Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Trying to Capture My Flow on Film


These days, when I leave home, I always have my camera with me. Most of the time I have my little digital in my purse and my 35mm film camera around my neck. I have enjoyed taking photos since I was sixteen but lately if I leave my 35mm, I feel like an appendage is missing, it has become part of me, an extension of me, a third eye hanging from my body. This strong attachment has occurred over the last two years or, ever since I joined facebook. I wanted to show people who I am so I started taking my cameras everywhere to try and capture what I think is a magical life, on film and digital. In trying to capture my life, my flow, I have really grown to love this medium of expression. I am always looking for pictures that explain the magical world that I live in. Recently I spent time sitting on a beach that was composed of sea glass, and I wanted let people on my page see what I saw although nothing beats seeing it with your naked eye. In the beginning I used my camera and video to show the magical space I call home and then I moved out and about to show my bay area playground and how it is possible to have fun doing the simple things in life. I am really starting to fancy myself as a photographer and people have suggested that I take some classes, I thought about it and decided against it. I am not interested in being trained to see the world through some teacher's eyes. I want the compositions to be my own and not that of the teacher. People say that you should learn the rules and techniques and then you can stray from them and do your own thing but for me that doesn't make sense, I am having fun doing what I am doing and being graded or critiqued in a classroom will probably not bring me much joy. So, I will continue to try and capture my world and my joy on film on my own.


Saturday, July 18, 2009

The Othello Papers


I had a lovely time experiencing the play, "The Othello Papers" by the playwright, Robert Henry Johnson. I was squirming in my seat at the beginning of the play as I sat there listening to all of the racial stereotypes being acted out while white people heehawed it up, and I thought what is my brotha doing? And then he flipped the script and the laughter gradually turned into intense listening to the historical knowledge that the characters delivered to the mostly white audience. By the end of the play, which is still a work in progress, I was cheering. It turns out that I have read a lot of the same books and gathered the same facts but to see it in the form a play was a unique experience for me. Robert Henry Johnson took what was the deliberately hidden history of African people and brought it into the light