I received my acceptance package from MICA in the mail on Saturday.  Despite my uncertainty about what I'd like to do after my AmeriCorps*VISTA year ends on June 24th, being accepted into a supposedly very competitive graduate program is a validating experience.  My scholarship letter cites my "outstanding qualifications" and "superior achievement in visual arts."  I may be hard on myself much of the time, but these words do manage to make me feel like perhaps the struggle of my undergraduate years and the hard work I have put in afterward was good for something.

Incidentally, my entire visual art portfolio was photography even though I concentrated in painting for my BFA.  Once again I am reminded of the intense struggle I felt every day in the painting studio.  I continually felt unable to live up to my professors' expectations and unable to compete with my peers.  How much of this came from my own high standards for myself I will never know, but I do think one professor in particular made me realize painting was not my true calling.  He was passionate, maybe even maniacal, about painting and favored students who felt -- or at least expressed themselves -- similarly.  He must have seen some sort of potential in me or he never would have tried to push me so hard, but I always ended up feeling like he was trying to wrench something out of me that just wasn't there.

In the end, I have realized (or rediscovered, since I was hell-bent on becoming a professional musician between fourth and tenth grade) that I just do not think visually.  It is why I cannot draw objects from memory and struggle to draw from a subject sitting in front of me.  It is why I painted more for the experience of the paint than I did for the images.  Maybe it is even why I often get lost, unable to visualize a map in my head.  Certainly it is why I found 4 Weeks to an Organized Life With AD/HD to be so unhelpful.

But if I'm not a visual thinker, why this continued interest in the visual arts?  Why am I still drawn to photography, and why did I submit a portfolio to a visual arts graduate program?

I really think photography allows me freedom from my inability to visualize.  I am at home behind the viewfinder because for once, my image has been laid out before me in perfect detail.  I can adjust angles and depth of field, work little by little until I have the frozen image that explains the scene exactly as I saw and felt it.  There is no other way to preserve it.  I adore photographs because they preserve a thought, a memory in a way my mind usually cannot. 

While I can always remember the tone of a voice that has called my name, photographs allow me to look into the eyes of someone I have lost.  They also evoke the spirit of a scene as I felt it at the moment I released the shutter.  While I dream of taking a sketchpad, india ink, and brushes along on an upcoming trip to Europe, I know I shouldn't even bother.  I should buy a special journal and an extra memory card.  I should take hundreds, even thousands of photographs.  I should write out all the words in my head while I'm sitting outside a cafe in Venice because this is how I will capture it.

As I continue to explore who I am, not who I convince myself to be, I am learning all over again that I think in music and eloquent words, but I see through my photographs.

Well, this week I actually did it.  I submitted pictures to every open JPG theme, even the weekly photo challenge.  This felt good.  A few people added my photos to their favorites and a couple more began watching me in their contacts.  Suddenly, I'm on a roll. 

Slightly less exciting was the fact that my main computer is broken, leaving me temporarily without most of my full-size versions of images.  This made for a big disappointment after I paid for entries to the annual Photographer's Forum spring contest only to find I lacked images with acceptable pixel dimensions.

All in all, though, it has been a good week.  The photo challenge was fun because it was a "camera toss" assignment, which I had toyed with before but never really gotten into.  I came out with many uninspiring images and a few good ones.  Some of the most fun for me were the ones showing my blurred arms reaching up to catch the camera, a happy accident I hoped was somewhat unique.  It wasn't.  There were so many outstretched arms I couldn't bear to enter mine, so I instead entered an abstract image.  I don't remember what it was originally, but I liked the simplicity and mystery of it: click here for the image (still working out some kinks with inserting images into entries, so I'd prefer to keep it to a minimum for now).

Due to a server issue (what else is new), the weekly Words + Images update has been delayed.  Stay tuned, it should be up by the end of the day today!

This blog is about words and images, most frequently words about images.  Maybe there are some like it on the web, maybe not.  The great gift the internet has given us is ultimate control over content.  I create the content, edit it, filter it, and publish it. 

But then what happens to it?

The audience is where I lose control as a blogger, and the one major failing I see in self-published work.  Just like the zine scene, which I inhabited during my high school years, a few blogs rise to the top and gain some recognition while the rest remain adrift in the vast sea of the online universe.

For this reason and many others, I see submitting to real-life publications as a necessity to pull myself out of the crowded streets of the blogosphere and enter the more established traditional field of professional, paper publications.

The only trouble is, I am still trying to exercise that same control over content while not relinquishing total control over audience.  I pick and choose, this favorite piece of writing there, this photograph here.  I enter my work for publication only when I feel very strongly about the contest and am really invested in winning: which means, of course, I never do.

It's not about picking your favorite contest or magazine, and it's not about picking one favorite piece from six months' work.  It's about spreading your work widely as dandelion seeds and seeing what takes root.  It's about finding every opportunity that could possibly be relevent and going for it, even if it's not something terribly exciting.  It's about building a list of small accomplishments before trying for the long-reach, dream opportunity.

If there is one thing I want to take away from my short list of carefully chosen contests and publications, it is I need to do more in every way possible. I need to let as many eyes see these words and images as possible and just wait for something to stick.  And most of all, I need to keep working, keep thinking, and keep trying.

As busy as my life is right now, working out of two offices about a mile apart is a blessing. Rather than worry about parking (or lack thereof) or burning more precious fuel, I more often than not choose to travel that distance on foot. For 15-20 minutes, I am outdoors, measuring my footfalls on the sidewalk, removed from the stresses of my day. And my Focal Micro 110 is in my hand.

When I received my first set of prints, I was somewhat disappointed. 110 doesn't perform well in extreme light. My cheap plastic toy camera doesn't produce a clear image when photographing close up or a wide view of a scene. Really, the camera and the film require a delicate balance of light and distance from the subject. The viewfinder is inaccurate. Most of the pictures on the roll didn't come out how I had envisioned them.

Still, I've kept taking photos with the 110. After my initial disappointment over not having a whole roll of strikingly beautiful pictures, I've decided I should embrace this little silver and black piece of plastic. All silliness aside, I am developing a new eye and finding new pictures. It's no longer about meticulously engineering depth of field and precise compositions. It's about feel. It's about relinquishing some control to the camera and realizing that, plastic and all, it's going to have the final say.

(House hunting and wedding planning are beginning to take over my life for the months of March, April and May, but I'm still trying to keep adding images to Flickr. See a few of my 110 shots here.)

My prints finally came in. No less than ten days after dropping off my found 110 cartridge at the CVS, I was able to hand over $5.99 and pick up what remains of my childhood photos. As predicted, many of the prints contain only a lot of grain and the frame numbers. Some are exceptionally dark, obviously taken inside without the flash strips that were so hard to find at the store.

There were some beautiful and interesting qualities to the pictures, though. Ironically, the photos taken 15 years ago retained more color and quality than those taken on the day I found the camera. My favorite pictures were those featuring the backyard and swingset area, because I photographed it both times. The later pictures show my play areas in a state of disrepair, a stark contrast to the neat, relatively new yard I played in as a child.