Chickens in Motion

My family recently pooled together to get my dad a nice DSLR for Christmas. He had mentioned to me last summer while we were on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters how he would like to be able to take pictures of the beautiful things he saw around him. So, ever since he got the camera he's been working on figuring it out. He frequently contacts me to ask questions about how things work and it has made me recall my photography classes from over a year ago. I'm no master photographer myself but it has made me reflect on how well I retain (or don't retain) things that I've learned in my various classes. My dad has set a project for himself and it seems to be going well. He is going to photograph the alphabet. He has recently gone a shoot looking for the letter A, either literally, looking for the letterform, or shooting things that start with A. Already he has some pretty interesting shots from it. I'm very impressed about how he has set himself to learn something and hope to be able to follow his example in setting good projects for myself in the future. Look at his flickr feed to see how the project goes.

In Typography class last summer we had a project involving an imagined King County, Washington program for sustainability. The idea was to encourage locals to raise chickens to cut down on waste and imported goods. Practicality aside, it was a good project and gave me the opportunity to go to work in a way that I really enjoyed. I took photos of chickens from a Bainbridge Island family that raises chickens and buildings around the city. I was pleased with the way poster and brochure and the idea to do a motion graphics aspect to the project began to germinate. Finally this semester I had the excuse to go for it. The video was fun to make. Check it out: