Stop

Stop what, you may ask?

I only wish I knew, I answer.

Fabulous Fall Foliage

So far this fall has been gorgeous, with really fabulous fall colors. My personal favorite is the deep yellow. I love the look of yellow trees :)

Bricks and Windows

Here's one of my favorites from my little photo odyssey yesterday.

Full disclosure--I played around a little bit with Picasa to enhance the colors and the contrasts, and I also amped up the fill light a little bit as well, I think.

As to my thoughts on photo editing debate (taking a note from Akinoluna's earlier entry on the subject here) -- well, I took a Black and White Photography class (that's film, by the way, not digital) in college, where I spent endless hours in the dark room wasting sheet after sheet of contact paper in what sometime seemed like a futile attempt at making the perfect print. Anyone who's never done that before and thinks that what is on the film just goes directly onto the paper with no editing -- in your dreams!

Like I said, I spent HOURS agonizing over the perfect exposure, making print after print with incremental differences, trying to get it as good as it could be. Now, they weren't usually huge changes, just things like:

cropping
lengthened/shortened exposure time
burning and dodging

You know, pretty basic stuff that EVERY photographer does/did (burning: exposing one small part of the frame for longer than the rest to make a really light spot darker; dodging: exposing the whole frame but blocking a small too-dark area from the light so that details can be seen). Ansel Adams was infamous for laboring over every detail of his prints in the darkroom, sometimes changing them into something almost unrecognizable from the original negative.

Anyways, the point I'm trying to make here is that I think making small edits to digital photographs like the ones I did to this one aren't cheating; they're simply following in a long line of photographers fiddling with their shots to get the best possible image out of what they took originally.

Now, people who do hatchet jobs by taking bits and pieces of several different photos to make one composite image, basically fabricating the image, is something completely different. It might be art, but it's not photojournalism. And for my intents and purposes, photojournalism is what matters. So none of my images will ever be anything but what I saw and photographed, with one or two small tweaks that doesn't affect the accuracy of the image.

Oh Frabjous Day!

Today has been a fabulous day! I took a walk downtown for a joint-shopping/errand/photo trip, and was fortunate enough to get several great shots of fall foliage and the beautiful afternoon light. I also received a phone call confirming me as an intern for a local paper! A paid intern! Granted, it's merely a free paper with a staff of (now) two, but I'll still be developing, researching, and writing stories which will then be published and I'll even get paid for it, which is the most unbelievable thing. Granted, it's only $20 per story, but that's a lot better than I was expecting--which is $0. Usually interns are granted the privilege of working for free, so any paycheck makes me happy :)

Solitary Sentinel

A short time ago I made the decision to go to apply to graduate school next year. Of course, that decision has brought the requisite headaches and snafu's that are slowly driving me out of my mind. I knew that this process would be full of hassles, but I feel like I'm hitting a roadblock at every turn. Each time I feel like I've triumphed, somehow managing to overcome what felt like an insurmountable obstacle, I immediately turn around and run face-first into another one!

At first my biggest (and most basic!) problem was deciding exactly what course of study I wanted to pursue. The problem is that there are so many fields of study that I find fascinating, and also that I wasn't really sure precisely what I wanted to do with my life. I couldn't settle on a career because there were so many options and none really stood out more than the rest. Eventually, after several discussions with several former professors, I settled on journalism.

Journalism is a field that not only fascinates me, but one that has so much power and capability to do good, and it seems like that power has been misused in the past decade (i.e. the 2002-3 run-up to Iraq invasion). I've also been a bit of a news junkie for the past several years, and something that never ceases to infuriate me is the lack of coverage for serious issues while the headlines splashed all over the country usually involve Lindsay Lohan's latest stint in rehab or which celebrity is cheating with which other celebrity. How do the usually excessive and often criminal peccadilloes of celebrities trump the invasion of a country and the deaths of hundreds to thousands of innocent people, such as when Russia invaded Georgia or Israel attacked Gaza? Both times neither event was the leading headline. Things like that are what I would like to change.

The biggest challenge facing me, however, is the possibility of getting into grad school. Because right now my chances are not looking good. I spent several hours this afternoon with a friend studying for the GRE, which really means taking a practice test. Disappointingly, I didn't do as well on the Verbal section as I had hoped, but it wasn't that bad and if I study it should be fine. However, the real problem was with the Quantitative section. In other words: the bane of my existence since first grade. I hate math. My brain just isn't wired for it. When I was reading those practice questions, it was like trying to read Japanese. It made absolutely no sense. Even when my friend was trying to help me by working through the problems and explaining them as she went, I wasn't getting any of it. Some of it sounded vaguely familiar, misty remnants from long-ago classes that, like smoke, were gone as soon as I tried to grasp them.

I'm seriously worried about taking the GRE now, because I don't think I'll be able to pass the Quantitative section with a score that will allow me get into any school I like. Or any school at all. Even if I do better on the Verbal than I expect, it won't be enough to offset the abysmal Quantitative score I'm expecting, and all the programs I'm interested in require a minimum of (usually) 1000-1100 for admission.

It's really too bad, because I was just getting excited about all this research I've been doing and finding programs that I really like and daydreaming about all the possibilities. I'm still definitely going to pursue it, though, and cracking the GRE will be my first step. It's time to study, study, STUDY! At least until I actually take the test in a few weeks. Depending on my score, I'll decide then what will happen next once I have a concrete answer (how long does it take for you to get your score, anyway?) but until then I'm going to keep pressing forward with my research, reference letters, and personal statements until the very last minute.

Early Winter

I know the weather isn't the most fascinating topic to discuss, but it's only Oct. 10 and it already feels like winter. We haven't gotten any snow here, thank goodness, but it snowed yesterday in my hometown, which is not that far! This picture might not show the actual scene outside right now, but it describes rather well the way that it feels. There's a definite chill in the air, and when I left for work today it felt like winter. It even had that cold smell that heralds winter weather.