-
- “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”: This is a shot of this morning, when we were displaying the lights we made for space class. Although this was a assigned project, but I have always been a fan of trying anything I did not know about in any field. When I was in Canada, I listed quite a few things I wanted to do, gun shooting, skydiving, scuba diving. After I came to New York, my to do list became more academic rather than leisure activities. Get a drive’s license, learn who to whistle and trill the Spanish letter R, study computer programming, get a internship, take a law study examination, get a pilot license after getting a driver’s license. These are part of things I have in my to do list. Although some are finished and some are not, but my passion toward exploring new adventures in something I do not know about never stopped.
-
- Interdependence: Ain’t no photo represents interdependence better than this one. Just joking. There are way many interdependence happening spontaneously just within our daily life. Customers paying sellers because customers depend on the products they need and sellers depend on the money they earn through exchanging goods to purchase more goods to sell. Just as much as professors and students interdepend on each other. Happy, helpful, effective processors make students comfortable and active in class. Whereas comfortable and active students boost professors’ confidence in teaching the class and which makes the professor more helpful and effective. It is a circle of impacts.
-
- Memory: My beloved sister visited me during last week from Wisconsin. We haven’t met for approximately 5 months. It is the first year of her being in United States and the being away from home. We grew up, fighting, pinching together. I hated her, since the first day when she was born because she took all of my parents attention away from me. Who would have thought that we turned out to be best friends today. We share the same interests, we mock each other’s bear face, we share makeup and clothes even though we are 5 years apart.
-
- Bird by bird: This was the third hand casting I made. The third failure. Regardless of how careful I was, the cast always came out cracked or broken. I made an effort to bang and to slam the container hard to get rid of bubbles. I measured the portion of the plaster and the water as precise as possible to make sure the mixture is to scale. I waited a long time to make sure that plaster was fully harden and tore the alginate cautiously. However, the fingertip of the cast always ended up with bubbles, The plaster was very fragile that once I tried to take off the last piece of alginate the fingers just broke into pieces. Of course the forth one finally came out in one piece, but the process of failure was precious. Not only that I grasp the tricks of the making a perfect cast but also it cultivated my patience.
-
- Inspiration: I met both of these girls at Parsons. Although they have nothing to do with the inspiration of my way of artistic thinking and the style of my design, but it would be accurate to describe them as the inspiration of my dedication of becoming someone outstanding. Gwendolyn, accepted by London University, Washington University in St.Louis, was born in Hongkong and raised in the United States under a quite wealthy family. She is one of the kindest girls I have known, a hard working individual. Lara, was born and raised in Massachusetts, accepted by Harvard, and speaks excellent French. She is the most low-key person I have ever seen. I was not aware how smart she was until 3 months after knowing her. How could I be indolent when I have companies of such friends. They are the secret engines that keep me inspired and motivated.
-
- Sustainability: Caged: this is a photograph of one of my art works. We have a very limited space to live in, limited material to use and our space is half stuffed with us — human. We could have been able to sustain for our decedent if we keep the space half stuffed. The brutal truth is, human are selfish. We give birth as many as we wish regardless the capability of the space we have. We use up the unrenewable resources. We slaughter animals till one after one species become extinct. We burn out fuels and contaminate air and water without knowing how to fix it. The land is covered in plastic, heavy metal and chemical fertilizer. Soon enough our space will be filled with human and we have to scrooh and crowd.
-
- Unfair: This is a scene of my internship. A Violet Grey’s editorial shooting with Alexandra Agoston. I was unable to get all of us in one frame, but we could see the photographer, the model, the stylist, and the photographer assistant in this photo. Could you sense the unfairness? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. We were all born unfairly, with different heights, different genders, different appearances, different backgrounds, different personalities, different destinies. There will always be someone who has more superiorities over yours. Looking at the glam through the camera, we might admire, we might envy or we might just be indifferent. We would never thought of what these people had to do and who they had to deal with in order to be standing at where they are today. However, regardless of how much stress they have to take, at the mean time this photo was shot, there are thousands of deaths happening caused by war just on the other half of this planet. Again, this world was never fair.
-
- Story: Fin, 17 years old, currently a grade 12 student He goes to a high school in westchester that cost 20,000 dollars a year. His parents were divorced when he was 3, its been too long that he never really cared because he was raised in such family at the first place. His father works in the food industry and his mother is a teacher. He believes that he is fairly one of the maturer ones among all of his friends He often walks around in the city after he gets off school. His favorite place in the city is SOHO. He has seen plenty of celebrities at SOHO, but that is not the reason why he likes there. He could spend hours, wondering around, greeting new people. He has met various kind of people at SOHO, at different age, work in different fields. They could be artist, trader, student, chief, or vocalist. They share stories, discuss interests, debate opinions. He has taught me things. Things on different aspects. He knows about meditation, believes in sprit, karma, the power of mind. He never argue even if I disapprove his thoughts; he just does not need my approval. He is not religious but he is convinced that humans are souls trapped in empty shells. Simply judging by his facial expression and the composition of this shot, which was shot by me, I can just sense the confidence by the way he squints his eyes, and that crooked smile with only one side of his mouth lifted.The way his shoulders lay, shows that he is relaxed and unguarded. One more interesting thing about this photo is probably the man in the background wondering what the heck we were doing.
-
- Discover: Apparently my strength is shooting portraits. Discovering beauty is a beauty of action. This is Lara, one of my best friend at Parsons. The photo lost a bit of focus but I like it regardless. I always prefer my models to smile, as natural and relaxed as they could. I find smiling the most attractive facial expression; it is very calming, has strong visual impact, but also mysterious. You would wonder what are they thinking? You would speculate whether it is a fake smile they squeeze on their face or they truly mean it. I believe the ones who like smiling would always be loved, and a bit narcissistically saying, my photos that smile shall always be loved as well.
-
- Style: It is a little bit embarrassing to confess, before Parsons, I was always interested in trendy Items. I constantly browsed on social media and look for what was popular on Instagram. When I watched Ready To Wear fashion shows, I always ignorantly thought I could have designed those garments myself. Haute Couture never intrigued me. But in fact, 5 months of study at Parsons has already completely inversed my definition of fashion and standard of beauty. Norm-core style has more and more ingrained in my catalog go being “fashionable”. I used to craved for the busty figure Kim Kardashian had. Nowadays, skinny body figure seem to be more attractive to me. Styles I adored before are now tacky and secular.
-
- Portrait: I encounter this girl at SOHO and I was stunned the minute I saw her. I have been always fascinated with the vintage style from the 50s and the 60s. Dresses from that period of time have delicate salivate that can precisely bring out body curves, create hourglass figures and ingeniously hide any imperfection of any type of body. I asked the girl to take a photo holding my hand. Surprisingly, she said yes to this absurd request. She threw a dolce smile to my camera and rendered this photograph. I inquired for her Instagram so that I can like every single post she had. But unfortunately, she does not use any social media. Such a pity, more people should see this piece of beauty and she would have a lot of followers on Instagram.
-
- Perverse: A vague and abstract word to comprehend. On the dictionary, it is defined as deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable. But however, I have already past the age where I desired to behave differently than others. My rebelliousness has burned out as I grew older. In contrast, I eccentrically want to follow the rules. I stay away from uniqueness as much as I could. Looking at the word perverse, I think of me fighting with my parents, bullying the quiet girls, ignoring teachers and craving for some drugs. But those perversenesses have become what I am ashamed of today. The only unreasonable things I do, according to my friend, are that I do not drink alcohol, not even slightly little bit, and, I have a very strict diet which always made me the weirdest person when hanging out with them because I was too picky about what to eat. Sadly, the only unacceptable might be the fact that I have been sneaking into NYU and pretend to be one of their students to attend classes.
Hi, CK. I liked the way you introduced this girl; you talked about her style and extended it to the discussion of vintage style. Also, I think it is very unique and sweet that you asked her to hold your hand. The only thing is, I wish you can ask her more questions!
Hi! I think the way you wrote the portrait post conveyed your thoughts and impressions on meeting the girl really well! The words you use are also really descriptive! (seminar homework….)
I am enjoying reading your posts! I also like how you took a similar approach with both the portrait and the story posts, but focused on different characteristics. It seems that people find you to be a very trusting person and feel comfortable sharing their stories with you. That is great. Good work!
Very interesting photo blog – great stories and great portraits! You are experimenting with photographic composition and can push it even further.
Say hi to Gwen from me.
Nice work on your photo blog, CK! I hope you fulfill everything on your NYC bucket list. 🙂