“To photograph is to confer importance. There is probably no subject that cannot be beautified; moreover, there is no way to suppress the tendency inherent in all photographs to accord value to their subjects.”

—from On Photography by Susan Sontag

When I was younger I would read all the time, anything I could get my hands on. My family had a set of Childcraft books and World Book Encyclopedias, and I would read them just for fun. I learned a lot of (somewhat) useful things that way. I still retain things to this day, and I have no idea how. I just remember random stuff that would probably be best used in a trivia tournament such as Jeopardy.

When I entered middle school (6th grade), I encountered the often dreaded “Summer Reading List” for the first time. I don’t quite remember what books I was meant to read. I think it may have been Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. However, it was from then on that I started the habit of never finishing the books I was acquired to read over the summer. Usually it was because the book didn’t interest me, or I had no idea why I was reading it or how it was supposed to relate to my life. Back then, of course, I didn’t intellectualize my failed readings in such a way. But seriously. . . The Member of the Wedding? I think I had to read that the summer going to the 7th grade, and it was the worst book ever. I mean, that book it lost me shortly after the “heroine” cut her toe nails with a butcher’s knife.

When I got to high school, things weren’t much different. The school I attended had both a Magnet and Comprehensive program. Students taking Honors classes had to read two books, while people in regular English classes had only one. I don’t think I read both books on my list until the Summer before my junior year. The books were The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and Fences by August Wilson.

Since my freshman year, the entire county had adopted a new academic system called “block scheduling.” Different high schools handled it different ways, but it was a way for us to earn 8 credits a year rather than 7. My school had four 98 minute classes one semester, and then the next semester, you’d have four new classes. So, if one was fortunate to have English class second semester rather than first, they would have extra time to procrastinate reading their books. I read The Grapes of Wrath first, under the reasoning that since it was a gazillion pages long. I figured once I finished it, I would breeze through the mere 128 pages that was Fences.

To this day, I still feel a small pang of fury over the “ending” of The Grapes of Wrath. Now, years later, I understand the philosophical message about how life must continue on and things don’t have to end happily. . .but goodness, it was so abrupt and unexpected, I would have been more fulfilled if everyone had just died at the end. Then I wouldn’t have to wonder what happened to them (even though, I know, they were fictional characters).

So . . . what am I reading now?

For the past month I’ve been getting through Kingdom of Lies by (N.)Lee Wood. Then after my trip, I got Pendragon Book Eight: The Pilgrims of Rayne, which caused me to put Lies on hold. I enjoyed The first book pretty much. It was a police procedural mystery, set in England, so all the jargon was hard to muddle through in the beginning. Pilgrims of Rayne got more of an emotional response out of me just because I love the Pendragon series so much, and the main character is doing some recklesss things, and the plot didn’t really advance the story much other than to set things up for the next book in the series.

I don’t know if I’ll ever finish Crime & Punishment, which I started a while ago. But I have gone back to On Photography by Susan Sontag. The writing is amazingly analytical of the subject of photography, and the writing is quite sophisticated. I had to read it aloud, in a English accent to be able to understand it. I’m just weird.

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Here are some really pitiful sketches I did recently.

Ciao. =)

It’s been an unusually warm winter this year. I mean, it’s friggin’ January and 72 degrees. That’s crazy.

Wednesday, I go up to my school to pay some outstanding parking tickets. A few weeks ago I got an email saying that my graduation ticket had expired, and that I needed to reapply for graduation. I was really confused by this since I already walked and everything. So, I assume the tickets are what’s holding things up. So I pay the tickets, and then go to the registrar to find that the college of Art & Sciences has declined my graduation because I hadn’t completed the requirements for my major.

What?!?

So, I go over to the advising office (across campus), and see what that’s about. I turns out that the class substitution form that I submitted over a year ago, hadn’t been completed. I don’t feel like going into all the details, but it was really frustrating finding this out. So, I went to the Visual Arts office, and it turns out my advisor signed the form about 2 weeks ago, the department chair signed it Tuesday. That was crazy.

So, I turned the form into the Advising office and they sent a memo to the registrar. So, I should be getting my diploma in a few weeks.

I’m doing this thing on flickr where I take a self portrait every day for a year. This will be good for me since I’ve been trying to be more comfortable in front of the camera. I’ll also help me be more creative (yay!).

I love my new boots. I just got them in the mail today, ordered from Journey’s. This is my first ever pair of nice leather boots. They were on sale.

I almost forgot I need to send off my portfolio and resume’. . . Yeah, getting a regular job is pretty important right now.

Yesterday I had what will (hopefully) be my last critique in photography. It went surprisingly well. For our final assignment we did Gum Prints. It’s cool process, but a bit time consuming and difficult to master the first go-round.

It took me forever to develop my concept for this project. I had an idea really early on, but I didn’t quite know how to execute it on film. Finally I came to the conclusion that simple is better, and worked from there. I’ll talk more about it when I get the images back so I can post them here.

After class, we all got together to take a class portrait, like we’ve done in previous classes. It is photography, after all.

l to r: Rita Skiadas, the instructor; Sherard Robinson, William Bunce, Nikki Bhakta, John Hyland, and Sharon Samples (me). Photo taken by Sohil Bhakta with my camera.

In the beginning of the semester there were 8 students. Then there were 6. Only 5 people showed up for critique. Nikki’s prints were awesome. She’s an extremely talented photographer, and I’ll hope to see more from her in the future. Her cousin, Sohil, is also a photo student at South. He’s really good as well. I hope he realizes his dream of becoming a fashion photographer.

My future as a photographer is a bit less certain, but I do enjoy it. Who knows? My minor in photography may do me some good in the future.

Tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. I graduate. Ken‘s being awesome and attending. I still have yet to try on my cap & gown. If it doesn’t fit now there isn’t much I can do about anyways.

G-Day approaches.

Ugh. . .

I’m sick and my body aches, but I have to go to school cuz I’ve used up all my absences.

Take care, y’all.

*Update*

I went to class and did some work, coating some paper for the gum print process. I was fighting a headache, and had/have a slight fever. Eventually, in passing my instructor asked me if I was ok. I told her I was sick and had a fever, and being the amazingly compassionate person she is, she let me go home and didn’t give me and absence.

Home again, I think I’ll pass out now.

Yeah. I’m at the university right now, blogging from the Student Center. The PTB (powers that be) were gracious enough to leave the place open, offering free coffee to students until 2AM. I’m happy to be done with my finals, so I’ve just been surfing the net.

I’m actually here to keep my younger sis company while she studies for her exam in Financial Accounting II. (I just asked her what class it was, and she replied, “It’s the hardest accounting class in the school.”) She’s seriously been stressing all this week that she’s gonna fail the test, but now everything is falling into place, and she’s more confident, which is great, because I was getting tired of her whining. ;).

There are quite a few Japanese students here.

I’m just really tired. I finally got some sleep yesterday, 12 hours actually. When I woke up my body ached, but my legs no longer hurt from all the standing I had been doing. It was replaced by a crook in my neck, however, from sleeping in a weird position. It’s all good though.

I do actually have a point to this entry. My Senior Portfolio review went really well. I was so out of it from lack of sleep that it didn’t really sink in until later. My instructors only had positive things about my work, with a few critiques on technical aspects of my work. My Senior Portfolio instuctor told me, and I quote, “You’re a good designer, but you’re a great illustrator.” Can you say, “squeee“?. That’s friggin’ awesome. Especially since it was coming from a veteran designer/illustrator. So, I have something to be happy about. It’s not that I didn’t know that I was a decent artist before, but it feels good to have validation from someone with experience.

I’ll try to get the work from my portfolio posted on my site finally. It’s seriously lacking. I also have many pictures to post, but I’m tired right now.

::Sharon paused to take a few shots in the Student Center::

I’ll try to have pics up in the next post.

::update::

Two views outside of the library.

Nicole works on a problem.

Motivation.

some japanese students

Laura sleeping.

finis.