Catching Up, and Photo Essays

Others in this class will have noticed by now that I've been a bit behind in getting all of my assignments uploaded to this blog. There are several reasons for this, and none of which should be taken as excuses. It's mostly because all of the stuff we've been doing over the past few days is so new and unfamiliar to me. Of course, this is a good thing; my potential in the realm of technology has been stretched over the past few days, and my confidence with it. I'll try to stay on top of things from this point on.

On Tuesday (7/17) our assignment was to experiment with creating photo essays. With mine, I attempted to chronicle my relationship with my fiancé. The catch is that we were first limited to five photographs, or frames, with which to build our essays. Using Windows Movie Maker, I toyed around with some photos of Katie and I that I pulled from Facebook (why yes, thank you, it is creative and original). My intent was to illustrate how Katie and I’s relationship began with a shared taste in eclectic (weird) humor; from hanging out in cemeteries to making “guido” faces in pictures, our relationship evolved from a merely goofy one to one that is truly wonderful in every way.

 After working on the first draft of our photo essays, we were then directed to a photo essay by Phillip Toledano called “Days With My Father.” Toledano meant this photo essay to be a sort of “time capsule,” a record of and reflection on his father’s last days of life. This essay was tragic, humorous, odd, and unashamedly tender in every way. More than once I had to fall back on my well-honed, manly emotional repressiveness while reading it just to keep the ‘ol eye balls from “sweating.”

I have never nor do I ever expect to one day bill myself as a filmmaker, or even a film expert, but it seems to me that Toledano has accomplished with this photo essay exactly what successful filmmakers are seeking to do; he forces us to empathize with him and with his characters. Before reading/viewing the essay in its entirety, I might have been rather disgusted and put off by the sight of Toledano’s aging and decrepit father. By the end of the essay, I found myself wanting to love this old man with the same fierceness that Toledano evidently loved him; I felt sorrow at his death, and empathy for the author’s grief.

My own attempt at a photo essay is nothing like Toledano’s and is certainly not as polished or powerful, but it’s an attempt nonetheless.