What Is Great?

I first introduced this video in responding to an older blog post, "What is great?". I fell in love with this song after it was shown to me, and have found it very inspiring ever since. There are many level-headed, rational quotes within that have guided me through things when I have been neither level-headed nor rational.

Great is realizing your goals. Great is satisfying my viewers as well as myself. To be great, one must always be learning, always trying new things. To be great, one must be humble. In trying to verbalize my thoughts on this, I was reminded several times of Baz Luhrmann's 1997 commencement speech-turned-song, Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen).

Elko Tract

I originally talked about Elko Tract in a presentation last semester for Shane's class. This will shed a little more light on what is known as the Lost City.I don't know if any of you watch the local news, but Mark Holberg is an independent reporter unaffiliated with CBS 6 who does several stories a month that are aired by them. He is an excellent reporter, and did a piece in 2008 on Elko Tract. I also saw that Shane started a blog about it. Winning.

On a side note, he did a story a few months ago on the controversial VCU parking lot on the slave burial site.

Getting Started

What better place to get started than where I left off last semester? My final digital project was about scars and the individuals who bear them. A fair amount of the work was inspired by Ted Meyer. Below is the artist statement.

Scarring is a natural part of the healing process, as far as the physical realm is concerned; but often times the bearer is left emotionally and psychologically altered. This series arose from a project concerning personal liberation- photographing my own surgical scars, which eventually evolved into encouraging others to do the same, shed the shrouds concealing their secrets, and allow me to photograph their eccentricities. The subjects are pictured in the most straightforward manner, waist up in plain tee shirts in a n expressionless demeanor against a black background. Then I photographed their prominent scars with the same frontal lighting setup, very closely cropped so that none of the background is visible. In this body of work, the scars are still somewhat hidden, as the individuals are not immediately paired with their scars. This element of ambiguity is perpetuated to further emphasize the metaphorical weight held by scars, which are outward representations of the innermost privacies.

I was very pleased with the way the project turned out, but as Shane harped ad nauseum, the final presentation was just an arbitrary stopping point.