No Smoking.

No Smoking
November 15, 2005

This is from one of the few times I took my camera out for school. The one photography class I took left a really bad taste in my mouth. I feel like I actually did learn a lot, but I really don't respond well to criticism and judgement, I take everything way too personal. Art studio students are a special breed, a breed that I can never be. You've got to have some thick skin to listen to people tear through your creativity for hours on end.

This was actually for a project for my human rights class, probably the class I worked the hardest in my entire college career. This lady was my professor. I loved that class. Our final project had to be about a human rights issue that affected a certain region and I picked probably the least popular region, the United States. My project was about our health care system, which was the project I wanted to do since the first day of class. I learned a whole lot and believe me when I tell you that the US has the greatest health care system in the world. But no one can afford it.

We had to provide some kind of visual aid with our project, so I ran around a few hospitals in the Albuquerque area and took pictures. My teacher and everyone else in my group loved it, which I don't understand. It almost feels like cheating. "So you're telling me I get to walk around, take pictures and you want to give me college credit with that? AND there's no critical analysis of the photos? Alright. Sounds good." About 2 hours of my life turned into an A.

I did spend some time photoshopping. I wanted to make them look as gritty and isolated as possible. This is actually from a construction site at UNMH, they were building the new children's hospital (above my beloved tunnels). Once again, it's almost cheating, but really, this is how your HMO feels about you.

(Taken with the Sony DSC-P32. It was screaming its siren song at me by that point. I photoshopped it years ago... contrast is overcooked and there's a film grain filter on there. The rest, you've got me. Original image.)