The chicagraphers came up with something called the PHOTO March Madness! Its just like basketball, only nothing like it at all! Hilarious! Who will be your Final Four? Mine are Andreas Gursky, Nan Goldin (I know, I know, but I have a thing for her right now), Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Diane Arbus (a staple). Now I know a lot of you out there in Shambi-Land aren’t familiar with a lot of photographer historic and contemporary, but I though it was such a cool thing that I had to show you guys. Alec posted it on his blog months ago, but I just got around to deciding recently. ITS HARD TO CHOOSE THE BEST PHOTOGRAPHERS EVER. If any of you all are bored at any time, I would encourage you to take a look on good ol’ Google Image Search for these guys and familiarize yourself… maybe even choose a Final Four!

Holy freaking cow. I am so ready for this year to be over. I need to be doing summer-things now, like wearing adorable new swimsuits and giant sunglasses on lake calhoun, eating noras food everyday (SES I love and hate you), and taking pictures willy-nilly in thief river falls. I want to be working at every high school musical performance and converse with all of the little actor-lings. I want to visit Katie in the NYC with my newly-purchased rip-off Loius Vuitton Luggage set. I want to be getting sloshed at Charlie and Alisha’s Wedding in southern minnesota. And I NEED to be taking evening walks with Alex, looking at birdies at Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge. WHOS WITH ME?!?

But no, I have a whole list of menial little duties to do. Not big projects and final presentations, mind you. I got all of that shit out of the way already. And I should be happy. I should be proud that Im basically done. I am always jealous of that person every semester. That person thats got their ass in gear, and is pretty much way ahead. But I actually feel kind of annoyed. Actually LOTS annoyed. I have lots of photo submissions that I am keeping myself busy with and I keep pestering Tom to put me to work every night, whether Im scheduled or not. I have to archive all of my work for classes on CD (Oh, MCAD. I love that you archive my work, but maybe you could update the online galleries once in awhile so it was all worth it). AND, I am so stressed out about little personal things like moving (our sweet apartment), getting my apartment subleased, and sticking my nose in all of my friends’ businesses when I should just leave it alone.

Science help me. I am ready for summer.

ps: can you tell how busy I am from my not even posting an image this time? I am so cool.

Okay, in light of Bills “lets all do do something related and put it up for all to see” show proposal, I have a challenge for each and everyone of you shambies. POST SOMETHING REALLY EMBARASSING ABOUT YOURSELF. It can be a picture, a story, or some really bad art you did awhile ago or something. I think the idea for doing this came about when I ran across this picture of me from high school:

ILL START: For those of you that DONT know, I was a competitive cheerleader, none of that sissy yelling at the crowd shit. Naw, we was hard-CORE! Throwing people in the AIR, thats what IM talkin about. ANYwho… thats me on the far left, looking dumb at nationals. CLASSIC Alli face… I thought it was pretty funny.

P.S. And dont think I wont call you all out on this! Ill totally post something embarrasing FOR you if you dont. THIS IS FUN I SWEAR.

P.P.S. We should have a prize for whoevers is the most embarassing or something, you know, for like, incentive?

P.P.P.S. I think Angie should be exempt from this, you know cuz she DID already accidentally post her BOOB.

So I didnt really do anything cool over spring break like Angie, Emma, Evan, or any of the CR peeps… I basically hung around Bemidji, MN. Bored. BUT, as some of you may know, I have lately been working on putting my senior project into a book format for my books class (wow, that was redundant and unneccessary), and happened upon a website called blurb.com. It’s totally awesome. You just download their free software, upload all of you images and/or text and send it to them and POW they send you back a real live book complete with its own ISBN number (Katie will know what Im talking about)!! And then, people can look at your book online, buy it, and you can EVEN choose to get profits out of the deal!! Crazy right? Well, I sent in my book this week and will be getting it back in about 5-7 days. I hope in time for my Merits show… how cool would that be?

The next cool thing, that Ive been trying to get to is that I wanted to include in my book a poem or essay or something by someone else that would complement my images nicely so that I wouldnt have to include an artist statement (these are hard for me to talk about). SO, I found the perfect poem by an actual poet in an online poetry journal (there I go, being redundant again…), and after hours of research, I FINALLY found her contact information… sigh! I emailed her, asking if I could use her poem, was very careful about copyright and all that and she emailed back with a resounding YES! She was so nice. I totally wasnt expecting her to be so great! Direct quote:

“I took the opportunity to go to your website and look at your images and there was a great deal to admire there! I was particularly drawn to the pictures of decay and neglect, which reminded me of the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi . My teaching and writing is very much centered around the idea of collaboration, so I’m happy to participate in your project. Thank you for asking!”

A breakthrough.

For those of you who know me, you know that I am the type of person who is actually able to cry when I try on a dress and it is THAT CUTE. (Katie and Emma, I know you know what I mean.) I can be the type of person who is shallow enough to watch Entertainment television, with for instance Sugar Ray… its that bad. But here’s the worst part. I indulge in America’s Next Top Model. It’s awesome. And even though its been going down the shitter since the first season (I mean come on, ELLE magazine doesn’t want to give them modeling contracts anymore). And the whole premise is getting wierder and wierder. But OMFLFLAJSJDSG… I still love it.

Im shamful, and to heck with it, I am PROUD to be an ANTM whore! I love Tyra Banks and her shitty feel-good TV Talk show! I love all of the models and their daytime-tv-esque-drama! I love Miss Jay Alexander and those beautiful gams of his! And I even love looking online, yes… at the girls’ portfolios. For example, I was browsing around today whilst doing lame proofsheet printing and found this ridiculous picture of brittany, from this cycle. I haven’t seen this episode yet, because I work wednesday nights, but here it is in all its glory. Look at how ridiculous it is! AND I LOVE IT NONETHELESS!

Since you all are so interested, of COURSE, I will tell you about my work. It is going well, as you can see:

Ben has been an ever-so-wonderful photographers assistant throughout this project (so thank you to him!), and I was feeling like I was stuck for awhile, but I think I’m getting back on track. FYI: we will be having and Advance Photo Class Exhibition on the second floor, as of today, and probably running through next week. Please take a look at it and tell me what you think (I expect you ALL to make it! (jk)). ALSO, Alex will be around this week for his Spring Break so let’s all hang out!!! Seriously, when do we do that anymore? Here is a picture of an awesome goose, because I am now officially infatuated with them: BUUUUuuuuH?

I am so tired lately. I have trouble waking up in the morning, even though I know that I got a good 7 hours of sleep the night before. “What’s up?” I ask myself. I couldn’t figure it out… until today. I calculated how many internship hours I had accomplished as of yet out of curiosity, and its 114. HOURS! And I only need 120. I have 6 weeks left of my internship. What to do…

I guess I’ve been working harder at the studio than I had realized… For instance, today we went (Alec and I) on a sort-of last minute shoot for Jane Magazine/Alec’s own project that he’s working on. We were told that she was a stripper, and that we would go to photograph her in her house in Robbinsdale. Okayyyy… So then Alec googled her, and found out that she’s actually a kinda famous stripper. She wrote a book about being a stripper, and is shooting a television pilot about being a stripper. And she was on David Letterman. AWESOME! Way to tell us about her, Jane. Anywho, here she is on Letterman: (isn’t she totally cute?!)

edit: I dont know where this video went… BARF.

Also, she has a black and white chihuahua named Barnabus… ADORABLE! He skidded around on the hardwood floor (in her surprisingly-really-fancy-expensive-townhome) when I pretended to chase him around the kitchen island. She was totally sweet and later told all of her friends to contact Alec so he could use them as subjects too. When we got back to the studio, they had already filled his inbox with EIGHT emails. EIGHT. Hilarious.

But it was a good day. I think I just need to let up on the interning. I STILL NEED TO PAY THE RENT, MAN!! (And you know, like, shoot a senior project and all…)

LAY-TER PEEPS!

Look! I am making professional-looking InDesign layouts for my books class now. You cant really see them, but there are crop marks and registration marks and etc! AAAAH! It will be a book!

P.S. They look way cooler printed out and in person. I can show them to you later, if you live in Minneapolis.

So I’m back from the great white north, once again. And I am tired again. It must be all of this snow. Although apparantly Minneapolis, receiving almost a foot, was “spared” compared to nearby states).

THE BAD NEWS: I havent been making it into any of the competitions I have been entering lately (poo), for instance the Made at MCAD show (which Emma DID get soem illustrations into, good for her!) and the one I was potentially most excited for, the MCP Photocentric Exhibition. And although my work didnt get it, 11 MCAD students and alumni DID!! Extra-lame (Good, but lame that it wasnt me).

THE GOOD NEWS: The spring Merit Scholarship Competitions are coming up soon, which is usually stressful and not really worth doing because all of the really good seniors sweep all of the awards. But it MAY be worth doing it this year. I am a senior now, and have more new work that I am somewhat proud of so far. I am praying that I get some recognition, SERIOUSLY. Also I may be entering a Competition in Paris soon, and anything else I stumble upon.

I wish I had a picture to leave you with… Oh, here is something I am working on for Digital Photo, that I am taking with Ben (thank GOD, or it would be the lame-est most boring class on the face of the universe).

I dont really know what Im doing with it yet, but I think this may be the beginning of a beau-ti-ful final project!

Okay, since shamby went all hay-wire last night and so did emma’s camera yesterday, I have nothing from day 4 officially to show. BUT I can tell you a few things that may or may not be interesting to you. This is my last chance to brag about my new cool asociations-ness. PS: these are from the abandoned school on Saturday as well.

First of all, I know I promised pictures of the fabulous people I was working with but a) the new york W people were much too intimidating to take full-on pictures of them (because they would probably see me and think I was wierd.) and b) this isnt an accurate depiction of the people from “Team Soth,” but close enough, right? The guy on the left is Josh, a former intern of Alec’s who was getting paid for this gig, unlike me; and the guy in the back is Alec’s assistant Phil, who is hilarious. Actually both of them are hilarious, we all laughed so much this weekend despite being so exhausted all the time. The girl’s name is Stella (cute!) and we actually photographed her twice (she was THAT cute!). In this one she is basically wearing a silk garbage bag with a collar and vintage shoes. Alec is behind the camera.

Aaaaaand this is my favorite kid EVER. He was so skinny and gawky and funny-looking in his big puffy camo jacket and moose hat. His name is Stephen and he cleans up real nice, dontcha think?!?! IN A CHANEL SUIT?!?! I think so. (Also this girl on the right is Eleonore, pronounced ell-ay-uh-nore, and she is awesome. She was from casting and I am going to visit her when I am in new york this summer!!)

Okay, let’s play a game: guess the ages of the people in the pictures. It’s harder than it looks! Winner gets a virtual pat-on-the-back? Gook Luck!