I thought it fitting as I have reached the end of the Spring semester at school to show you one of my final projects! If you're friends with me on Facebook you may have seen my final movie project as well. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm a photography major not a film major. Haha.
Anyways, for my black and white photography class (also mentioned in this post) I was given zero requirements except that the final product had to be six photos mounted on photo board and that one of these six had to be a 30x30 mural print. Nice. But also not-so-nice. I rather like boundaries when it comes to assignments. When the field is open so wide I'm afraid of not coming up with a good enough idea, or even worse, coming up with a great idea and not living up to its greatness. So, I wracked my brain. I knew I wanted to push myself and knew I wanted to photograph people (my favorite). Then I remembered a blog post by photographer jennyj my old art high school teacher, Connie, sent me around New Years. I loooved the idea of going up to random people and asking them to share a piece of their life.
So, I decided a location: the bus stop. I would go up to people waiting for the bus and ask them a deeper question, "What are you really waiting for?" I got some wonderful answers. And having spent hours in the darkroom I have grown awfully attached to these faces. I wish I could revisit them, befriend them, and help them achieve their goals. But I decided from the outset that the whole essence of this project was to tap into the lives of the people I carelessly pass every day in my car. I didn't want to know them or grown acquainted with them any more than I would any stranger. I didn't want to know their names or stories, just their dreams.
All of the photos were taken with a Hasselblad medium format camera and developed and printed by me.
"I am waiting for a bus to ride so I can have some fun. But right now I looking at a lovely lass who got a hell a lot of class. She's trying to get a real good shot with her camera."
"I'm waiting for a great opportunity"
"I am waiting for Eden"
"I'm waiting for things to be quiet @ work."
"I am waiting to buy a car so that I will never have to wait on this bus-stop"
"He's waiting for this scarf to come off" - "She's waiting to bother me to death"
I loved this project and still get chills remembering some of my conversations with these faces, especially the couple in the mural print. You'll have to excuse the bad scan of this one - the print is so large and one of a kind so I'm afraid to scuff it up, so what you see above is only a cell phone picture. But, I simply fell in love with these two. There's a great story behind this print. I tried to get all the shots I wanted in one trip to the bus stop. But what ended up happening was that the role with the images of these two didn't come out at all and my 35mm back up role was also blank. I was devastated. However, I felt like God told me to go back out and shoot 3 more rolls and He would make the results even better than the first time. I couldn't imagine what that would look like because I LOVED those two kids and what they wrote and thought I'd never see them again. But, God works miracles sometimes and sure enough RIGHT as I was about to leave disappointed they showed up. I stood there with my mouth wide open and asked them if they remembered what they wrote the week before. They said they did and we recreated the lost roll of photos. I'll never forget that moment.