I proposed my thesis in April, and it was accepted without reservation! Presenting was SO stressful, but I did well and got a lot out of it, and I prepared really thoroughly so I know I'll be able to tackle my oral. PNCA got out for summer break recently, so I took a little breather from thinking about my thesis 24/7. I kept shooting, obviously.



I snagged a kickin' mentor at the very last minute, Wayne Bund! So excited to work with him. As you can see the images are still roughly the same. While I was shooting these I was using an 18-75mm (or something like it) that got me really nice wide shots, but I had to hold it up pretty high over the food, to the extent that sometimes I wasn't able to look in the viewfinder while taking the picture. I've since switched back to my 24mm macro lens, and I think I'll probably use that until I'm done shooting.




The text also got a little larger, and I switched from a 5x7" format to a 4x5". Not really sure why, except my print teacher last semester, Paul Mullowney, mentioned it to me when I was talking about my thesis proposal, and I sort of fell in love with it. Haven't justified it conceptually yet! I'm also still thinking about installation. These last pictures are how I hung it for my final critique; experimenting with thumbtacks a little bit. My friend Petra mentioned suspending them with fishing wire, and I'm getting interested in that idea, although I haven't tried it yet.




So yes! Still thinking about disclosure/exposure, but not sure how to work that into the final pieces. Still really happy with it formally! Just gotta nail down that installation and do a butt-ton of research.

-hannah

Hi guys! I had coffee with the awesome/inspirational (not to mention a fabulous artist) Petra yesterday and she got me inspired to work on my long-defunct website. After coming up with a new idea thanks to googling/looking at other artist's sites, I whipped this little bad boy up real quick with the help of Lightroom. I'm super pleased with it! Do go check out my website here: hannah o'sullivan dot com.

-hannah

So: I'm graduating this year. I know, right? TERRIFYING. I've got my thesis project pretty nailed down right now, though. Been taking pictures of all the meals I eat from the same angle. It's really satisfying to me process-wise; I love taking a camera around with me and shooting as a part of my daily life. I did a 365 last year which really solidified this for me (even if I hated a good deal of the photos I took for it and am glad to not be doing it!!)

Anyway: so I've been labeling each meal with the date & time (obviously). I'm planning for this project to span 3-5 months, and to end up with a wall-sized grid of these labelled black and white images. Really happy with these so far!




"Meal" has been a little problematic for me, as I tend to eat larger quantities at fewer sittings, so I'll only have two meals that day. I decided not to photograph snacks because 1. I need to draw a line somewhere, and 2. EMBARRASSING, and since I do snack quite a bit a lot of the food I eat is missing. Not sure how I'm going to work with that yet.



But yeah, like I said, feeling really good! This is the first time I've shot black and white and felt both conceptually and visually spot-on with it; usually I have to shoot b&w for a class and I'm all, maaaahhh why can't I shoot colorrrrr. I don't want to do this project in color AT ALL. It feels like it's in exactly the right spot in black and white, especially since I'm trying to avoid food porn, a totally unnatural action for me. I gravitate towards food porn like sunflowers angle towards the sun!

-hannah