A short film I made for my Intro to Film class. I apologize for the white streak throughout most of it– the Bolex I was using I guess had an issue with some sort of screw.

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This past week I’ve had two large assignments surrounding the idea of lighting in photography and film. The first assignment was my photography one, in which I designed and constructed a Ringlight for my photos. A ringlight is a piece of equipment (in this case, a colander, a small plastic bowl, some cardboard, a bit of foil, and a ton of duct tape) that throws light onto your subject in a ring form. This is done to minimize any sort of shadows on the subject’s face.

I followed these instructions, but had to compensate for the fact that I had almost no tools. Instead of drilling holes of any sort, I had to heat my colander and plastic bowl over the stove first, then thwack at it with the sharp end of a hammer. I did this during one of the World Series game (Woo! Go Sox!) and definitely looked like an idiot. I must say though, I was a bit surprised when my downstairs neighbor came and knocked on my door complaining about the banging and asked if I could do it “during the commercials.” I understood.

So, I took some photos with it on both film and digital. The film ones came out beautifully, but sadly they are drying right now. Here are some of the digital ones:

And here’s the ringlight in a reflection of my mirror (with me as a dork):

To see more, check out the Flickr set I made for it.

Meanwhile, for my FILM 1 class, we were assigned to do a lighting test project using a Bolex camera with 16mm TRI-X Reversal film. If you don’t know what any of that means, it doesn’t really matter. Basically we (my group and I) shot this on a film camera– one of those dealies with the cranking and the filming!

We had to light the scene (duh. it’s a lighting test), and do it at different contrast ratios. It’s pretty evident in the (relatively successful) outcome:

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Lighting is fun, huh?

Last Friday, my dad, my little brother, and I headed off to Boston where I go to school at Emerson College. We took the Lake Express Ferry at 6:00 AM, across Lake Michigan and through Canada to get to Boston (here are the detailed directions).

I decided before the trip to attach my iSight camera to the dashboard of the car we drove, and I started taking a picture every 5 seconds starting at the Lake Express Ferry Terminal in Muskegon, MI. It falls a couple times due to it being mounted duct-taped to the car, but I left it in because, well, I frankly believe it gives it character. Here’s the outcome:

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Passive Aggressive Notes is a site that posts just that: passive aggressive notes “from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers.” It’s a great idea for a website… so much that it required its own post on here instead of on the helpful little links list on the right side bar.

You should check out the site also because I submitted my own passive aggressive note. I made it back at the University of Puget Sound after countless discoveries of pee on the toilet seats. I was always told as a youngin’ to lift up the seat and then do my business, but clearly someone else was told otherwise. “I have good aim,” they’d all assure me.

Bullshit.