You HAVE To See This...!

So the whole thing that inspired this project was a military image I saw of a woman holding a baby in front of a laptop and on the laptop was her husband. They were skyping until the baby fell asleep. And the caption said something along the lines of "although my daddy is far away he's still here in my heart" because they got to see each other. I can't find the image but I am still looking.

Today I logged onto my Facebook and saw this picture. This is Gavin, his daddy is away on a 400 day deployment. He has a 1 year old brother and they miss their daddy soooo much. I love this image. This is exactly the types of things I want to photograph. I couldn't think of how to explain it before but it's coming along. I want to show the little things (and larger scale things) that these families do in times like this. In this case, just making a little pillow with the father's picture on it so Gavin can see him when he goes to sleep. It's such a small thing, but it helps this little guy.

* Just to verify again. This is not my image but an image my friend and Military Wife Kymber took of her son.

Researching Away!

I'm super excited I just ordered two books to continue my research on my project about Military Wives/Fiances/Girlfriends.

1. "Married to the Military: A Survival Guide for Military Wives, Girlfriends, and Women in Uniform"
Meredith Leyva

2. "CONFESSIONS OF A MILITARY WIFE"
Mollie Gross

Super excited to get these and start reading them. I have also tried to look for military spouse support groups in the area. I haven't found anything yet but I also have put the word out that I am looking. I started a group on facebook and added the few girls that I know that fit this project.

Done!

I finished my 2nd draft of my grant but it's a lot shorter than my first and rough draft. I feel like I should add something but I have no idea what to add. Hopefully today in class I can get some feedback. I cut out a lot of things to make it really seem feasible.

Also, since I don't have any new images of this specific project and found three from my essay project that I really like that I think emulate the style that I want to go for in the essay about military spouses etc.

Here they are:

Grant Re-write...

Finishing up my second draft of my grant and Becky was totally right, I am already sick of this! Just because I don't know what to write or how to write it...frustrating. I think I'm also just confused. I feel like I know what's going on but when it gets down to doing it I'm confused again. I don't even know if that makes sense. I'm not even sure what types of images to turn in because I haven't lined up any models yet. But I have been making contact and put up an event on facebook as an easy way to keep track of the people that I do make contact with. I do however want to continue this Military Wives/Girlfriends/Fiances project because I am really interested in it.

"You don't want to just drop your resume out like leaflets from a helicopter."

A task ahead of me now is writing out my resume to be included in our mock grant in class. We went over many things that should be on a resume in class today. Ranging from personal information to "Special things" that is totally a technical term by the way, for sure using it as a heading on my resume.

I have no idea how to word some of the things I've done into one little line on a resume. But over the weekend I will be working on these things due Tuesday:
    
     -2nd draft of grant
     -Resume
     -9 Images for submission

"Good luck with that."

Guess what I forgot....

Super bummed when I realized today my rough draft for the grant application was due. Good thing I was sick on Tuesday. Not. Awesome. I will have to work on it today because even though it is late it still has to be done!

I did however find most of my informational interview prospects, I'm having trouble finding one more that I like!

1. Buena Farrell Photography
www.beunafarrellphotography.com

2. Judd Sather Photography
www.studiojphoto.com

3. Couture 13
www.couture13.com

4. Images of the Past - Photo Restoration
www.imagesofthepast.com

5. ???????? Coming Soon

First Critique!

I received what I believe to be fairly good feed back from class today. It really helps when you get to actually hear what other people think. I like that the further along you are in the program the more genuine it feels during critiques. It's not just about who "likes" your photo. It's more than that, whether or not it's actually working. I know there's photos I like but they're not perfect.

I really do agree that some of them could have benefited from some form of supplemental lighting. I wished I would've had a speedlight at the gym. I think it would've made things just a little bit easier too since some of the images I shot had some heavy motion blur and on some I missed the focus.

I want to try to set up a shoot with a military wife/girlfriend to just get that project started and see where it goes. I also want to do some fashion style shooting with models and really get it done. I find it hard to get models who are actually willing to commit to a time and day but I want to broaden my search and get people to commit to concrete appointments.

Here are 3 photos from the first assignment I converted them back to color: