angie newsome » photography

The idea of practice

Angie Newsome — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:58:01 +0000

One of my goals this year is to really start working on my photography. I discovered that I love taking photographs and learning about photography just a few years ago, when I was in grad school and spent all my free time wandering through a textile mill that was shutting down, watching workers slowly cart all the looms and other machinery out the door. Writing about this was one thing. Seeing it was another, I quickly learned. And the first digital camera Pat bought me for Christmas one year — I cried I was so happy — fueled my love of wandering around and taking photographs.

What I’ve also realized, though, is that it helps to make time to practice. I’m one of those people who like to be perfect the first time around. I admit it, freely. But, practice! It struck me today that the idea is almost unheard of — for me, especially — and completely underrated. But there’s a lesson there, obviously. Musicians likely spend more time practicing than performing for others. But practicing writing or reporting, for example? Who encourages that?

The answer is that I’m going to encourage practicing, for myself and my photography at least. Last weekend, you’ll remember, I organized a photog meetup in West Asheville to get some practice in and to meet other photogs interesting in learning. Six of us crowded around a little table at the bakery down the street, passing around Keri Beth’s Gorillapod and talking about photography inspirations before heading out to shoot for about an hour or so. Along with the interesting group of photos everyone shot during the meetup, a cool list of online sites to check out started to emerge. It’s still small, but I think it will grow as the conversation continues and as I keep practicing. Here’s what we shared with one another, places to go for inspiration and information, to help our practice develop:

Reviews, technical info and equipment specs:

Camera Labs
Digital Photography Review (also known as DPReview)
Steve’s Digicams

DIY projects and photo tips and tricks:

Photojojo

Photo blogs, inspirations and essays:

The Big Picture at The Boston Globe
Zenography (Zen’s blog)

So, I want to ask you: What and how do you practice something you love? And, maybe more importantly, how do you know you’ve learned what you set out to do?

A photo to go with that shake (or photog meetup tomorrow)

Angie Newsome — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:19:22 +0000

If you are in Asheville tomorrow morning and would like to go to a bakery and drink lots of coffee and maybe (if you can resist, you are a better person than me) eat some cinnamon rolls then walk around town looking like a tourist while snapping photographs with a group of other camera-wielding wanderers, then come on over! I’ve sent out a call to the Internets and planned my first photog meetup, for which there are Twitterers and Flickrers in attendance. Some famous!

So, here are the details:

Photog meetup from 9-11 a.m., Saturday, meeting first at West End Bakery in West Asheville. Share your goodies on Flickr, tag with AVLmeetup. Woot! Contact me with questions and Lemon Drops, please. See you tomorrow!

It’s OK if you don’t like them. I do, enough for the both of us.

Angie Newsome — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:47:31 +0000

Sometime last year I bought myself a little plastic camera, a leaky light raft of a camera that from the very start made no promise of perfection. But it was perfect for me, I thought, because I can teach myself a lesson on letting go. I have a wicked addiction to perfectionism that I war with. Sometimes it’s bloody, bloody, this endless fight to resist trying to be perfect all the time. And of course I’m not, so part of the battle is admitting it. Here, Internet! I admit it!

So this film is the first of my perfectly imperfect experiment. It had been tumbling around in my car for a couple of weeks after I decided it was about time to see what happened. Not that it was any big thing. I was just preoccupied with other things. And these are what I found, these hidden gems in the roll. Gems to me, anyway. Rough and tumble, blurry and imperfect.

Ode to Jamie Livingston

Angie Newsome — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:56:33 +0000

I’ve been collecting small bits of inspiration and today I found Jamie Livingston, or, rather, found out about Jamie Livingston. He took one Polaroid photograph a day for 18 years, from the time he was a student at Bard to the day he died. Some are missing from the collection, but the ones that remain — and there’s more than 6,000 of them, have been shown in various incarnations.

It’s an amazing, inspiring story and one fitting, I think, to kick off Thanksgiving week. I’m thinking a lot lately — as I’m sure tons of people are — about things for which I am thankful. One of the biggest things are unexpected shots of inspiration, and, in particular, those I know and those I know of who inspire me. I didn’t know about Jamie or his life — even though there’s been a lot written about him, from at the New York Times to a bevy of websites in his honor — but he’s inspired me to think, to look and to consider my own longevity and commitment.

If you’d like to learn more, here are some websites to spend some time on:

Hugh Crawford’s collection of all of Jamie’s Polaroids

Images from the 2007 art show of Livingston’s photographs, as they appeared at Bard College

Another way to view the photos, this time in a flipbook

And here are a couple of my own Polaroids, taken several months ago on walks up the Blue Ridge Parkway and through my West Asheville neighborhood, respectively. My own small shots, posted in his honor.

Forks

Angie Newsome — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:35:42 +0000

I wrote a story recently about an architect and his daughter who built a house together in North Asheville. The house was beautiful, a treehouse of sorts, filled with lofts and massive door-like windows and a deck that was nearly the size of the bedrooms put together. When we were talking, the father mentioned that he believed life was too short to have ugly things, that everyday objects should take on the beauty of artwork. Christie’s house was filled with handblown glasses and colorful dishes and flying pigs. She had a great sense of humor.

Today, looking around for some photo inspiration on Shutter Sisters, I found this post challenging photographers to do the same. Go into the kitchen right now and shoot. I did this morning, and here’s what I found: our silverware. Simple. Shiny. Reflecting the red construction paper scarecrow my niece Acy gave me from her Kindergarten artwork stash. And very much my everyday.

There were fun shots of apples and dishwater. Here are some of my other favorites, which you’ll find links to in the comments. What I love the most is the idea of all these women with their cameras, bending and stretching to take photos over dirty dishes and suds-filled sinks:

Luscious vegetables from Meadowlark Days
Delicate teacups from Artsy Nature Girl
A much better cutlery photo from Diving for Pearls
A beautiful set from Nomesthenome
Great Atlas jars from R. Parton

Skinny Dip

Angie Newsome — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:57:57 +0000

When I was a junior in undergrad, I spent the summer living on the edge of Biltmore Forest, in a little run-down house where my Bulgarian friend and his now-famous authoress wife lived. They were spending the summer gong to Bulgaria and dealing with US immigration agents (Are you married? Yes! Really? Yes!) while I took care of their dog and made terrible pesto while listening to Sonic Youth really loud.

That summer, I also found myself tagging along as friends sought out some of the best swimming holes around here. These pools had wholly uncreative names from what I remember: Whale Rock and Skinny Dip, for starters. This photo is from a hike Pat and I went on to Skinny Dip just a few days ago, where the withered ferns grew gold in the afternoon light. I always wonder where the red fern grows (wow. funny!).

I didn’t want to go on a walk in the woods, to be honest. Some days I can’t stand the quiet. But then I go and walk and dodge the tree roots growing over the path and slip on rocks and find myself on this footbridge over one of the pools. It’s a bridge with only one railing, the other side open to the water sloshing over the rocks. It’s not deep or tall, really, but I still felt a little dizzy, disoriented, bewildered looking into the water. It’s beautiful there. The water is cold, even in the heat of the summer. And there I found this little leaf, almost off the edge, and I knew what it meant.

The vacation slideshow (that has disappeared)

Angie Newsome — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 13:16:00 +0000

My dad loved cameras. He had buckets of lights and bulbs and camera parts. He had tiny point-and-shoots. He had Polaroids. He loved his Kodak Disc Camera SO MUCH that when we left it on the Blue Ridge Parkway by accident during an ill-contrived picnic, he drove two-and-a-half hours back to the picnic site to find it.

But none of this camera love compared to when he got his first video camera in the mid-90s. He carted that huge thing (which looked, in comparison to today’s models, like a camera a TV crew would use) to the beach on one of our last trips there together. He set up his tripod, and stood there (was he in his red Speedo? I can’t remember) and filmed HOURS UPON HOURS of the waves coming in and out and the birds flying overhead. He told me once, If I could have been anything, I would have been a photographer for National Geographic. In a Speedo, probably.

So when I present to you this little slideshow (sorry, the migration of my blogs to WordPress deleted all these, and, well, do you really want me to rework them? If so, comment and I’ll try to find the files! Really! I don’t mind!) of my recent trip to Savannah, know that I come upon this honestly, this urge to record every little thing. And let me tell you how awesome it was to travel with someone who takes more pictures than me! And who laughs like crazy when I make her pose in front of fiberglass elephants in the parking lot of a fireworks store! (Which is not included in this little show because, really, nothing can compare to the alligator shot.) Ha ha!

I’m loving summer already! Thanks, Dad!

A reflection

Angie Newsome — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 16:15:00 +0000

Why do you travel? For me, it’s to see new places, expose myself to new things, people, culture. Walking unfamiliar streets, eyes peeled to the sky; watching people pass you on the street; hearing the street noises in a new city: needless to say, the urge to see and do these things in an unfamiliar place aren’t original.

But one thing struck me yesterday as I looked at the photography exhibit at MoMA. Even though I was surrounded by some of the world’s best art, I found myself searching for the familiar in the art there, particularly in the photographs. Which I loved. The shots of nature and models and portraits were intersting. But the photographs of Knoxville and the girl at the flea market in Georgia, I couldn’t get enough of those. I go hundreds of miles away from my home to experience something new, yet search for the familiar when I get there? Why? I really don’t know. Maybe I’m drawn to other people’s interpretation of your home, in general terms, out of the environment in which it was created and reflected. It’s like looking in the mirror in the dark, where you struggle to recognize the shape you know is there without even opening your eyes.

Or maybe I’m homesick for a home I couldn’t wait to leave.

Picturing where you live

Angie Newsome — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:30:00 +0000

For Asheville/Buncombe County Flickr lovers (I am one, I admit), there’s a “Day in the Life of Ashvegas” project in the works.

Check it out here. And there’s a meet-up planned for Feb. 17 at Asheville Brewing on Coxe Avenue at 4 p.m.