Archive for February 5th, 2008

POTD2 #015

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments


POTD2 #015
Originally uploaded by Kacey3.

The seething core of hell burns in my computer.

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Depressing and Discouraging…

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | No Comments

…in which Kacey talks about his miserable failure as a student and a person.

Tonight is my first night to try to print photos since I took a hiatus from my MFA photo work last September. It has been an excersize in horrible, near suicidal, frustration and self loathing. Not only do I have only 9 semi-decent photos (where I should have “20 or so”), I can’t get anything to print anywhere that I would ever even feel comfortable putting out for people to see.

I had suspicions that it would be a bad night before I even left the house because my eye-strain was particularly bad already. I really need to get these glasses looked at again. I’ve never been this uncomfortable with a pair of glasses in my life, and I’ve been wearing glasses since the third grade. That aside, upon entering my studio, I recalled how flaky my studio computer has been lately. It likes to crash. A lot. I hoped for the best, plugged in the new UPS (praying that the crashing was actually a result of the shitty power out here in the studio building) and powered the computer up. Before I could even start working on my photos, the computer had already crashed three times. I held my temper very tightly and simply fretted every time I had to reboot, hoping that that would be the last crash for the night, and constantly disapointed as the screen froze up and I had to reach over and reboot the thing again.

After nearly three hours on that computer, I had crashed almost every five minutes and, during the longest stretch of stability, had printed one very purple print. Just to be clear, the photo was not purple, it was not supposed to be purple, it did not even look good purple. I was just about to give up when I remembered we have an all new print lab in the building with some brand new Intel iMac computers and some top-of-the-line Epson printers. I figured that if I could get the comptuer to be stable just long enough, I might be able to burn a CD of the nine images and go down to the new lab and print. It took two tries, but I got the CD burned and was able to head down the hall. Once there, I realized that the software I use (Adobe Lightroom) was not on the comptuers. Fortunately (and the only fortune I’ve had all night, really) is that I’m the administrator for these computers. I need software? I install software. I installed the application and started importing my photos only to find that the CD wasn’t perfect. One of the photos failed to burn correctly. It was probably the weakest one, but now that means my paltry nine, are now a impotent eight. One step forward, two steps back.

So anyway, I shake it off and start trying to print. After taking a few minutes to get acclimated to the new environment and hardware, I get printing. The first photo comes out so-so. Its a duplicate of the purple photo from before, and while its no longer purple, its now just a bit dark. Its not so bad and I might could sell it off as intentional. The second and third photos, however, are all coming out dark. Its getting bad, and I can’t seem to find an option to make them better. I’ve printed three different photos, all of them are too dark. One of them I’ve printed three times, changing settings each time, and each time its almost the same. I’m having a really hard time (especially now, that its almost 10:30 and I still haven’t even had dinner), not just quitting for the night and seeing if I can delay my critique another week.

I really don’t want to do that because I’ve almost consistently been the last to produce work, the last to show work, and the one to request the most extensions (with pretty much the only exception being my boss, who is also in the class – which is a completely different level of awkward). I want to be productive and proactive. I want to be all those “pro” words, but instead I’m lazy, uninspired, and far too often unmotivated. I have a hard time getting myself to do the things I “should” do, even if once I do them, I enjoy them. I love taking photos, and I love doing photo shoots, but I hate planning them and even prepping for and driving to them. I need a crew of assistants and a secretary. That stuff only comes with fame, and fame comes with drive and initiative.

Sometimes, I really wonder if I have the drive to do this. Sometimes, I really wonder if I have the drive to do anything worth while. I’m good to my friends, but I’m not all that good to myself.

Pondering

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 | LiveJournal Archives | 4 Comments

I’ve been pondering moving my journal to a wordpress blog or some other self-hosted service rather than livejournal, again. I don’t have any problems with livejournal, at all, don’t get me wrong. Its just that sometimes I would like a bit more creative freedom and would like to make my blog MINE. There are certain things that I can’t do on livejournal (such as have my flickr and twitter widgets up all the time) that I could do with a blog on my own site. What I think I may do is research what it would take to portal any entries directly from an individual blog straight into livejournal so that I would effectively be double-posting. The other alternative would be to set up an RSS feed for my offsite journal and have that be my livejournal presence.

Again, I’m just pondering and may or may not ever do it. Its just when I see the most successful blogs, they’re all self hosted. Not that I ever think I’m going to have a successful blog. Shyeah, whatevah.


Addendum (11:43 am): Looks like there’s actually several Worpress/LiveJournal Crossposting Tools. I may have to really start looking into getting my new URL, starting a new (more personal/photo based) website, and trying to be a more serious blogger.

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