There’s Graffiti in Your Upper Class Neighborhood

“Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint.”
― Banksy, Wall and Piece

Holy spring, it has been a while since I’ve last posted on this blog (April 27th, gasp). In the busy months since (boy, were they busy), I have:

• Taken the SAT (twice)
• Survived my first season on Varsity Softball
• Wrangled the troops of the yearbook to produce the Senior Supplement (to say it’s like herding cats would be generous)
• Tried really, really hard to not be in Acton
• Watched my senior friends graduate (congrats/take me with you!)

And now it’s raining in June and, having completed 2/5 finals, I am officially done with chemistry and French for the rest of my life (please don’t correct me on this one- ignorance is bliss), and I’m making the good CP Math-induced decision to write this blog instead of, you know, studying (oh).

But maybe the craziness of the last 2.5 months has been beneficial, because it gave me the opportunity to shoot some beautiful places/faces. I chose to complete my last two photography class projects in digital, just because I couldn’t muster the energy (or $$$) to go and buy more film. Pathetic as that is, I was able to shoot real pictures in digital for once, something that I hadn’t done in far too long.

The images I’m sharing with you today come from Mother’s Day (sorry mom, love you), the first day that felt like real summer in our little New England home. It was 80 degrees and sunny and I had my dad’s car and my camera, so naturally I picked up my best friend/model for the day and we set out to finish my final photo project. This was actually supposed to be a response to a “Picture in a picture” assignment- using text or images in photographs. But with car keys in hand and friend in passenger seat, I had something a little different in mind.

The town where I live is pristine, mostly. There are nice little rows of houses set perfectly along nicely paved streets. Graffiti exists only on the stop signs surrounding the high school, annually marked with the digits of that year’s graduating class. There’s the occasional pair of sneakers over a telephone wire, and Dunkin cups sometimes end up abandoned on the sidewalk, but for the most part, Actonites like their town how they like their children’s grades: flawless.

But if you go to South Acton (endearingly known as Sacton), the “bad part” of Acton, there’s a bridge that I’ve driven over more than 100 times in my seventeen years in this little bubble. It crosses some railroad tracks and from above is totally average. Underneath, however, it is this upper-middle-class town’s safe haven for artists who couldn’t stick it out in Advanced Drawing and Painting. It’s secretive, and thus effortlessly preserved. To be frank- it’s sketchy. You don’t want anyone to see you walking down the path to the tracks. But luckily I had a large camera, my guaranteed access pass to just about anywhere.

These are some of the best images from that day. We had fun reading the graffiti, asking questions about it, wishing we had thoughts that deep and introspective that we could take to a concrete wall with a can of paint. To ask the same question my photo teacher asked, “what would make someone write that?” Part of me wants to know. The other, larger part is perfectly fine just wondering.

“soft grunge”

more ballers less rappers

“this is art”

have kicks will travel

aaannnd a little self-portraiture just for shits and giggles

Breaking and Entering Into a World of Color

Feeling a little cooped up in this small, gray town on an uncharacteristically warm, albeit rainy, April day (60º!). Was partaking in my usual habit of scanning my iPhoto, looking for something I missed the first time, when I came across this little set of images. Taken October 2013 over Columbus Day Weekend (yes, that’s a thing in New England) during a day trip up to Bar Harbor (yes, that’s a thing in my family).

We’ve been going to Acadia National Park, Mount Desert Island for years and it has become an incredibly special place for my family. Home to smiles, tears, and boundless memories, we try to make the trip to the small Northern Mid-Coast Maine island annually. Unfortunately, due to softball tournaments, and messy work schedules, and the Europe trip (incase you missed it, I went to Europe, but you probably can’t tell by reading this blog), we were scrambling for a time to go to our favorite little island.

That time landed in the middle of a government shut-down. The park itself was (technically) closed, so like all true, law-obeying New-Englanders, we parked along Route 233 and hopped the caution tape fence that kept Eagle Lake from the rest of the world.

We walked into a world of color. The fall leaves were in their prime, painting a mural of red and orange and yellow against the backdrop of a brilliantly blue cloudless sky. I stood amongst bikers, hikers, leaf-peepers, and New England families just like us, coming home for the first time all year, raised the viewfinder to my eye, and funneled my feelings into photography. Feelings of warmth, of light, of color, of happiness. Feelings that are best felt on a warm(ish) rainy night in April. Feelings of That Day We Broke-And-Entered Into Government Property. Feelings of Acadia.

 

 

public drinking supply.

Patriotism & the Eastern Prom

Here’s a collection of shots from Fourth of July, 2014. After years of meticulously timing to get a shot of the burst of light that lasts for only a second before melting away into smoke, I decided a new approach- long exposure.

I love the lasting patterns that the light creates in the image, and how that much more closely resembles what we see with the naked eye. At the same time, I love the details  captured frozen by the lens, that may be forgotten too quickly, or simply not seen in the grandeur of it all.

These shots were all shot at between 2.5 and 5 second exposures.

edited- 4x fade effect (iPhoto)