I read three books this quarter, all dealing with a different aspect of film production.

My first book was Film School: The True Story of a Midwestern Family Man Who Went to the World’s Most Famous Film School, Fell Flat on His Face, Had a Stroke, and Sold a Television Series to CBS by Steve Boman. Long title explains it all pretty much. Even though this was easily the most entertaining book to read, it probably helped me the least out of my three. His writing style is superb, easy to pick up on and I honestly laughed out loud a few times — however despite the fact that Boman was doing basically the same thing as I, he is being instructed. I’m doing everything from the very start, albeit with a little experience/initial teachings under my belt, all by myself. I’m not even in a photography-centric program let alone a film one. I feel less pressure to adhere to the standard way of conceptualizing and constructing my movie just because I knew there wouldn’t be anyone other than a classmate or two there to critically judge my piece as I would like it to be. Boman’s story genuinely is miraculous and at times is hard to believe but if you’re interested in attending film school at all – it will definitely give you a candid view at the inner workings of such a prestigious institution.

My second book was Stealing Fire from the Gods by James Bonnet. This book dealt primarily on story and how to meditate deeply on your varying elements to help set them in concrete. Bonnet’s big thing is making sure that your story makes sense on a deeper level — helping to create and cement meaning among the various story elements. Now, I’ve taken a few classes in the past that did teach me how to create stories of any type… I’ve just had very little actual practice/experience. I used to love writing stories as a kid, but I hated finishing one. I never knew where to take it, so I usually just stopped writing it and moved onto the next story. I’ve got lots of great ideas, but no full stories that I could just straight up implement. So, with this all in mind, imagine reading this book trying to find the places where it helps you to create a story in the first place — then it just not being there. You’re left with all the instructions for the process after the initial creative push. It does talk at length about the importance of story and where it came from and why, but it seems to get too in depth too quickly. I picked up this book as a severely novice writer and am still very novice. I have better ideas for next time, because unfortunately I read this book a little too late for it to inform the beginning of my process — yet it did help me change around the ending of my film to make it more effective and less confusing. This was also a great read, but I completely messed up by not reading it first.

My third and final book was more of a technical handbook of sorts — Reflections: Twenty-One Cinematographers At Work by Benjamin Bergery. Based solely on cinematography and the work of a few famous artists of the field, this book is literally like a handguide to shooting film. It talks a lot about lighting setups for specific layouts, camera angles, multicam setups, camera movements and so much more… It provides a bunch of diagrams and a lot of reference pictures so you can easily visualize what they are talking about. Even though I probably found this the most helpful/interesting book I read, I still didn’t use much of what was taught to me in the book. I wanted to incorporate a few of the movements and camera angles, they just wouldn’t work or would take way too long to get good at. I would literally need 2 or 3 quarters to film if I was legitimately trying to perfect the camera movements I want to use… sucks but I learned that the ultra hard way this quarter!

All in all, I read three pretty fantastic books, none of which informed my project a great deal but I really did enjoy each and every one.

I read three books this quarter, all dealing with a different aspect of film production.

My first book was Film School: The True Story of a Midwestern Family Man Who Went to the World’s Most Famous Film School, Fell Flat on His Face, Had a Stroke, and Sold a Television Series to CBS by Steve Boman. Long title explains it all pretty much. Even though this was easily the most entertaining book to read, it probably helped me the least out of my three. His writing style is superb, easy to pick up on and I honestly laughed out loud a few times — however despite the fact that Boman was doing basically the same thing as I, he is being instructed. I’m doing everything from the very start, albeit with a little experience/initial teachings under my belt, all by myself. I’m not even in a photography-centric program let alone a film one. I feel less pressure to adhere to the standard way of conceptualizing and constructing my movie just because I knew there wouldn’t be anyone other than a classmate or two there to critically judge my piece as I would like it to be. Boman’s story genuinely is miraculous and at times is hard to believe but if you’re interested in attending film school at all – it will definitely give you a candid view at the inner workings of such a prestigious institution.

My second book was Stealing Fire from the Gods by James Bonnet. This book dealt primarily on story and how to meditate deeply on your varying elements to help set them in concrete. Bonnet’s big thing is making sure that your story makes sense on a deeper level — helping to create and cement meaning among the various story elements. Now, I’ve taken a few classes in the past that did teach me how to create stories of any type… I’ve just had very little actual practice/experience. I used to love writing stories as a kid, but I hated finishing one. I never knew where to take it, so I usually just stopped writing it and moved onto the next story. I’ve got lots of great ideas, but no full stories that I could just straight up implement. So, with this all in mind, imagine reading this book trying to find the places where it helps you to create a story in the first place — then it just not being there. You’re left with all the instructions for the process after the initial creative push. It does talk at length about the importance of story and where it came from and why, but it seems to get too in depth too quickly. I picked up this book as a severely novice writer and am still very novice. I have better ideas for next time, because unfortunately I read this book a little too late for it to inform the beginning of my process — yet it did help me change around the ending of my film to make it more effective and less confusing. This was also a great read, but I completely messed up by not reading it first.

My third and final book was more of a technical handbook of sorts — Reflections: Twenty-One Cinematographers At Work by Benjamin Bergery. Based solely on cinematography and the work of a few famous artists of the field, this book is literally like a handguide to shooting film. It talks a lot about lighting setups for specific layouts, camera angles, multicam setups, camera movements and so much more… It provides a bunch of diagrams and a lot of reference pictures so you can easily visualize what they are talking about. Even though I probably found this the most helpful/interesting book I read, I still didn’t use much of what was taught to me in the book. I wanted to incorporate a few of the movements and camera angles, they just wouldn’t work or would take way too long to get good at. I would literally need 2 or 3 quarters to film if I was legitimately trying to perfect the camera movements I want to use… sucks but I learned that the ultra hard way this quarter!

All in all, I read three pretty fantastic books, none of which informed my project a great deal but I really did enjoy each and every one.

I read three books this quarter, all dealing with a different aspect of film production.

My first book was Film School: The True Story of a Midwestern Family Man Who Went to the World’s Most Famous Film School, Fell Flat on His Face, Had a Stroke, and Sold a Television Series to CBS by Steve Boman. Long title explains it all pretty much. Even though this was easily the most entertaining book to read, it probably helped me the least out of my three. His writing style is superb, easy to pick up on and I honestly laughed out loud a few times — however despite the fact that Boman was doing basically the same thing as I, he is being instructed. I’m doing everything from the very start, albeit with a little experience/initial teachings under my belt, all by myself. I’m not even in a photography-centric program let alone a film one. I feel less pressure to adhere to the standard way of conceptualizing and constructing my movie just because I knew there wouldn’t be anyone other than a classmate or two there to critically judge my piece as I would like it to be. Boman’s story genuinely is miraculous and at times is hard to believe but if you’re interested in attending film school at all – it will definitely give you a candid view at the inner workings of such a prestigious institution.

My second book was Stealing Fire from the Gods by James Bonnet. This book dealt primarily on story and how to meditate deeply on your varying elements to help set them in concrete. Bonnet’s big thing is making sure that your story makes sense on a deeper level — helping to create and cement meaning among the various story elements. Now, I’ve taken a few classes in the past that did teach me how to create stories of any type… I’ve just had very little actual practice/experience. I used to love writing stories as a kid, but I hated finishing one. I never knew where to take it, so I usually just stopped writing it and moved onto the next story. I’ve got lots of great ideas, but no full stories that I could just straight up implement. So, with this all in mind, imagine reading this book trying to find the places where it helps you to create a story in the first place — then it just not being there. You’re left with all the instructions for the process after the initial creative push. It does talk at length about the importance of story and where it came from and why, but it seems to get too in depth too quickly. I picked up this book as a severely novice writer and am still very novice. I have better ideas for next time, because unfortunately I read this book a little too late for it to inform the beginning of my process — yet it did help me change around the ending of my film to make it more effective and less confusing. This was also a great read, but I completely messed up by not reading it first.

My third and final book was more of a technical handbook of sorts — Reflections: Twenty-One Cinematographers At Work by Benjamin Bergery. Based solely on cinematography and the work of a few famous artists of the field, this book is literally like a handguide to shooting film. It talks a lot about lighting setups for specific layouts, camera angles, multicam setups, camera movements and so much more… It provides a bunch of diagrams and a lot of reference pictures so you can easily visualize what they are talking about. Even though I probably found this the most helpful/interesting book I read, I still didn’t use much of what was taught to me in the book. I wanted to incorporate a few of the movements and camera angles, they just wouldn’t work or would take way too long to get good at. I would literally need 2 or 3 quarters to film if I was legitimately trying to perfect the camera movements I want to use… sucks but I learned that the ultra hard way this quarter!

All in all, I read three pretty fantastic books, none of which informed my project a great deal but I really did enjoy each and every one.

I read three books this quarter, all dealing with a different aspect of film production.

My first book was Film School: The True Story of a Midwestern Family Man Who Went to the World’s Most Famous Film School, Fell Flat on His Face, Had a Stroke, and Sold a Television Series to CBS by Steve Boman. Long title explains it all pretty much. Even though this was easily the most entertaining book to read, it probably helped me the least out of my three. His writing style is superb, easy to pick up on and I honestly laughed out loud a few times — however despite the fact that Boman was doing basically the same thing as I, he is being instructed. I’m doing everything from the very start, albeit with a little experience/initial teachings under my belt, all by myself. I’m not even in a photography-centric program let alone a film one. I feel less pressure to adhere to the standard way of conceptualizing and constructing my movie just because I knew there wouldn’t be anyone other than a classmate or two there to critically judge my piece as I would like it to be. Boman’s story genuinely is miraculous and at times is hard to believe but if you’re interested in attending film school at all – it will definitely give you a candid view at the inner workings of such a prestigious institution.

My second book was Stealing Fire from the Gods by James Bonnet. This book dealt primarily on story and how to meditate deeply on your varying elements to help set them in concrete. Bonnet’s big thing is making sure that your story makes sense on a deeper level — helping to create and cement meaning among the various story elements. Now, I’ve taken a few classes in the past that did teach me how to create stories of any type… I’ve just had very little actual practice/experience. I used to love writing stories as a kid, but I hated finishing one. I never knew where to take it, so I usually just stopped writing it and moved onto the next story. I’ve got lots of great ideas, but no full stories that I could just straight up implement. So, with this all in mind, imagine reading this book trying to find the places where it helps you to create a story in the first place — then it just not being there. You’re left with all the instructions for the process after the initial creative push. It does talk at length about the importance of story and where it came from and why, but it seems to get too in depth too quickly. I picked up this book as a severely novice writer and am still very novice. I have better ideas for next time, because unfortunately I read this book a little too late for it to inform the beginning of my process — yet it did help me change around the ending of my film to make it more effective and less confusing. This was also a great read, but I completely messed up by not reading it first.

My third and final book was more of a technical handbook of sorts — Reflections: Twenty-One Cinematographers At Work by Benjamin Bergery. Based solely on cinematography and the work of a few famous artists of the field, this book is literally like a handguide to shooting film. It talks a lot about lighting setups for specific layouts, camera angles, multicam setups, camera movements and so much more… It provides a bunch of diagrams and a lot of reference pictures so you can easily visualize what they are talking about. Even though I probably found this the most helpful/interesting book I read, I still didn’t use much of what was taught to me in the book. I wanted to incorporate a few of the movements and camera angles, they just wouldn’t work or would take way too long to get good at. I would literally need 2 or 3 quarters to film if I was legitimately trying to perfect the camera movements I want to use… sucks but I learned that the ultra hard way this quarter!

All in all, I read three pretty fantastic books, none of which informed my project a great deal but I really did enjoy each and every one.

I read three books this quarter, all dealing with a different aspect of film production.

My first book was Film School: The True Story of a Midwestern Family Man Who Went to the World’s Most Famous Film School, Fell Flat on His Face, Had a Stroke, and Sold a Television Series to CBS by Steve Boman. Long title explains it all pretty much. Even though this was easily the most entertaining book to read, it probably helped me the least out of my three. His writing style is superb, easy to pick up on and I honestly laughed out loud a few times — however despite the fact that Boman was doing basically the same thing as I, he is being instructed. I’m doing everything from the very start, albeit with a little experience/initial teachings under my belt, all by myself. I’m not even in a photography-centric program let alone a film one. I feel less pressure to adhere to the standard way of conceptualizing and constructing my movie just because I knew there wouldn’t be anyone other than a classmate or two there to critically judge my piece as I would like it to be. Boman’s story genuinely is miraculous and at times is hard to believe but if you’re interested in attending film school at all – it will definitely give you a candid view at the inner workings of such a prestigious institution.

My second book was Stealing Fire from the Gods by James Bonnet. This book dealt primarily on story and how to meditate deeply on your varying elements to help set them in concrete. Bonnet’s big thing is making sure that your story makes sense on a deeper level — helping to create and cement meaning among the various story elements. Now, I’ve taken a few classes in the past that did teach me how to create stories of any type… I’ve just had very little actual practice/experience. I used to love writing stories as a kid, but I hated finishing one. I never knew where to take it, so I usually just stopped writing it and moved onto the next story. I’ve got lots of great ideas, but no full stories that I could just straight up implement. So, with this all in mind, imagine reading this book trying to find the places where it helps you to create a story in the first place — then it just not being there. You’re left with all the instructions for the process after the initial creative push. It does talk at length about the importance of story and where it came from and why, but it seems to get too in depth too quickly. I picked up this book as a severely novice writer and am still very novice. I have better ideas for next time, because unfortunately I read this book a little too late for it to inform the beginning of my process — yet it did help me change around the ending of my film to make it more effective and less confusing. This was also a great read, but I completely messed up by not reading it first.

My third and final book was more of a technical handbook of sorts — Reflections: Twenty-One Cinematographers At Work by Benjamin Bergery. Based solely on cinematography and the work of a few famous artists of the field, this book is literally like a handguide to shooting film. It talks a lot about lighting setups for specific layouts, camera angles, multicam setups, camera movements and so much more… It provides a bunch of diagrams and a lot of reference pictures so you can easily visualize what they are talking about. Even though I probably found this the most helpful/interesting book I read, I still didn’t use much of what was taught to me in the book. I wanted to incorporate a few of the movements and camera angles, they just wouldn’t work or would take way too long to get good at. I would literally need 2 or 3 quarters to film if I was legitimately trying to perfect the camera movements I want to use… sucks but I learned that the ultra hard way this quarter!

All in all, I read three pretty fantastic books, none of which informed my project a great deal but I really did enjoy each and every one.

I read three books this quarter, all dealing with a different aspect of film production.

My first book was Film School: The True Story of a Midwestern Family Man Who Went to the World’s Most Famous Film School, Fell Flat on His Face, Had a Stroke, and Sold a Television Series to CBS by Steve Boman. Long title explains it all pretty much. Even though this was easily the most entertaining book to read, it probably helped me the least out of my three. His writing style is superb, easy to pick up on and I honestly laughed out loud a few times — however despite the fact that Boman was doing basically the same thing as I, he is being instructed. I’m doing everything from the very start, albeit with a little experience/initial teachings under my belt, all by myself. I’m not even in a photography-centric program let alone a film one. I feel less pressure to adhere to the standard way of conceptualizing and constructing my movie just because I knew there wouldn’t be anyone other than a classmate or two there to critically judge my piece as I would like it to be. Boman’s story genuinely is miraculous and at times is hard to believe but if you’re interested in attending film school at all – it will definitely give you a candid view at the inner workings of such a prestigious institution.

My second book was Stealing Fire from the Gods by James Bonnet. This book dealt primarily on story and how to meditate deeply on your varying elements to help set them in concrete. Bonnet’s big thing is making sure that your story makes sense on a deeper level — helping to create and cement meaning among the various story elements. Now, I’ve taken a few classes in the past that did teach me how to create stories of any type… I’ve just had very little actual practice/experience. I used to love writing stories as a kid, but I hated finishing one. I never knew where to take it, so I usually just stopped writing it and moved onto the next story. I’ve got lots of great ideas, but no full stories that I could just straight up implement. So, with this all in mind, imagine reading this book trying to find the places where it helps you to create a story in the first place — then it just not being there. You’re left with all the instructions for the process after the initial creative push. It does talk at length about the importance of story and where it came from and why, but it seems to get too in depth too quickly. I picked up this book as a severely novice writer and am still very novice. I have better ideas for next time, because unfortunately I read this book a little too late for it to inform the beginning of my process — yet it did help me change around the ending of my film to make it more effective and less confusing. This was also a great read, but I completely messed up by not reading it first.

My third and final book was more of a technical handbook of sorts — Reflections: Twenty-One Cinematographers At Work by Benjamin Bergery. Based solely on cinematography and the work of a few famous artists of the field, this book is literally like a handguide to shooting film. It talks a lot about lighting setups for specific layouts, camera angles, multicam setups, camera movements and so much more… It provides a bunch of diagrams and a lot of reference pictures so you can easily visualize what they are talking about. Even though I probably found this the most helpful/interesting book I read, I still didn’t use much of what was taught to me in the book. I wanted to incorporate a few of the movements and camera angles, they just wouldn’t work or would take way too long to get good at. I would literally need 2 or 3 quarters to film if I was legitimately trying to perfect the camera movements I want to use… sucks but I learned that the ultra hard way this quarter!

All in all, I read three pretty fantastic books, none of which informed my project a great deal but I really did enjoy each and every one.

During week 6 I chose to visit the Portland Art Museum. This particular museum drew me in with its exhibit showcasing Carrie Mae Weems, a prolific photographer we had been introduced to in Winter quarter, as well as its focus on unique modern art. I definitely was not disappointed.

First of all, the building itself was beautiful inside and out. Unassuming from the outside, clean and elegant on the inside. Walking around reminded me of being in the Museu Picasso or the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, both in the same city. Everything was displayed so nicely and basically uniform… it was a treat on the eyes. Even the rooms themselves were pieces of architectural art, I’m sure they had envisioned such when in planning and construction. This place was truly an art gallery, both holding and being art.

I wasn’t completely sure what had happened, but I missed one of the special photography exhibits that was based mainly on landscape photography, I think primarily done by one person. Well, whatever. Instead I will talk about the regular photography exhibit as well as the special one on Carrie Mae Weems. In the normal exhibit there was a lot of really striking images, yet I kept finding myself asking the question that Kitty asked of me a while ago… what makes this fine art? I can sit there an analyze a photograph to no end, comment about the composition, the lighting, the exposure, the color, the focal range, the depth of field, the mise en scene… but who is supposed to know when just looking at them? There were a lot of stark, raw images there, mainly in black and white, that depicted normal life. It seemed like there was an emphasis in part of the exhibit toward capturing families in their domestic spaces. It definitely seemed to follow a similar idea to Eric’s project.

Carrie Mae Weems’ exhibit was laid out so well, I really wish there was a bird’s eye view of the space available, they had a lot of great portraits with funny question/answer cards next to them, a few large projectors displaying her work/people that were close to her work and most notably the Kitchen Table series that was shown to the class last quarter. Such an exquisite series, I love every image to death. I loved them so much I tried to snap a photo then got in trouble Fantastic exhibits for photography for sure. Definitely worth going to the Portland museum vs. Seattle just for that alone.

One of the last things I’ll mention is the fact that this place was a labyrinth of stairs, random exhibits and very sparse signs. It made it easy, and fun, to get lost within the museum’s walls. However, it got kind of old when I was trying to find the second special exhibit as well as just know exactly what I was looking at without their rentable iPod guided tour. The rest of the museum was superb, full of beautiful modern art that art my eye every time I turned the corner. It was refreshing to see so many good, creative, original pieces of art.

All in all, a highly recommended museum. Great aesthetics in terms of architecture and display, fairly friendly staff, great exhibits and I definitely found some of my new favorite artwork here.

During week 6 I chose to visit the Portland Art Museum. This particular museum drew me in with its exhibit showcasing Carrie Mae Weems, a prolific photographer we had been introduced to in Winter quarter, as well as its focus on unique modern art. I definitely was not disappointed.

First of all, the building itself was beautiful inside and out. Unassuming from the outside, clean and elegant on the inside. Walking around reminded me of being in the Museu Picasso or the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, both in the same city. Everything was displayed so nicely and basically uniform… it was a treat on the eyes. Even the rooms themselves were pieces of architectural art, I’m sure they had envisioned such when in planning and construction. This place was truly an art gallery, both holding and being art.

I wasn’t completely sure what had happened, but I missed one of the special photography exhibits that was based mainly on landscape photography, I think primarily done by one person. Well, whatever. Instead I will talk about the regular photography exhibit as well as the special one on Carrie Mae Weems. In the normal exhibit there was a lot of really striking images, yet I kept finding myself asking the question that Kitty asked of me a while ago… what makes this fine art? I can sit there an analyze a photograph to no end, comment about the composition, the lighting, the exposure, the color, the focal range, the depth of field, the mise en scene… but who is supposed to know when just looking at them? There were a lot of stark, raw images there, mainly in black and white, that depicted normal life. It seemed like there was an emphasis in part of the exhibit toward capturing families in their domestic spaces. It definitely seemed to follow a similar idea to Eric’s project.

Carrie Mae Weems’ exhibit was laid out so well, I really wish there was a bird’s eye view of the space available, they had a lot of great portraits with funny question/answer cards next to them, a few large projectors displaying her work/people that were close to her work and most notably the Kitchen Table series that was shown to the class last quarter. Such an exquisite series, I love every image to death. I loved them so much I tried to snap a photo then got in trouble Fantastic exhibits for photography for sure. Definitely worth going to the Portland museum vs. Seattle just for that alone.

One of the last things I’ll mention is the fact that this place was a labyrinth of stairs, random exhibits and very sparse signs. It made it easy, and fun, to get lost within the museum’s walls. However, it got kind of old when I was trying to find the second special exhibit as well as just know exactly what I was looking at without their rentable iPod guided tour. The rest of the museum was superb, full of beautiful modern art that art my eye every time I turned the corner. It was refreshing to see so many good, creative, original pieces of art.

All in all, a highly recommended museum. Great aesthetics in terms of architecture and display, fairly friendly staff, great exhibits and I definitely found some of my new favorite artwork here.

During week 6 I chose to visit the Portland Art Museum. This particular museum drew me in with its exhibit showcasing Carrie Mae Weems, a prolific photographer we had been introduced to in Winter quarter, as well as its focus on unique modern art. I definitely was not disappointed.

First of all, the building itself was beautiful inside and out. Unassuming from the outside, clean and elegant on the inside. Walking around reminded me of being in the Museu Picasso or the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, both in the same city. Everything was displayed so nicely and basically uniform… it was a treat on the eyes. Even the rooms themselves were pieces of architectural art, I’m sure they had envisioned such when in planning and construction. This place was truly an art gallery, both holding and being art.

I wasn’t completely sure what had happened, but I missed one of the special photography exhibits that was based mainly on landscape photography, I think primarily done by one person. Well, whatever. Instead I will talk about the regular photography exhibit as well as the special one on Carrie Mae Weems. In the normal exhibit there was a lot of really striking images, yet I kept finding myself asking the question that Kitty asked of me a while ago… what makes this fine art? I can sit there an analyze a photograph to no end, comment about the composition, the lighting, the exposure, the color, the focal range, the depth of field, the mise en scene… but who is supposed to know when just looking at them? There were a lot of stark, raw images there, mainly in black and white, that depicted normal life. It seemed like there was an emphasis in part of the exhibit toward capturing families in their domestic spaces. It definitely seemed to follow a similar idea to Eric’s project.

Carrie Mae Weems’ exhibit was laid out so well, I really wish there was a bird’s eye view of the space available, they had a lot of great portraits with funny question/answer cards next to them, a few large projectors displaying her work/people that were close to her work and most notably the Kitchen Table series that was shown to the class last quarter. Such an exquisite series, I love every image to death. I loved them so much I tried to snap a photo then got in trouble Fantastic exhibits for photography for sure. Definitely worth going to the Portland museum vs. Seattle just for that alone.

One of the last things I’ll mention is the fact that this place was a labyrinth of stairs, random exhibits and very sparse signs. It made it easy, and fun, to get lost within the museum’s walls. However, it got kind of old when I was trying to find the second special exhibit as well as just know exactly what I was looking at without their rentable iPod guided tour. The rest of the museum was superb, full of beautiful modern art that art my eye every time I turned the corner. It was refreshing to see so many good, creative, original pieces of art.

All in all, a highly recommended museum. Great aesthetics in terms of architecture and display, fairly friendly staff, great exhibits and I definitely found some of my new favorite artwork here.

During week 6 I chose to visit the Portland Art Museum. This particular museum drew me in with its exhibit showcasing Carrie Mae Weems, a prolific photographer we had been introduced to in Winter quarter, as well as its focus on unique modern art. I definitely was not disappointed.

First of all, the building itself was beautiful inside and out. Unassuming from the outside, clean and elegant on the inside. Walking around reminded me of being in the Museu Picasso or the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, both in the same city. Everything was displayed so nicely and basically uniform… it was a treat on the eyes. Even the rooms themselves were pieces of architectural art, I’m sure they had envisioned such when in planning and construction. This place was truly an art gallery, both holding and being art.

I wasn’t completely sure what had happened, but I missed one of the special photography exhibits that was based mainly on landscape photography, I think primarily done by one person. Well, whatever. Instead I will talk about the regular photography exhibit as well as the special one on Carrie Mae Weems. In the normal exhibit there was a lot of really striking images, yet I kept finding myself asking the question that Kitty asked of me a while ago… what makes this fine art? I can sit there an analyze a photograph to no end, comment about the composition, the lighting, the exposure, the color, the focal range, the depth of field, the mise en scene… but who is supposed to know when just looking at them? There were a lot of stark, raw images there, mainly in black and white, that depicted normal life. It seemed like there was an emphasis in part of the exhibit toward capturing families in their domestic spaces. It definitely seemed to follow a similar idea to Eric’s project.

Carrie Mae Weems’ exhibit was laid out so well, I really wish there was a bird’s eye view of the space available, they had a lot of great portraits with funny question/answer cards next to them, a few large projectors displaying her work/people that were close to her work and most notably the Kitchen Table series that was shown to the class last quarter. Such an exquisite series, I love every image to death. I loved them so much I tried to snap a photo then got in trouble Fantastic exhibits for photography for sure. Definitely worth going to the Portland museum vs. Seattle just for that alone.

One of the last things I’ll mention is the fact that this place was a labyrinth of stairs, random exhibits and very sparse signs. It made it easy, and fun, to get lost within the museum’s walls. However, it got kind of old when I was trying to find the second special exhibit as well as just know exactly what I was looking at without their rentable iPod guided tour. The rest of the museum was superb, full of beautiful modern art that art my eye every time I turned the corner. It was refreshing to see so many good, creative, original pieces of art.

All in all, a highly recommended museum. Great aesthetics in terms of architecture and display, fairly friendly staff, great exhibits and I definitely found some of my new favorite artwork here.