21.52

For Chelsea Memmolo

Assignment: Make something honest. Brutally honest about yourself. Show me something true.

We are in the middle of Memorial Day weekend and this has been the longest four days of my life.

For this assignment I was unsure what random quark of mine I wanted to highlight. After some deliberation I went with one of my more irrational fears, ankle deep bath water.

Michelle suggested I check out Postsecret.com; I went through all the posts I could find and really enjoyed their concept. Something that I noticed was that every one of them were extremely over the top and 100% finite in an attempt to make all of the problems appear more severe than they really are.

Drawing from those posts I made my own; incorporating my own life ending problem.

To summarize, the issue I have with bath water stems from me going to pole vaulting camp my freshman year of high school and showering in the bathrooms there without sandals on. Anyone who has used a floor bathroom can tell you this is a horrible idea. So needless to say This resulted in me getting a really bad fungal infection all over my feet and since then I have not been able to shower and have the water back up around my feet without having a panic attack. 

20.52

For Elise Manzi

Assignment: Photograph me with my horse Moe.

I really don’t have much to say this week. Elise wanted me to come to her barn and photograph her with Moe while they did their daily routine, so that is what we did. It was nice to do a semi-practical assignment because the more I do this type of thing, the more comfortable I will be when I end up having to peddle my services to pay for college.

After the shoot Elise realized that it was actually their six year Horseiversary; congrats to her and Moe and I am glad I was able to be with them on their special day.

In unphoto related news I received some extremely shitty news yesterday.

19.52

For Valery Petrone

Assignment: Shoot a family portrait and make it look like an old 1900’s photograph.

On Monday I went to hang the prints from my Unsynced series and quickly realized they were not in my house. After a ton of emails and texts I have come to the conclusion my prints, the same prints that I spent a good 40 hours putting together for the end of the semester, were left on the side of the road in front of the TD Bank on 3rd Avenue.

After that I really have not been in the mood to touch my camera or do anything photography related. Normally I would shoot to make me feel better but the drive is really gone. On paper I start work tomorrow and D3 launches at 12 Am on Tuesday so I am hoping that after clearing my head of photo for a bit my passion will come back.

Alright enough bitching.

I switched my mom to this week so I could use her for the project and also give her something for mother’s day

It was pretty straight forward shoot, I did some research on family portraits and in most of these no one is smiling and everyone is crowded around the Matriarch or Patriarch of the family.

After shooting I had to doctor the image so it had an older feel. I added some texture, blurred the focus, and screwed with the contrast to make it more consistent with a faded image.

In the end I had it printed 4x6 and put it in a weathered frame so that it could sit on my moms desk at work.

18.52

For Michelle Martinesi

Assignment: Take a portrait of Macbeth for his 8th Birthday

Chapter 2

I moved back from SVA this week and it feels really good to finally be home. By the end of the semester all I was doing was fantasizing about how nice doing nothing would be… It turns out doing nothing is really boring.

I have this problem that when I am doing one thing after another, all I want to do is sit and play video games. When I play video games I feel like a waste of life and that I’m not being productive. On one hand it’s a good thing, I will never be able to settle and will always want more, but on the other I will never be happy with what I have.

I spent the whole week thinking of ways to photograph Macbeth and ended up shlepping all of my photo equipment up to Staten Island. I wanted to have Macbeth on a raised box and shoot from slightly under him with the sheet background colored red with one of my gels.

Yah that didn’t happen, I set up the box and Macbeth didn’t want to sit up there (in my head everything listens to me). He was scared and was trying to hide behind the sheet and wouldn’t move away from it. After about 15 minutes he was like, “Okay I’m done” and went into the corner.

Once again I am left with another thing that I am not into shooting… pets. I need to be in control and be able to direct. Setting up lights only to have the subject move and ruin my setups makes a high stress situation even more stressful.

17.52

For Michael Martinesi

Assignment: Make a Diptych with one shot being living and the other shot being an inanimate object; the two looking similar or having similar features.

This is the last week that I will be residing in New York City until September. It also marks a third of this project being done; so it is easy to say this week is sad and happy at the same time.

I need to thank Mike for bailing me out of almost not having a prompt this week, My original prompter ended up having a ton of stuff dumped on him at the last second and was unable to help me out this week. Luckily Mike stepped in and saved the day so kudos to him.

With a little bit of a late start this week I was stressing a ton about what I would be shooting for this prompt. Michelle and I, as always, were batting around ideas that ranged from people as feather dusters and couches to skinny red heads as french fries with ketchup on top.

It wasn’t until I was at Gramercy on Thursday, freaking out about my lack of ideas and the pressure of cleaning my room so that when someone walks in they won’t want to gag, then Bam! I thought of comparing aperture blades to the contracting and dilation of the eye.

I decided to make another .gif this week because it represents the concept better than a still can. Lately I have been really enjoying making them because it is a departure from my standard editing processes but still familiar enough that I get an immense amount of enjoyment out of creating them.

I think this idea works well for Michael because he is currently in the throws of a 365; currently on his 120th day. So congrats and good luck to him on finishing that, I know first hand how much of a pain in the ass that project can be and how much dedication it takes to keep on trucking.

End Chapter 1

16.52

For Cris Lombardo

Assignment: Photograph me during the drum line’s Earthstock performance.

This was another one of those weeks where I really didn’t have to think about what I was going to shoot. All I had to do was show up and react to what is put in front of me.

Cris wanted Michelle and I to come to see him play in Stony Brook’s Earthstock performance. I was all fine and dandy with it until I realized that Earthstock was during the first half of my Seminar classes’ final presentations. It may seem really stupid but not being there for these presentations kinda bummed me out. For those of you who don’t know (I’m looking at you Future Joe), Seminar is the keystone class for my Junior year. We spend ~6 hours a week together for 30 weeks and the whole point of this class is to show work and progress on our year long projects. So after being there for everyone’s growth and watching all these concepts evolve I wanted to be there for the final pat on the back session where we celebrate how awesome we all are.

Unfortunately I committed myself to this project so I felt put between a rock and a hard place. I had to choose between this or the class and I just want to say sorry to the people who’s last showing I missed.

So let us get back to the prompt and what the fuck these GIF’s are all about.

Like I said on week ?3? this project is as much about what I want to do as it is about what I don’t. Band photography doesn’t really seem to be something I fancy. I much prefer to be in a studio where I control everything.

Although I’m used to feeling stress throughout the whole week from this project, I feel like this week all 7 days worth of stress was crunched into 3 hours. When it came time to shoot Cris’s performance there were a ton of people in the way, both spectators and his fellow band members. I went into business mode drifting around and popping off shots trying to at least get something. When I came back to sit down I was shaking, which is something that only happens to me when I play Starcraft.

While I was reviewing the images I found myself getting much more enjoyment out of making little animations out of the movements that I caught. On a recent meeting I had with Abby she suggested trying some random stuff just to kinda mix up the normal processes I do every week. I also feel that the movement fits the subject matter better than a single still could represent.

Cris is going to get the stills on facebook and I get to have my doofy low quality animations on my page… Win win?

Yes.

15.52

For Tony Figueras

Assignment: Create a satirical interpretation of a recent event using legos

This was one of those weeks where I felt like all I was doing was spinning my tires and going nowhere.

I had my review on Thursday and spent the week preparing for it. Overall I think it went well, Stephen didn’t tare my prints up and burn them…. So I can take that as a positive sign.

As far as the image, I had some trouble finding a recent event that I was able to satirically recreate with legos. With the help of Michelle and a lot of “for shits ideas” we came up with the most concepts for the North Korean’s shooting off a long ranged rocket.

So this image is just that and I think the headline would read “Kim Jong Un gets a rocket into space”

I wanted to go with something insane and when Kim Jong Un couldn’t ride a dragon carrying the missile to space, I decided to cast him as the tugboat for the North Korean rocket.

The funny thing is; I actually think this will be image on the front page of their news paper if they are actually ever capable of getting a rocket into space.

Special thanks to Rob Charleton for proving me with stars from his scalp.

14.52

For Kevin Gonzalez

Assignment: Photograph Central Park from the highest vantage point you can get to.

Lesson learned this week: If you see a big building around central park it is owned by a hospital and is probably under construction.

Like the other “go and do” projects, this prompt was more about the experience than the execution so… I’d like to take a minute if you just sit right there, I’ll tell you how I got to the highest point in Central Park.

Thursday was set aside to shoot for Kevin and since I would be leaving New York after class on Friday it was the only time to get the prompt done.

I set out of my Dorm around 12 and embarked on my journey to Central Park with only my smart phone and my wits to guide me. Michelle came with me because I can’t shoot by myself. (Google The Joe Petrone Tandem Law and you’ll understand)

We entered the park at West 86th street and in the distance, to the East, we saw two giant buildings. One building was all ultra modern and glass looking, and the other was ugly, gray, and surely an office space.

As Michelle and I started walking across the park, we also noted two large apartmentish buildings raising out of the North end.

The first place we tried was the giant black building only to find out that the one access point is behind an armed gaurd (It was a research center for a hosiptal apparently) (I could be a 10000% wrong but that’s what I’m going with).

We just kept on walking and attempted the second building on our path - the glass one. This building suffered from a lack of a door… don’t ask me how people lived in it but there was construction all the way around and I am afraid of men in hard hats so we unfortunately had to accept defeat.

Moving on to the two spires on the north side of the park, a giant sign read “APARTMENTS FOR RENT” and in my head I was like “We got this. We just gotta play the ‘We wanna see the apartments because we are in the market’ card and we are IN!” So with confidence Michelle and I approached the doors… these buildings were actually equipped with them! As we walked up I made eye contact with the guard and it was like he had super bullshit zapping vison or something because I was like “FUCK IT ABORT ABORT ABORT!” and then the two of us awkwardly stood there pointing at a gate that stopped the lesser people from going into the super exclusive courtyard.

At this point our spirits were low and the idea to just look up the highest topographic point in the park came up, so that’s what we did and that is what these images are of.

Summit Rock on West 84th Street (Legit 2 blocks from where we started).

We tried more places while walking but all of them yieled the same result, NO ENTRY FOR YOU!

I wasn’t happy at first glace with my day shots so Rob and I went back at night and actually had a very nice bro bonding session in Central Park after dark. Great date idea for all you guys and gals out there.

13.52

For Lisa Lewis

Assignment: Photograph the view of the Verrazano Bridge from the entrance to Miller Field, which is located at the bottom of New Dorp Lane (Staten Island) during either sunrise or sunset.

I started this week out early and on Monday planned a trip to Miller field to scout the location and possibly get this assignment done on the first day. Unforunately when Michelle and I got to the field I was a tad befuddled. Michelle constantly talks about the Verrazano Bridge and I have seen so many stunning angles of it, so I assumed Miller Field would be no different. It turns out that the bridge is actually a ways out and behind a bunch of trees. I did what I could to capture the image Lisa was looking for but with a wide lens the bridge became a small item in the background and the rest of the image was soccer and football fields.

I opted to go for a telephoto shot that showcased the bridge and some of the park, but with no clouds in the sky the sunset was lack luster (the sun sets on the opposite side of the field). I shot at twilight to have the lights of the bridge but also have a deep blue sky, the only problem was the wind was insane and even with the tripod I couldn’t get a steady shot. 

Michelle and I made plans to go to the field one more time at dawn over the weekend and ended up with a day that was overcast and rainy. I made due with what I had and tried my best to capture the park as I saw it. So rather than post one photo I present the best of the shots I got.

Miller Field Between the hours of 5-7 Am and PM.

Oh and April Fools.

I am so tired of this 52 Project. Every night I go to bed and ask myself what the hell am I doing with my life; so take this as my official resignation from SVA. I don’t think this whole photography thing is for me anymore. Two years ago I was very naive and thought I would be able to pursue photo as a viable career, but the more time I spend here the more it becomes crushingly clear that I don’t have the cutthroat mindset nor the earth shattering skills to become successful enough to fight off the staggering amount of debt I have incurred “educating” myself. I leave you with the last photographs I will ever produce “Eggs On White.” I believe this is some of my best work.

Thank you all for your support.

Joe.

12.52

For Seth Greenwald

Assignment: Go outside with camera. Without looking through viewfinder, indiscriminately make a photograph of the scene in front of you. Afterwards, see how many worthwhile images you can crop, from that original scene. Display all resultant images alongside the original photo.

Well… Now this is awkward. It appears that I have cheated this week. I read the prompt late Sunday night and kinda got the feel for it rather than actually reading the words.

So yeah, Seth wanted me to walk out my door and just snap a photograph and then deconstruct it into as many other images as possible… I didn’t do that. I wandered around the mall with Michelle snapping pictures (I didn’t look through the viewfinder, for my credit.) and when I got home deconstructed the one I felt I could get the best results from. I think the exercise would have been a lot harder had I actually read what I was told to do.

This week was very nerve-racking because I had to retake the Visual Literacy Survey on Friday, so the majority of my mental energy went towards preparing for it. I feel pretty good about it, so here’s hoping for a passing grade!

All in all I had fun working backwards this week. Normally there is so much thought that goes into taking an image and this assignment had me not worrying about where or what I was shooting. It was a blast zooming in and trying to make images out of a master full sized image.

11.52

For Star Montana

Assignment: Forget it all, forget the quotes, the deep searching, the inadequacy of the outcome of your pictures. Make pictures that make you happy. I am going to lend you my Fuji Instax Camera I want you to take the camera everywhere with you.

This has been the most relaxing week for the 52 project to date. This was the fist time I have used an instant camera since I came to SVA and I have to say there is some kind of magic in an instant camera. It bridges the gap between the shoot and wait aspect of film and the instant feedback of digital. There really was something special in watching the images develop in my hand. I came to realize that I enjoyed photographing people more than objects with this camera just because it gave me this weird kind of voodoo idea of capturing their soul (say cheese and die?). Overall I really loved this assignment, maybe because there was no pressure, and I may end up buying an instant camera just for shits.

The image I am posting is the first one I shot with Star’s camera, and although it won’t get me into the VLS for SVA it makes me happy.

Michelle and I were walking down the street on the way to CRC and ended up walking in the wrong direction for a block or so. There were a bunch of nice homes on the street and I really enjoyed just walking, talking, and looking with her. I figured this would be a good time to try out the camera so I loaded the film and asked her to stand for me,(reluctantly) she did, and I snapped her picture. The camera made a ton of noise and printed out the Polaroid (Fujifilm Instax) and I took it out of the camera excited to see what I got. I stared at it for about 45 seconds and nothing was showing up. I was really disappointed that I somehow fucked up an automatic instant camera, but then Michelle then came over and flipped the photo over in my hand and I got really excited that it worked! Her face is blown out and she is kinda blurry but it doesn’t matter, to me it is a memory of a nice day wandering around the city with my girlfriend.

I need to rescan this tomorrow when I am in the labs.

10.52

For Dustin Ersek-Mull

Assignment: Explore Freudian sexuality using one of his more famous concepts.

This week was spring break so I want to keep this write up short. I researched Freudian concepts and came to the understanding that most, if not all, of his theories revolved around sex and aggression. I went with a grid of foods that my mind perceived as phallic objects. According to Freud, the reason I see these objects this way is because of our human obsession with sex.

9.52

For Ryan Loewy

Assignment: Approach a stranger on the street, talk to them for 5 minutes, and photograph them.

I think to most people this task sounds easy and to many other photographers this is life but for me… Second to standing in ankle deep water, I don’t think there is anything I dread more than approaching strangers.

I’d like to think Ryan knows me better than 97.5% of the people here at SVA. He is my roommate and being the kinda guy he is he gave me an assignment that I would never do otherwise.

This assignment wasn’t difficult on a conceptual level but it was devastating on a personal level. It wasn’t about making a flawless photograph, it was about the process of obtaining it.

Zach accompanied me on this journey today and we set out from the dorms around 1:30 and just kinda wandered to get a feel for things. After some walking we bumped into Jenna on 2nd ave and she suggested going to Times Square to talk to the tourists because tourists would be easier to talk to. So Zach and I hopped on a train to 42nd street and paced up and down looking for someone to talk to.

After a lot of debate and about a quarter of a million sighs I saw what looked like a nice little old lady sipping some coffee at a table in the middle of Times Square. I went up to her and said “hello, I’m Joe I’m an art student would you mind if I talked to you?”

To which she immediately replied “Yes actually I would mind.”

In my head I was like “haha old lady your such a kidder” but she was dead serious.

So defeated and a little hurt the dynamic duo meandered down to the south side of times square where once again I worked up enough courage to approach a lady with a tripod filming an ad. Her and I had a nice long conversation about what she was doing and I found out she had actually attended SVA for some continuing education classes. In my head I felt like kid riding a bike IM DOING IT! IM DOING IT! so I went for the closer and asked if I could photograph her, that’s when I hit a pothole.. She said “I’m sorry I don’t really feel comfortable with that to be honest.”So her and I parted ways and I went to go find Zach, who was hiding behind a trashcan.

We then decided to go to the Port Authority to see if any magic would happen there, it didn’t. I wanted to go back to Union Square, where kids normally hang out on the steps just chillin, thinking that would yield better results.

Sitting in Union Square we scoped out people to talk to and I’m sure we creeped a lot of them out with our “how bout him??! Nah… OH shit hes looking at us” conversations. I then tried to talk to this dude in reflective sunglasses… He straight up ignored me.

After some more time we went up to a “non transit park”, Madison Square Park and besides Obama no one was really there that looked approachable. In a last ditch effort I wanted to go back to Union.

Success was on the horizon, as we entered the park a man approached us! This man was Shizzle My Nizzle an Author/Painter/Entrepreneur he was peddling his newly published book “Shizzle My Nizzle and the Story of Sausage Head”. If we purchased his book he would throw in one of his limited edition paintings, featuring such great work as “White man with white balls on his chin” and “Penis Smoking a Bowl Out of His Dick Hole, While Shitting Money”, valued at $74.99 for no extra charge. Although it was a great deal we passed determined to complete this assignment.

Finally rounding the park one last time I saw a girl sitting on the steps with her phone in her hand. With each step I was gaining more confidence and then in the background I saw a young man stretching listing to some music. Instantly I aborted step girl and went up to him, there was something about his face that said “I’m a nice guy”… and he was!!

So this image is of Xavier, a 23 year old Biology student who on his free time plays bass and does parkour around the city. He said deep down he wanted to always try to be an artist but never really thought he was good enough at bass to do it as a career, to which I replied neither do I but you just kinda gatta go and do it and hope something happens….

All in all do I think this image is the best thing I have ever taken? No… But am I proud of it? Fuck Yes.

8.52

For Katherine Charleton

Assignment: Photograph a vignette of discovery/self discovery, in which the ending results in the person realizing they’ve got the world in their hands and there’s really nothing to hold them back.

To be honest after the insanity that was last week my brain was fried when Katherine gave me this week’s prompt. I really didn’t want to focus on shooting or thinking the entire week. When I read her prompt I imidatly thought of a photo I did for my 365 (http://insanewithbrilliance.tumblr.com/post/3077381571/125-365)

So I attempted to remake it and have a figure in the mirror looking at themself in the mirror and have the image looking back not the one that is looking in.

I think as with most people, that when you look at yourself in the mirror all you see is the worst bits of you staring back. I set the shot up so that the real person would be looking into the mirror and have all the things wrong with them looking back. The real figure is then ignoring these imperfections and finishing getting ready to leave and take the world by storm.

An issue I have with the photograph is that I feel all I did was rehash an idea I photographed more than a year ago and again to be completely candid I like the other one more…

Next week is Ryan’s and simultaneously contains my 6th actual birthday and the beginning of my 24th year of age.