Wildfires raged across the state of Oklahoma all weekend.
A friend and I decided to drive west. My heart goes out to all those affected — and to the firefighters who are hard at work saving peoples’ homes and livelihoods in the 110°f heat.
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“I want to tell you that I have a hope that there’s another way to be in this world. And that I believe with courage and vulnerability and honesty, that the stuff we put into the world can serve a better purpose. What I have to offer is me. What you have to offer is you.”
– Charlie Kaufman
What I have to Offer from Eliot Rausch + Phos Pictures on Vimeo.
April has proven to be a month of change for me, but despite the constant push forward it’s important to stop and pay attention to the details sometimes.
In this case, the light on the quilt-covered bed in the pink bedroom you slept in for a week.
It’s about the journey, right? Find ways to document the things that happen to you, the things you see, and the ideas you come up with — that’s the stuff that future inspiration is made of.
I spent a good part of the last half of 2011 traveling. It was amazing for all the reasons that wandering is always so, but I sadly returned into a world so hectic that I’ve barely had the chance to process it all. In the coming weeks I intend to sort through the photos, journals and video I shot while galavanting around the country (and even, for a brief time, outside it). I’ll likely condense it into a few posts, but consider this a teaser and a proof of concept. It’s coming.
A long time coming, but finally here: the ump-teenth redesign of this blog, featuring a few firsts for me. Notable points include:
Essentially I designed this theme from the ground up with my own work in mind. I produce media in a variety of formats, and often the strict bloggy nature of my previous themes kept me from displaying my work in a way that did it justice. In short, I’m utilizing post types to achieve this: “aside” posts feature primarily text, rendered large and legible; “standard” posts balance text and images and are suited to longer format posts; “image” posts display my photographs and graphics the way I want them: large, “full-bleed”, and perhaps most importantly without thumbnails or lightboxes.
I’ve read a lot of angry / heated language about the use of larger fonts as body text on the web recently, but I don’t buy it. I’ve designed the text on this site to be both legible and elegant; I have balanced longer line widths with wider line spacing and used media queries to adjust text for various screen sizes. Modern displays provide an ever-decreasing pixel size and an ever-growing resolution, which results in more screen real estate; for Thoughts on Stuff I’ve chosen to dedicate that real estate to big images and legible type that’s allowed to breathe.
For a few months last year I rented studio space downtown. It didn’t end up being cost-effective for me, being that I’m a sort of anti-commercial photographer*, but it did give me the chance to coerce more of my favorite people in front of the camera.
I swear, these people make my job way too easy.
I have beautiful friends. Pictured: Katie Cunningham and Jillian Summar at Loose Leaf Co. Fall 2011, Grace Grothaus in her Tulsa studio, Summer 2011.
*not entirely true. I just tend to offset the paid photography I do with expensive stuff like “still shooting film” and “buying more old cameras”.
This morning I took a picture of my breakfast. It occurs to me that maybe I should get out of the house more.
But can you blame me? Look how pretty it looks. And yes, in case you were wondering, it was delicious.
Did I pick that bowl out specifically because I planned to photograph my breakfast? Yes. I have priorities. And cereal is one of them. It is, though I’m a little ashamed to admit it, one of my absolute favorite foods. I’ve been known to skip dinner and eat a bowl before bed. I’d say it would be my “desert island” food but inevitably the milk would curdle in the hot tropical sun and then I’d be screwed.
What’s your favorite kind of cereal? Answer carefully — I’m judging you.
Here’s more wintry coldness, because I’m finding it hard to think about anything else right now. On a positive note, the 24-hour video race is tomorrow night and I’m totally stoked. Here’s my team’s winning entry from last year and a write-up I did for Tasha Does Tulsa about my experience. But more on that later; grab some hot tea because it’s time for more cold photos.
This one’s actually from last year. I was shooting long exposures out my back window while firing a giant manual speedlight from the side through a garden window. Apparently when I get cabin fever this is what happens. I’ve actually used this photo as the background on my phone all winter, because apparently the feet (plural) of snow outside isn’t enough of a reminder.
And another from last year, though not so snowy. Fog is one of my favorite photographic subjects, as well as one of my favorite things about winter and the cooler parts of the year in Oklahoma.
Also I apparently have a thing for the lines in the middle of roads or something. I’ve always liked this shot though, because if it weren’t for that bright yellow line this photo could pass for a black and white. Again, I dig that monochromatic quality that winter brings into our lives; having said that, I’ve had enough of it this year. Spring, we await you with open arms and short-sleeved t-shirts.
It’s always seemed like I get most inspired to take photographs in the winter, which most people would probably call the least photogenic of all the seasons. The truth is I never saw it that way; I think one of the reasons I was always interested in photography was that it allowed you to capture the beautiful in the mundane, the everyday. I also think there’s a sort of minimalist beauty in the sparseness of winter.
There’s just something about it.
