It's almost 7am, Sam's still sleeping and I can't believe how dark it still is outside. I miss the sun coming up at 5:30am, it's going to be a long winter. We've all spent just about the last five days sick with some sort of sinus thing. I still feel horrible but couldn't sleep and since my little guy isn't up I thought I'd finally sit down and write the blog entry that I've been meaning to get to since last week. We'll see how far I get before the Monkey gets up.
I bought my very first camera, a Canon Rebel 2000, back in 2001. It was a simple light weight thing that came with one lens. My cousin's friend, who worked at a camera shop, helped me purchase it right before I left the States to visit my parents in Zambia, Africa. I was just wrapping up my first year in college and had spent the pre
vious two semesters discovering that there was an artist buried deep inside the person I had always been, but was
struggling to discover. At that time I didn't realize that there was such a huge wide world to the possibilities of things I could get into. My sole goal was to take photos of things in Africa, so that later on I'd have access to original images for drawing, painting and so on. My parents were most support
ive and paid for the processing of all 35 rolls of film that I shot that summer, all colour. After trashing about four rolls I hit my stride when I decided to just let go and shoot what I was interested in rather than what I thought I could use later in a painting. It wasn't until my return to school that I came to the realization that it wasn't nature my camera loved, it was people. 30 some rolls of people.
Shortly into the first semester of my sophomore year, I asked a fellow art student to show me the dark room and teach me how to process my own film and print. That started my love affair with photography. I was just getting my feet wet when an art Prof. I was just getting to know offered me the job of being in charge of the darkroo
m and tutoring students. I didn't think I knew enough to take the job, but since it was a campus job it made sense to at least try. For the following semesters I took every opportunity to try new things. My boss and mentor was ready and willing to purchase supplies so I could learn. In some cases I even got to teach classes when it came to stuff I knew more about. My senior thesis exhibit was comprised completely of black and white hand printed images I had taken in Zambia the summer before.
After graduation I felt a little lost and wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life. At my grandmother's request I moved in with her and decided that for the time being my next step was to save up money to fly back to Zambia for a summer. It took me nearly a year, but I finally had enough money to make the trip. During that time I kept my job at the college and worked other odd jobs. So in the summer of 2005 I flew to Zambia with 30 some fresh rolls of black and white film, that I insisted on being hand checked at every airport, and the hopes of photographing another show.
Upon my return to the States I met my soon to be husband and frantically went to work on my negatives. I was only able to process th
e negatives and print a few images before wedding plans had to be made. The next summer Nick and I were married, and 9 1/2 months later Sam was born. Photography and anything other creative force in my life came to a screeching halt pretty much the day I said, "I do". All my creative energy got poured into being a wife and a mother. It hasn't been till just recently that I've been feeling that dormant part of me coming back to life. Nick has been so very supportive, even going so far as to agree to spend a pretty big chunk of change on a digital camera. Little by little I'm crawling back to the creative artistic Diana I discovered in college...This is where we come to what I discovered last week!
My dear Prof. friend, who still teaches photography at my alma mater, is taking a sabbatical this semester. I was hesitant to try and use the darkroom only because he always had a couple photography cl
asses a semester and I knew there was no way I'd be able to anticipate having the darkroom to myself. This fall I decided to jump at the window of opportunity provided by my dear Prof. and have gone into the dark room a couple times. At first I was unsure as to what I should work on. Should I bust out my manual ca
meras? Should I go back to my old negatives? I decided to go back to my last set of Africa negatives, the ones from 2005. It's been an interesting journey really. I didn't expect that by printing these pictures I'd be visiting my past, as well as discovering the new Mommy/Wife/Artist Diana, who was not the person who originally took those photos.
There were a couple images I was able to print up before having Sam and getting married. I made the mistake last week of trying to reprint those pictures. I wasn't able to do it. It was kind of like I was trying fit my feet into shoes I wore in 8th grade. I look at those negatives and can see how far I've come as a photographer since they were taken. And it completely shocks me! This whole time I felt that art had been put on hold in my life...but somehow, unknowingly, I've snuck it in, and I've been able to grow! So I decided rather to try and print pictures that didn't catch my eye the first time around. Printing photos is only half the process...actually it used to be my favorite part...but now that I'm back in the dark room it's gotten me thinking about buying some film for my manual cameras. I'm not quite there yet...but...well...we'll just see....
