Final Project

So, I finshed a few rolls of film and I went to develop them and they were underexposed again. I can't figure out what is going on. I made sure there was enough light and I watched the light meter on the camera. It is so strange. Two photos of my mother came out and the rest of her, sitting in the same place, came out blank. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Is this from the way I develop the negatives. It seems like the the photographs in the middle of the rolls of film come out blank and the rest are fine.

So discouraging.

Broken!

My camera broke! I shot three rolls of film last week and only five pictures came out. I am so disappointed. I shot a whole roll of Portraits of my mananger's two little kids down at the conservation in Easton, and not ONE came out. I brought my camera to Benners last week and left it over the weekend b/c I was in NYC. They told me the shutter and the flash are broken and the repairs would be as much as a new camera, so needless to say, I am borrowing one. A family friend of ours is letting me borrow hers, I picked it up yesterday (Monday). Which, unfortunately means that none of my project has even been started. But, I have had a lot of time to think of more ideas and photographs.


My mission for my final project is to somehow express through photography change and the development of personality among my family and my friends. My future graduation date from Stonehill this year has forced me to reflect on the fact that time is passing so quickly and people are changing too. I have changed so much in the past four years, but a lot of the people in my life will always somehow be stuck at the age I knew them at in high school. It is as if I left them behind and expected them to be the same way when I returned. I think that graduation and growing up sends a lot of us into a small panic, and we tend to return to our roots and reach out to those who have known us longest.


My town and my childhood have always been really important to me, and so have my childhood friends. We have all grown up and moved on, and sometimes when we are together it surprises me how really different we are. After getting just a few photos out of my last project, one of which was my friend Dana, who is now 18 and looking at schools, I realized I want to go deeper into this story. Not only the story behind Dana's eyes but the story behind my other friends, my grandmother, and my yougest cousins. For, when I see these people they are to me what they were, but in reality they have become so much more mature.


For example, the self assurance Dana has gained over the years is so unusual to me because I remember her as the unsure middle school kid who came to the barn eager to hear anything my friends and I had to say about the previous weekend. Now she is who we were, ready to embark on her new journey. When I see my grandmother, she still seems 63, but she is really 75. She has aged, and is caring for a whole other generation of family. My youngest cousins, who seem like they are still 5, are getting ready for middle school, with personalities of their own... screennames and cell phones, is it even reality?

**love this picture, reminds me of my cousins, I'd love to use it for some kind of inspiration for a photograph of my own... if I can only get them to SIT STILL.

And my friends. Life was so simple when we were 16, wondering where we were going to be in 5 years. Here we are, ready to graduate now. Getting together with old friends over Thanksgiving in the realization that many of us are not speaking to the PRESENT "us" but the people we know from the past. How much do we really know about eachother's lives now? Do we spend time with old versions of ourselves? It is strange to think that relationships we never thought we'd lose... fade. Old relationships need to be refreshed and rebuilt. Time does that I guess.