I will be shooting will be a wedding weekend at the end of October in Las Vegas. Congratulations to Maria and Andrew! They will be getting married at Valley of the Fire State Park that weekend. It’s a beautiful place, and as usual I’m excited about documenting their event.
Meanwhile, here are some more pictures from the Bacara resort in Santa Barbara.
A month in Hong Kong/China
August 9th, 2006
I’ll be hopping on a plane tomorrow evening to go to Hong Kong/Shenzhen, China for three weeks of business and photography. I don’t go on these extensive trips often, but when I do have to I start to take things for granted less, and my preparation for this trip was the same. My husband and I spent a good week making each other a priority, and I had one of the most relaxing weekends of the year a few days ago, watching the food channel with my husband and walking down the street to get a gift card for one of our church kids and sharing a smoothie on the way back. I also got plenty of time to gather some peace of mind for myself….at the Bacara Resort and Spa, courtesy of one of my best friends, Helen, who is now the Spa Manager there. I took a ton of pictures, but I have a few stories to tell too, so I’ll just post one picture and save the rest for later. 
By the way, more great news, I’m really excited about the fall season. Since I launched my business in the midst of the summer season, it looks like I’ve caught the fall wedding season, and it’s really exciting…I’m especially filling up my September and October weekends, and at the end of October I’m scheduled to shoot a wedding near Las Vegas, at a state park. It has been great talking to many brides; I find myself relating to them easily, since I myself have only been married for a few months, since March of this year. So the craziness of planning a wedding is not unfamiliar to me.
Though I will be in Hong Kong/China, someone will be answering my phone and my email and taking care of the company while I am gone, and I hope to check email in China, though I am not sure of this since for much of the time I will be in a rural area. Nevertheless, it will be a good change, and I can’t wait to bring back the pictures!
Underwood Farms
July 28th, 2006
Happy Friday! I am finally caught up in my posts. This past Saturday some of the “adults” took our youth group (I’m with the church kids every Saturday evening, trying to keep them out of trouble) raspberry/blackberry picking.
I was going to take them strawberry picking, but I was two days too late. Since it has been so hot in LA a kind lady in Carlsbad informed me that the strawberries were beginning to melt so they had to pick the rest. So I found Underwood farms (it was that or another place that offered to take you around the farm on a “wagon tour” and then they let you pick 1 watermelon, so I decided to place my bets with this place)
I think I was more excited than all of the guys, but you can pick vegetables too! The consensus for us city folk: raspberries are fun to pick, blackberries hurt a bit more and stain. We were supposed to give the fruit we picked to the convalescent home, but the raspberries were a bit sour and we didn’t want to shock the old folks or have them remember us for sour fruit.
All in all, it was a really fun day. Oh yeah, and for the first time in my life I saw an Alpaca! That’s all.
