I just really liked this sign for some reason.

Anyway, sorry for taking so long to get to this final entry. Sunday wasn’t as eventful as the rest of the days, because we had to leave pretty early for the 5 hour drive back to Mobile.

My big sis Crystal, looking awesome.

Check out was at 12:00 p.m., so Crystal and I decided to go and have breakfast once more in the hotel’s Cafe Beau Monde before taking our luggage down.

From my seat in the cafe I could always see the chandelier hanging in the lobby.

Me, in the elevator once more.

The sign leading to directing to our room 704.

Crystal and I had to take a photo together for posterity. I had to remember to get in front of the camera at some point. Mostly my mom just wants to see it. But I’m always leary about handing my camera over to amateurs who don’t know how to take the best photo. Like in this case I had to show the person how to use the camera, and then the shot is cropped in a lot, cuz they didn’t zoom in like I showed them. Good thing they were using a good camera.

This is the nice man that took our photos, Andre. He gave me directions to the Medtown Pharmacy the Saturday before. He expressed that he was glad to see some young women of color attending the festival, which is something I was aware of before he mentioned it. I mean, it seemed like the Sidewalk Festival was a well-kept secret or something. The way Crystal initially found out about what by looking for film festivals held either locally or nearby, and as a result she discoverd Sidewalk’s website.

I’m not one who thinks everything’s an issue of race, like, “I want to be the first black person to do this or that,” or “this is because I’m black.” And I will admit that I tend to have an idealistic/naive view of the world, but seriously, everything’s not about race. I mean, if people have the attitude where they won’t do something just because there’re aren’t other “people like them” doing it, then they’ll never get in on the thing. Just do it, and then the other people that have that view will migrate to it as well, if that’s the impetus they were waiting for.
*end rant*

Yeah, I could have said so much more on that topic, but back to the recounting of the festival.

We went to the Birmingham Museum of Art to attend a screeing of Just Like the Son. We missed maybe the first 20 minutes of the movie, but it was an ok, pretty good, with an abrupt ending. I had seen the trailer a while back on Apple Trailers.

We were going to see another movie, but we had about an hour and a half to kill before it showed. We walked over to the historic Carver Theater, where they were showing a series of short documentaries. We say The Cole Nobody Knows, a documentary about Freddy Cole, the younger brother of Nat “King” Cole. He’s also a jazz musician, but he doesn’t get as much publicity as his brother. His music is amazing though, so I’ll probably be getting his album.

After that, we still had more time to kill, so I suggested we walk over to 16th Street Baptist Church, so I could take some pictures. Well, to my surprise, the church was in the process of being renovated.

Across the street from the Church was the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Museum. We found that it was open, and admission was free on Sundays, with the option to give a donation. Cool beans. So, Crystal and I took the self-guided tour. I could have gotten some awesome picture of black and white people together looking at the exhibits, which was a striking image to me especially in the context of the museum and us being in the South, but I decided to abide the museum’s “no picture” policy.

The exhibit was very powerful, if a bit overwhelming. There was lot of information presented about the fight for Civil Rights, with a lot of statistics and news articles, and I would have still been there if I tried to read it all. Fortunately, the “pictures worth a thousand words” worked in this case, because there was tons of imagery presented. What I really liked was that at the end of the exhibit was a display that focused on world human rights. Because certain groups in this country like to forget that their rights weren’t and aren’t the only ones that have been stepped on over the course of history.

We ended up missing the movie that we were gonna see later, but I think it was worth it.

After that, we headed home. I took a bunch of picture of the cloud formations.



And then we were home.

The blurriness of the last image was caused the camerashake. The battery on my Rebel died a few hours before, so I had to use my little SD400. I still like it, though.

Man, it feels good to be done with this entry. ^_^

Man, last night was really hectic.

My older sister got in a pretty serious car accident yesterday evening. She’s ok, though, save for a swollen lower lip from the impact of the airbag and bruises from the seat belt. Her Mitsubishi Galant. . . not so much. Fortunately, the accident wasn’t her fault, according the police report.

I didn’t get to go to the photo lab last night as planned, though, so it looks like I’ll be pulling an all-dayer.

Things I learned last night:

It’s been a while since I posted some art, so I thought I’d throw some up before I make the last entry on the Sidewalk Fest series.

It’s Stacy & Mike from the Confused Minds comic by Kendall Patterson.

I took these shots of my neighbors, Kaiya and Luca, for the project I’m working on in photography. We’re doing Van Dyke Brown prints. It’s a cool process, and I’m planning on actually turning this project in on time.

Here’s a test print I did in class while we were learning the process. I quite like how it came out.

When I was shooting for the project, I initially used myself as a model. So, that’s my eye.