Smashing pumpkins

Every old barn needs some paint

This week's assignment in my photo class was to make a self-portrait that reveals some inner thing about yourself. These are mine.

When I was in high school (and even junior high), I wore make-up. My mother used to take me to the Clinique counter to buy eye shadow and foundation. I always felt so embarrassed, sitting in those high seats as the make-up artist brushed blush across my cheeks. Do it just like this when you go home, they'd say.

I was never good at putting on my make-up. My mother told me women are supposed to wear makeup. If she wasn't wearing hers, she said she didn't have her face on. "Every old barn needs some paint," she said.

I felt like I'd never get used to putting a mascara wand so close to my eyes. I would never know how to make blush look natural, how to blend foundation in so that it looked like your real skin, only better. So when I went to college, I just stopped wearing it. Secretly, though, I always suspected I would be more beautiful if I wore makeup. Some nights, after a few cocktails, I would ask sorority girls to put makeup on me. Outside and done up, people would tell me how pretty I looked.

I don't wear makeup now. But the reason isn't because I don't like makeup, or because I think I look better without it. The reason I don't wear makeup is because I know I'll never be pretty that way. I know I'll never be good at putting it on, at being the kind of woman who would make the South proud. A beauty.

Luck of the draw

Yesterday, I drove out to a bison ranch about 45 minutes away from town to cover a fast draw competition. The cowboys who participate in the competition were all great guys and even strapped a holster and gun on me. As soon as I saw this guy -- Bad Eye Lefty -- I knew I had to have a picture keepsake of him.

I read your diary

I've enrolled in my first-ever photography class (yikes!) at Newspace in Portland. For our first assignment, we had to take a series of photos of something people don't normally look at (Would You Jump Rope readers might notice that I repurposed this for our collaborative blog). I chose personal journals. Here are some photos from my series. The rest are in a Flickr album.

You used to call me papillion.

In focus

Sunday night, Amanda and I worked on a video together. One detriment of the Canon 5D Mk ii is its focusing. It does not auto focus in video mode. And it's so hard to tell on a tiny LCD screen if something is in focus. So sometimes I'll flip the camera into auto focus and take a photo to get a better focus approximation.

Anyway, here are some accidental focusing portraits.

Things I want to do this fall

Build a pinhole camera (Q bought me a kit for my birthday, so I really have no excuse)
Experiment with fresh pasta
Make pumpkin ice cream
Hold a film festival (Aaron and I won a certificate to rent out the Baghdad Theater for free, so we'll be having a screening in November)
Read Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" (I'm 25th in line out of nearly 1,200 people at the library!)
Hang the art I recently bought
Learn how to use a camera flash (I signed up for a class!)
Write at least one story I am seriously proud of
Finish my essays for my portfolio
Join a gym
Visit Amanda in Seattle
Bike at least 10 miles a week (This is low-balling it, but my hip has been crazy lately)