the battle continues

So I have done a few experiments with photoshop and layering photo's over one another, I am going to try the same images with acetate and then figure out which images I prefer.

Then I am going to finally get people to photograph and go from there which means better quality and better image, more control over what I get and so on and so forth.

Really excited about it.

Just because I loved it....

I was having a moment of self-loathing on the tube yesterday as I recalled a particularly drunken misadventure and without meaning to I groaned and hit myself in the head a few times with my book, saying: “Idiot, idiot, idiot.” Everyone on the tube turned and starred. I realised that must be what it’s like to be mad. The voice in your head becomes so overwhelming that it requires action.

I was thinking about insanity after a 30-year-old lady came into A&E last week covered from head to toe in her own shit. She was clearly psychotic. We had to sedate her to clean her up because every time we tried to wipe any of it away she would flail and scream, agonised. She was very attached to it. Still a little stinky, she was inconsolable about no longer being covered in her own feces in the examination. Eventually, we learnt what had happened. Her husband had died six weeks previously launching her into a psychotic episode where the voices in her head convinced her that her husband was not dead but inside of her. She desperately tried not to shit, becoming toxically constipated, but eventually her bowels would explode in protest, so she would scoop it up and smear it over her body trying to preserve every last pellet of her husband. It was utterly tragic and part of me wished that we had scraped her shit into a little jar to take home with her. - DR MONA MOORE

http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/04/bollocks-to-the-hippocratic-oath-hearing-voices/

more experiments

here are some more experiments, emphasis on experiments

acetate vs photoshop

So here are loads of photoshop layering options. Acetate kicks photoshops arse.

old shots

I got realllly bored, so I edited some old photos that we took and directed for our club night. Mainly to see the different shapes bodies can make so I can figure out what kind of poses I want to photograph. Test shots if you will... old ones, all cropped to emphasize legs mainly.

name that part

Just trying stuff out, not really sure if it works, but I like a few of them. I want to try and perfect the idea of capturing a picture of someone spinning on all sides in one photo. I need to actually have someone other than myself to try this stuff on it would make the actual photography a hell of a lot easier. Well anywhere, thats experimentation 1.

acetate

I did some work with acetate, the pieces I think work quite well... if I hadn't used the wrong acetate. Ha, bad times.

But I actually got some things out of it that I really liked, love flukes. they're brilliant. So the top two photos have simply been layered over each other. 

 I am trying to figure out whether there is more feeling and texture to work that is literally layered with acetate or whether photoshop layers work equally as well. I am very dubious. I think acetate is Gods gift to layering photographs. So here are some crap quality photos.

The images of the legs, I went over them with my finger to smudge them to see what would happen. I really like the affect it has created. I like the idea behind it too,

Digitally taken, manually edited, digitally printed.

I'm going to try that one again, whether it will work with inkjet acetate is another question. I may need to keep using laserjet and then photographing it afterwards. I am intrigued!

What is it about fingerprints and hands that makes them so personal? Other than the fact that they are unique to us? What is it about hands? Is it what they can do or how they make someone feel? Or is it how they feel and look themselves? Anyway I photocopied my hands a few times just to be able to print it out and figure out exactly what it is about them that I love and whether I want them to feature prominently in my work. 

Fingerprints

by Lheiyrah

I dream your hands on paper and blackest need on purest white while violent slashes of desire are softened smudged by the edge of your palm Fingerprints appear like bruises on the page as I watch your hand move over my name I wake to your name in my mouth and sweetest longing on the loneliest tongue while I move through the passage of these longest days bruised and grieving and crazed enough to sleep with your letters to pray for dreams of your hands to lick the backs of stamps and flaps of envelopes desperate for a taste of you

http://www.netpoets.com/poems/love/1416002.htm

leeds

It is strange how liberated I feel right now. I got really irritated yesterday because I was reading through old work e-mails and e-mails from old boyfriends. God i do not miss them, I just felt sick. So I went on a bit of a rampage and deleted everything in my facebook inbox, which is actually a lot and deleted all my e-mail accounts apart from my job one, and just created new ones. 

I feel like I have just shed a few stone. 

Doesn't stop me being sad though. I cry myself to sleep still, although it is getting rarer. Not because I hate my life right now, but because I miss parts of my old one. 

Apart from the obvious, everytime I think about that I feel sick and can feel anxiety spilling over my body.

I do like my life now, there are so many great things about it, but because I have so much time, I mourn my old one too much. 

Body Remember

Body, remember not only how much you were loved,

not only the beds on which you lay,

but also those desires for you 
that glowed plainly in the eyes,
and trembled in the voice—and some
chance obstacle made futile.
Now that all of them belong to the past,
it almost seems as if you had yielded
to those desires—how they glowed,
remember, in the eyes gazing at you;
how they trembled in the voice, for you, remember, body.

Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)

more tests and experiments with dirt

Cheap & Grimey

Decided to cheapen things up, make them dirty, grimey, less pixels, more blurr.

Like your looking at everyone with a bad hangover and a needle hanging out of your arm, or something to that affect anyway. So my new focus is people, skin, curves, but in a bit of a dirty way, literally.

Attempting to portray how we have cheapened ourselves with time as society progresses sexually. Portraying the 'walk of shame' amongst other things. I will elaborate more as the process becomes more apparent to myself. I have done a few rough drafts to see what happens..

trees

I have officially decided to move off trees. i think ive gone a bit tree crazy.

The Tree

It really is, 'the tree' of all time.

demon cat

Today I am feeling pretty damn good. Granted pretty energy-less but a hell of a lot better than I have felt any day this week so I decided to go for a walk with my ma and dog, and incidentally the cat, it decided to follow us the whole way. Wierdo.

Anyhoo, out we go, ready to embrace the sunny day when we realise we did not bring any house keys and I had left the door off the latch. So we thought sod it we may as well walk now, so off we trotted dog and cat in toe. About 10 minutes later we reached what we call the roundabout which in case you hadn't gathered is where we turn around and come back. The cat decided very cleverly, to get stuck in a sodding bramble bush, mewing as loudly as a cat can possibly mew. So being the nice mother to cat I can be I climb into this god forsaken bush to get the cat out. A few pokes and prods later (thanks bush) I grabbed her and tried to climb out.

Now, climbing IN had been painful enough, climbing out whilst holding a mewing cat that seemed to do nothing but complain about my rescue technique and scratch the crap out of anything near it (unfortunately that was me) was NOT fun. I got to the other side a bit worse for wear to say the least with bleeding arms. I look like I have been self harming, you know the kind I mean. 14 year old pre-pubescent 'I want to die' and 'nobody understands me' style cuts inflicted whilst drinking straight vodka, a spliff hanging out of your mouth whilst rocking backwards and forewards to Nirvana. Claiming that only Kurt Cobain could ever understand the pain your in.

Wow I am glad to be out of that phase.

Anyway, I got myself and the cat out of the stupid brambles when, genius child that the cat truly is, it ran back into it again. What on earth is wrong with this cat? I mean really? Are you shitting me? I claimed to not care very passionately with much gesticulation to my mother and we continued whilst listening to Jessie(the demon cat) mewing her evil heart out from the middle of a massive load of spiky death plants.

Anyway we rounded the corner, but my conscience got the better of me yet again. So off I went into a less dense patch of shrubbery to rescue demon cat. This extradition mission was far more successful than my prior attempt. Mainly because amidst the swipes and scratches that demon cat so kindly blessed me with, I held on for dear sanity.

I walked with her at arms length (covered in mud may I add as I had to crawl under a barbed wire fence) until we reached the house. Which is a fairly long time to have to grip a cat for, especially when it's flailing like it's being forced into a tub full of water.

I am not demon cats biggest fan right now, to the point where I have depersonalised it. No more is she a she or is she Jessi. Nope. It is now demon cat.

Until it brings me a pidgeon or a rabbit, then I feel proud that my cat understands what I crave out of life.

Absence

One cannot be moderately dead or moderately alive.

The concept of freedom is an absolute.

and this is how the story goes

Harriette

my dog ate a pidgeon

16:59Paul

WHAT?

PIDGEONS ARE BIGGER THAN HIM?!!?! THE WHOLE THING??

17:00Harriette

lol

i pulled a boned

bone

out of her mouth

17:00Paul

hahaha

she was probably chewin on carcass

17:01Harriette

yep

dirty bitch

17:01Paul

still thats one cute little carnivor!

17:02Harriette

i know!

hows the work coming on?

17:02Paul

oh, bit slow today, went up to brick lane for 'research' with my investor

and lunch and a red stripe in the sun

17:03Harriette

isnt brick lane a book?

17:03Paul

hahahahahahahaha

like notting hill is a film yes

17:03Harriette

got it

what research?

17:04Paul

looking into competitors/discussing possiblities

for sales and advertising and stuff

btw i didnt give my last fag to anyone!!

17:05Harriette

lol i got confused

what kind of clothes are you aiming to make? whats your target audience?

17:06Paul

anyone who buys tshirts!!!

its varied really

just a wide fashion/studenty type audience

17:06Harriette

what kind of t-shirts? normal? fitted?

17:06Paul

well that all depends on the individual product design

17:06Harriette

long? short? loose? wide neck?

fair enough

17:06Paul

VAAARRRRIIIEEEDDD!

17:06Harriette

go long

17:07Paul

depends whats 'in'

17:07Harriette

long is the way foreward

long long long

or open sided

17:07Paul

its not really up to me, im just the designer......!

17:07Harriette

lol

17:07Paul

im great with the design part....but a bit of a slouch when it comes to fashion

17:07Harriette

sorry i ask lots of questions. im very bored

17:07Paul

its ok

17:07Harriette

ive run out of t-shirts to fix

17:07Paul

im sorry my work depresses u 

17:08Harriette

ive started a sketch book

not in a bad way

17:08Paul

HOOOOORRRAAAAY

17:08Harriette

but your work has made me ask loads of questions

and so ive started my own sketch book

17:08Paul

wow?!

ive inspired you??

17:08Harriette

based on absense

sex

misinterpretation

17:08Paul

absence/sex/misinterpretation?

17:08Harriette

yeah i guess you have

17:09Paul

hahahahah!!!

AMAZINGG!!!

17:09Harriette

yeah how words are so often misinterpreted

and an absence of words even more so

until it comes to sex which is some kind of universal language

17:09Paul

due to peoples paranoia?

17:09Harriette

i guess so

17:09Paul

pushed on to them through society

17:09Harriette

pretty much

17:09Paul

and the need for being, the perfect person

society sux balls

17:10Harriette

i wrote a lot based on your descriptrion of static love

17:10Paul

thankyou.....that gives me some confidence that people can relate to what im rambling on about

17:10Harriette

i dont feel a need to be the perfect person, and i think a lot of people dont too i just think that relationships are often disapointments because people dont work hard enough at them

your idea of

'relationships that end before they begin'

is very interestign

17:11Paul

yeah but u still have to meet up with certain standards society puts upon you untill u have the confidence to be 'yourself'

17:11Harriette

yep

17:11Paul

make up/shaving/fashion etc

17:12Harriette

but at the same time it has to be considered that 'yourself' is shaped by society. so you never know who your true self is. in itself it can be argued that the true self is what society shapes it to be because there is no opportunity for another self to form

kind of goes round in circle

s

17:12Paul

very true 

17:12Harriette

everything does

17:13Paul

the working hard in relationships thing u said

brings up the other end of the scale from a media point of view....disney love as it were

people give up perfectly good relationships because its not exactly how it was in sleeping fucking beauty!

17:14Harriette

yeah, in my opinion that is why divorce rates rocketed. were not as conservative as we were back in the day. and the image of disney, falling in love, no effort, love sustained has been imprinted in us since childhood

im particularly negative on this point at the moment though, bit of a sour grape

17:15Paul

yeah i mean this is all relative...maybe 'true love' does exist

and we are being perfectly pesimistic

17:15Harriette

true love exists but disneys 'true love' only exists on screen

i think true love is the fight and the journey two people undertake to be together

17:16Paul

so do u believe it can be built? or a certain amount has to do with 'fate'?

17:16Harriette

work

everything in life is about working for it

its about the fight

17:17Paul

anything thats not worth fighting for isnt worth having

17:17Harriette

true

17:17Paul

this is a bit deep for this early in the day!!!

i just scrolled up, and all this started with....my dog eat a pigeon

i think that must be symbolic!!!

17:18Harriette

but just because most thigns arent worth fighting for doesnt mean nothings worth fighting for

17:19Paul

if the opposite were true, it wouldnt be worth living

life = struggle Death = peace

17:19Harriette

well life is death if you think about it

we are all dying

17:19Paul

hahahahaha

17:19Harriette

well we are

17:19Paul

and im the negative one??

17:19Harriette

im not negative

im just realistic

we are dying

17:20Paul

hahahahahaha

17:20Harriette

it doesnt make me sad to think about it

it doesnt make me want to kill myself

17:20Paul

u have no idea, u just said exactly what i said the other night

17:20Harriette

it just makes me want to make the most of what ive got

17:20Paul

and all my friends thought i was being a dickhead

17:20Harriette

and make the most out of my life

lol

they're ignorant

17:21Paul

yeah im going to make a t-shirt....that says "IF IGNORANCE IS BLISS, THEN CHISWICK IS HEAVEN"

17:21Harriette

lol

or aylesburhy

aylesbury is pretty chav tastic

i

17:21Paul

hey dont judge those chavs by there covers, they could be really interesting people

17:22Harriette

they're not

i've been grabbed by a lot of them

safe to say they don't know anything except where they're dick is

their

not they're

17:23Paul

dont worry im not going to tell u off for grammer errors

17:23Harriette

grammatical errors i think you'll find is the correct terminology

17:23Paul

im going to sve this convo and look back on it to take notes, so thanx

17:23Harriette

lol so am i

17:23Paul

terminologise this

17:23