Shlee Vincent

I don’t usually pick up The Spark, but while waiting for my Dad to check out of his hotel this morning, I picked up the most recent issue. I saw an article about this little area by my mother’s house that I like to visit and romp in. It’s an old mill/industrial area that’s just crumbling and I love it. And of course what they’re going to do is take it and make it nice. This makes me sad. It’s where Kerri and I first started playing with Diana and Holga and where I took my cousins for photos. Meh.

So, while I’m waiting for my dad to come and whisk me away to the glorious haven that is Bob Evans, I am temporarily forsaking my novel (which has been forsaken a few too many times) in order to give my beloved (yet also, forsaken) blog some attention.

Current music: Circa Survive, thanks to the influence of a former co-worker.

Anyway, I’m taking the time to do this because I want to occasionally feature some other people’s work that I find really interesting. At some point, I’m wanting to make this a recurring thing, but right now, is not that time. Maybe in December.

So, to cut off the rambling, I found Jason Lee‘s personal blog on my friend Marni‘s tumblr, accompanied by this photo.

Not their Halloween costumes!

He is a wedding photographer from California, but what really stuns me is his personal blog comprised totally of photos he takes of his daughters on a normal basis. They’re all so lively and just not your run of the mill snapshots of a parent’s children. And there’s always a story to go with them.

They’re all incredible, but let’s talk about the princess shoes.

Just saying… Let’s do this again soon.

I never did put up any self portraits at the end of my project – or at least the three weeks I’d given myself. I’ve got a few ideas, but nothing quite solid yet. However, I did find a self profile that I had to write my senior year of college for my literary essay class.

Self Portrait

I sat, topless, in the far corner of my dark room. It was lit dimly by one small lamp directed at and illuminating me. My top was off and my shoulders and cleavage exposed cleanly as I’d sat beneath a collection of my personal traits.

Earlier in the day, I wondered if colored pencil would wash from my walls, as I scrawled a thought bubble in silver on those very walls in the corner behind my futon. When I finished, I sat down and it floated above me as if I were in a cartoon. But what was going on in my head that I could showcase to the world? So I pondered, beneath my thought bubble, about what the most prominent thing on my mind was. All at once, the questions about life and career careened forward but nothing fit into my thought bubble. The chaos in my head felt best to be translated as a giant question mark in the midst of a confetti of colors.

Instead, I drew a caricature of my Nikon D40, which has provided me with means of expression and exploration. I taped colored pens and a pink piece of cloud-shaped stationery with my thoughts on writing, written in stream of consciousness. The process of creating the self-portrait was so introspective. I wanted what was on my mind to represent more of myself than the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted in life. There were a lot of pieces that could be put together to create the person I wanted to be and those are what made it into the collage of my thoughts, adding to the one already growing on my walls. When I snapped the shutter, it became available for everyone to see.

So, the set before this is the last set of portraits that I took during my time “between jobs” (aside from my “self-portraits”). What do you think? Would anyone else be willing to be photographed by me?

Leave your thoughts in the comments. Please, don’t be shy.

Surprisingly, there’s not a lot of corn in this set of photos. Although, it’s a great start for a “Fall” set. I feel like there’s some whimsy mixed into the set. Last Saturday, I went exploring with my friends Sarah and Bekah and my best friend in the world Gavin. There were so many good ones in this set, it was really hard to narrow it down to just 19 (and as you might notice, I kind of cheated a little bit).

Please, let me know what you think!!

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