Typical

It seems to me that I've become a once-per-month blogger. It's so funny that pretty much every blog I write starts out with how bad I am at keeping up, yet I still try.. Ha! You'd think that maybe one of these days I'd just get over it already, but I guess today wasn't that day. How typical of me.

So anyway, since my last post I've been introduced to the studio, reintroduced to Photoshop, and officially became an adult. Yes, I turned 21 and I don't feel much different, for the record. Also, typical.

I remember long ago, in my teens when I could NOT wait to turn 21. It was this HUGE deal. Now that I am I feel like, while there are a few things I can do now that I couldn't (ie. have a horizontal drivers license, like everyone else...), nothing has really changed. I feel like being a Sophomore has changed me more than becoming an adult. Is that weird? I mean, having been through two semesters of photo, I feel like I can tell the Freshmen how to check the temp of the water in the development sinks and final fix prints with confidence. It's so silly, but I realize that I am helping those kids more and more every time I am in the darkroom. Even through my own struggles getting reintroduced to b&w development, I feel like there is something that I can offer to my peers in terms of experience. And even though, sometimes I feel like I shouldn't be intruding into their learning experience, it's a really nice feeling knowing that I have the ability. Is that cocky? Maybe, but it's also humbling because it just reminds me of how I felt walking up to the fix and wash the first time and it is SO typical of my maternal instincts to kick right in, telling them what to do.

I am learning SO much this semester, it's great! I've been really busy, keeping up with everything, so glad that I'm only taking 4 classes! I cannot even imagine what it would be like to have 5 with the two shooting classes! Omgoodness! that's not a pretty thought. Studio is proving to be really interesting and hard, but rewarding. I know I will be able to do SO much with it once I am out of it, I have the best teacher too!! Bill First. He's tough, but awesome, and so nice. I can def say I'll be taking him for view camera and for studio 2! the hardest part about Studio right now is probably the printing. Traditional black and white printing is such a hassle, esp in the winter! But, oh well. I think I'm going to get back in there the next few weeks and try split filtering again. I know I do MUCH better with that than regular.

My other classes, aren't really all that exciting. Well, digital is cool, but very basic. I love that I can shoot digital in there tho, instead of film and scanning. At this point, it's a HUGE relief for homework and financial purposes. They teach a lot of really useful stuff tho, saving and printing formats, as well as photoshop techniques. I do find myself saying, "I can do this so much easier/better in Lightroom" a LOT, tho haha! Needless to say, I hate Adobe Bridge.

I'm going to try to get up some albums of homework photos soon. Scanning negatives and prints can be so time consuming, but there is a lot of film work that needs to be digital. There are also a few digital files that I can share, but we haven't really done anything too interesting photo wise in that class yet.