Picture Story: Final Project
Well here we are folks. This is everything I’ve worked up for since coming to Mizzou. I’m on no sleep and jacked listening to Roky Erickson and done with my Capstone final project. Let’s just say I haven’t stopped thinking about school being over with all the hurdles and challenges I’ve come up with this project. Choosing to document someone with a mental illness was ambitious to begin with — surely it was for me. And I pull off-ed finding a subject. I felt lucky to have found someone who can relate with wanting accurate accounts of mental illness to be heard. Though, as I began photographing I soon realized that this just can’t be a story on bipolar disorder. Tara, my subject, is a person who has her own unique story. I don’t think I fully realized what that story was until I was near the end of collecting media, though. Tara has bipolar disorder but making sure her kids are happy and healthy is her main concern. Having been subject matter I haven’t photographed before there we many challenges that confronted me as I was photographing and in post-production. This project has taught be valuable lessons in being honest with your subjects and not giving up on them when their behavior isn’t necessarily convenient for me. In addition piecing together a 3-5 minute narrative from nearly two hours of audio interview was another challenge. I now know I can type a lot faster than what I though before. Though I think I wish I had more variety of environments, interactions and expressions with this project but I had to remember people are the way they are and you can’t try and search for more if it’s not there. Is this the quality of work that I thought I would be producing at the beginning of the semester? Somewhat I think, though I we typically set our standards much higher when starting a class. Halfway through putting this project together I thought I was going to lose hope with it. I believe it’s now of at least acceptable quality. Despite that, I can proudly say that I think it distinctly looks it has my photographic vision in it, which is what we all want right?
Anyway, I’m gonna get some sleep. Thanks again Tara Bailey for letting me into your life. Now here’s the video!
30-Day Works-In-Progress
Since my last picture story blog post I’ve been working on my 30-Day Project, documenting the daily life of Tara Bailey. She is a genuinely cheerful person, working alone in cubicle of an office and supporting two young boys. After years of being told she was severely depressed by therapists, at the age of 38 Tara was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The medication is prescribed keeps her at a level mood, though there are times when paying the bills outweighs being able to pay for her medicine. Though this hurdle can make things tough, she always has a positive constant in her life through her son Anthony.
Working on this project has taught me many things about working on photo stories had I not chose such ambitious subject matter. I think there are many things that I would have gotten more out of this story but I’m pretty pleased with my handling of all the hurdles that came up in the process, which I couldn’t have done without the support of great friends and encourage professor.
Here are some of my still selects. My final project will be finished on the 12th.
in a civil war camp
A little more than three months ago my photojournalism captsone class went to Lexington, Mo. to cover the Battle of Lexington Civil War re-enactment, September 16-18. This was to be our multimedia project for the class. For my project I decided to do a more interpretive piece that looked to mix native sounds and visuals to show how it feels to be in a Civil War re-enactment camp after the battles are over and when the public is gone.
CPOY 66 Reaction
Through out the past couple of years some of my favorite work to come from COPY has been in the Documentary category. Alex Welsh’s piece Hunters Point, ‘We Out Here.’ and then Rachel Mummey’s Southeast Side Iowa City. I would say Documentary is one the harder categories to judge because the stories are usually much more complex for which the images must make sense of things. For this year’s category, most of the submissions that just seemed like single stories were “outted” right away. And just as with other picture story categories you could tell that if the first few set of images didn’t get across to the judges the entry wouldn’t get very far. I was happy to see that some of the more experimental entries were voted in the first round, though many didn’t make it much farther than that. Honestly, I think I was pretty pleased with the way the judging went for documentary. Brad Vest’s story had the most emotional impact out of all of them and was kept well together. I remember thinking that Jimmy Croona’s orphan story should have been in first or second but can see how the unique sensibility of Salvi Dane’s Japan isolation story and Brad Vest’s story had more vision and impact. I think that multimedia categories were just as good as documentary this year. I really liked a lot of the way the projects were shot, as they just pulled you right into their stories right from the get go. I think this had to do with the sequencing of video shots for many of the projects. I was pretty blown away with Arkasha Stevenson’s story Safekeeping. The entire piece was very fluid and the images — though a lot of video — worked very well off eachother. I remember one of the more notable aspects of the production of the piece was the above-the-head video interview. It was like she was looking up to the viewer for help. This is the kind of work that demands attention and Arkasha got the right place, I think.
Picture Story #9
30-Day Project Works-in-progress #2
At first there didn’t seem like there wasn’t much of a light down at the end of the tunnel in regards to my 30-Day project for capstone. Seeking a person with a mental illness who is willing to have personal moments of their life recorded is as hard as it seems. I’ve sent out emails to various list servs through Mizzou, have gone to friends, and have put out flyers asking for help. On Monday I went to a support group hosted by the local group of the National Alliance on Mental Health. I was pretty nervous as to who would be there and how I would approach individuals. I went in there telling them of my own problems with depression but disclosed my intentions about my project. The meeting fell through for me, as no one was wanted to be involved. I did however get a much deeper perspective on mental health when I talked with the people at the group. Some would have been out of the question to ask as they were in too vulnerable state to be followed around by someone. While the stories from the people at the meeting would have been a benefit to document what a toll mental illness can really take, I might have someone else to photograph. A women who works as a secretary in the psychology building responded to one of the flyers that I put up. She says that she’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has battled depression since she was a child. I was surprised by her that she said she still keeps a “mask” on in front of others and might investigate this more. While bipolar disorder is not the same as strictly depression there are overlapping symptoms. We’ve planned to meet later today to discuss my project and intentions further. I need to know, though, if she is willing to be a part of my project. In her response to my flyer she said she would like to talk to me more if I haven’t found anyone yet. I’m hoping that means talk to me about being photographed and not talk to me about depression in general. With my luck it would most likely be the latter, but I won’t know until later today. If she is willing one of the first things I need to know, however, is of what four basic types of bipolar disorder she has. I would then interview a psychologist to get a better understanding of the type of bipolar disorder she has and how I can best approach documenting her.
UPDATE: She is willing to be my subject. (Woooh, what a relief. Now to get to work).
in a van down by the river
“Generator + Van + PA + being punx = do a free show on the riverfront trail by a party warehouse in the northside industrial district.” No joke. Hope they do this again sometime.
Northern bound
This past weekend my I went up to Chicago with my friend’s Meghan and Jeremy to visit our other dear friends Jessee and Philip. Jessee is graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago this year and this past weekend was her BFA show. It was probably one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time. Pizza, schnazy hotel, golden stag in a gold sink, video games, movies, good food and good times with amazing friends. Here are some of my favorites from the weekend. The rest can be found here.
Reunion le Bonerville
I was surprised to find out as I drove into St. Louis this weekend that some of my friends, which moved out west, would be back in town. So stoked. Bonerville is the name of my friends place in STL. Oh, yeah, and I got some photos of a trash fire after photographing a wedding.
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