Bush Fellowship

Here is the foundation and some more information.

one more try

Land of opportunities indeed! So many, in fact, that I have had to neglect recording them all. I have survived a whole year here and am considering staying on. In Rapid City, not necessarily in the same office. I've applied for a fellowship through the Bush Foundation i order to continue my work at a higher pay rate :) and I'm passing my resume around to all kinds of places while I give presentations. I've got lots of opportunities. My friends back home have been dying the last few weeks, and I'm still accepting applications for friends here, but other than that, life is beautiful. 

tick tock

I've been in SD for about six months now. I have struggled emotionally and financially for the most part in this beautiful part of the world, and I expected to, but just not quite so much as I have. I am in Aberdeen right now, in a hotel, with my Max and all our dogs. And what a royal pain it is to have to walk them ten twenty times a day! I had a great yard, a great house, in SC but I was miserable. Now I've got tons of minute responsibilities I never had to worry about before, less than half the space, and none of the yard. And I'm happy when I wake up. How is it that a simple change of scenery makes such a difference? Even in misery, and by that I mean my current miserable living conditions (not the hotel, I mean the place we're living), I'm happier on the inside than I have been in well as long as I can remember.
There's no money in my bank account and so much to do everyday in Rapid that I can't do because I took a vow of poverty for my dream job. Every day we go home to care for our doggies that have been in crates all day and stay in our neighborhood, too depressed to drive back to town for some excitement, too poor to drive anywhere else. And then: an opportunity! This weekend we're in Aberdeen on a work assignment.
I'd never been to Aberdeen, of course. I considered taking a job here instead of Rapid City but decided there was more for me in the Black Hills. Aberdeen is nice; the folks are friendly. It's a college town, too, though by no means is it like Athens, GA. I made the right decision for me, going to RC. But there's a great children's theater program here and I've made no friends or connections in the Black Hills to keep me there after my assignment is up. Except for Morgan, my boss. And to be fair, Max just got cast in a play, too. So I guess we're about to get really busy.

Youth Works helps us kick off the Day of Hope!

Mommy's Closet will represent Volunteers of America, Dakotas, this weekend at the Day of Hope, part of Hills Alive, a free summer concert this weekend. 

This year marks the 25th anniversary for this summer concert weekend. To celebrate, the festival has expanded to include a Day of Hope. Day of Hope is an invitation-only event for low-income families in the area. Everyone is welcome, but the first two hundred participants with an invitation will receive a box of groceries. 

Youth Works has come to Mommy's Closet each week this summer to help around the office. Today, we asked them to help us pack the boxes for the Day of Hope.

Youth Works Volunteers put the boxes together, expertly taped the bottoms to make sure no groceries spill out, and put one item from each group of groceries into a box. 
These girls found a pallet jack and filled six boxes at a time! Very enterprising Youth Works volunteers! 
Another group of volunteers will finish making and filling the boxes tomorrow for this weekend's concert and Day of Hope for Rapid City families.

my home is not my own

I was startled Saturday morning by a knock at my door. After our morning walk, my dogs, in my home, bother my neighbors. The police told me I have two options: shut them up or get rid of them. I HATE this place! I love my job, but this trailer smells bad from the neighbor's cats. There are about 20 cats that I've noticed, and they've been there 20 years or so, generations of them at my next door neighbor's home. I cannot help what they do in my home when they're locked in tiny boxes while I am at work. I hate this place, too. I love my job.
We went camping, the three dogs and Max. We had fun and went to Devil's Tower for fireworks. My brakes went out on the way back.
Seems my right rear brake got hung up and now I need a rotor. $292 later, I've got a safe car. But still my doggies, my beloved doggies, haunt me. In the mail was a notice from the landlord that they've got to go or shut up. Oh, and the entire letter was in caps and underlined. Classy folks at that rental agency. There are holes I can fit a cell phone through in the floor. There are no rentals that accept pets in the newspapers and I have yet to see a sign on a house around here.
I spend half my income on gas just to get to and from work from here, the only place that accepted pets when I moved to South Dakota. I came here with great dreams. I love my job, love the work that I do, but I want a place to live! How does section 8 approve a place with holes in the floor?!? And how can I complain to Section 8 when I've got nowhere else to go?
The life I was living did not make me happy. I found the courage to start a new one. I got rid of most of my pets, kept the three I couldn't live without, and now I may lose them too. Crying just makes my head hurt more. I don't think there are many opportunities in South Dakota. I love my job but it's only 8 hours of my day.

Entrance exam portfolio

The Golden Mean is one of the most classic rules of composition, used by great Greek sculptors as well as painters and architects of the Middle Ages. The proportional construction of the human body is in a relationship between parts of 1/3 to 2/3. When we divide a two-dimensional thing, we do it in such a way that the larger part is related to the smaller part as the whole is related to the larger part.(6.181 is to 3.819 as 10 is to 6.181)(p.21).

This is a photo I shot in the Badlands. I thought the main focal point of the picture should be centered, so I stood in front of the sign. According to my text, however, “…it is definitely wrong for a line to cut the picture in the middle…” apparently ever (p.37). I decided to employ the Golden Mean and at the same time eliminate the shadow from where my lens doesn’t open all the way. In cropping according to the Golden Mean, should I assume the line is the sign post or the wider sign itself? I chose the post since it is ‘background’ and the sign itself is what I attempted to capture.

We are conditioned to read left to right, so action beginning on the left and proceeding to the right follows our natural inclinations and seem “correct.” I started with the sign on the left because that seemed to be the way the rule would follow. Since the sign is a ‘call to action,’ it should begin where the eye is subconsciously drawn to the photo. It looked kinda flat and two dimensional, though, from that angle so I decided to defy the authority and put the sign on the right and allow the action to be leaving the image rather than enter and found out the sign was not the action in the photo at all.

 When the sign is on the right of the image, the ridge behind it cuts away like a doorway.  This is the feeling I was trying to capture: the sign was not an entrance to an other-world experience but a title. The viewer can imagine the edge of the ridge as a doorway and enter on the left, creating an action point and proceeding to the sign on the right to describe it.

The lines move diagonally upward towards the right, creating a natural eye-movement towards the sign in the right and mimicking the reason street signs and banner ads are typically on the right (37). We tend to look for confirmation to the right since traffic signs are on the right. When the internet became popular, design ads became crucial to the retail industry and their research told them to place their ads on the right side of the screen. People focus on their task, center screen or on the left, and subconsciously absorb the ads on the right the same way they absorb billboard ads while driving. The viewer of this photograph is now drawn into the doorway created by the ridge and absorbs the name of the trail in passing.  I was able to make a cool thing I saw into a good picture by following the rules of composition. I learned that what I thought was the main focal point of the image (the sign) was more of an accent and the ridge behind it is what entices a second glance. Ultimately I also went with b&w because the colors were a bit distracting from the overall feeling of curiosity and invitation I decided the image should convey.

By the same principle of lines and action beginning on the left, the above picture became the below with the help of photoshop’s flip on vertical axis. I liked the way the boardwalk entered the frame to entice the viewer into the Badlands.

The photo on the left was a lucky shot for me as a beginner. The clouds covered the sun in just such a way as to creat the shadows needed for good definition. The lines rise from the lower left hand corner to the Golden Mean above and to the right and the shadows effectively show off the Golden Mean.

I took this picture of myself because I liked the way the tree bark curled away from the trunk, similar to the way the wind blew my hair. I didn’t like the shadow created by my camera, however, so I cropped heavily. While reading the rules for lines, I decided to flip what was left of the photo after I cropped it to make the angle of the tree begin at the bottom left and rise to the right.

  

This photo demonstrates  repitition. I flipped the image so the rocks would begin on the left to demonstrate the rules outlined in the first three chapters of my text.  I later decided it looked sorta alien when upright and I liked the confusion it caused. My mentor said it reminded him of a totem pole. I'm reminded of the Sound Track, a featured component of Disney's Fantasia.

Stay tuned for more images on my quest to be a photographer!!!