8 Weeks of what?

I have been at Sotheby's for 6 weeks now, it's crazy to think that I have been living in London for 2 months now, it seems longer. Since I have been in London I have made some amazing new friends, I have great roommates, anyway i've made new friends, I sound like a kindergartner. A lot of people are younger or older then I am, however I really don't care, what matters to me is that i'm getting the most out of this experience.

When I first came to London I didn't know what to expect, I didn't know how long, or short, it was going to take in finding a flat, I didn't know how hard, or easy, it was to get a bank accout. I thought I was going to find a place that was under 450 a month (in pounds) in zone 1 or 2, it's not realistic. Oh well, I also wasn't sure how I was going to get along with my roommates as we only had talked over skype once and then facebooked each other the rest of the time. I'm happy that we get along and that we do stuff together and separately. We're in a flat where we aren't in each other's way all the time, except when we're hungry at the same time, then the kitchen is really small, haha.

I have yet to really explore the area around which I live, so this week being reading week (a week off, kind of like fall break), and i'm a poor student, I will explore and i'll take pictures, so make sure to check facebook or email me asking for pictures. The more I explore around London the more I want to take pictures, i'm glad that I have people to do that with. This week my mom and her friend are coming to visit, so possibly a chance to get out of London for a day, we'll see, but i'll be sure to bring either my big camera or my small camera. I love that I got back into it, i just bought a 2 GB memory card for my camera, I didn't have a very big one before. Now that I do, well, everyone get's the picture. (haha, ugh)

School is becoming to get a little stressful, I just finished writing everything in my calendar for what I have to do till the end of the semester. Needless to say I got overwhelmed, I have to write a paper, due next week, and I just had a meeting with my teacher about a 2000 word paper we have to write. It may not seem like a big deal, however I have to write it very well, we are graded very harshly, so my structure of the essay and everything else has to be perfect. Oh did I mention that it has to be in the Queen's English, which isn't bad, however it has to be up to Sotheby's standards. I got my first paper back, I looked at it and didn't want to deal with it. <-- Oh look a run on sentence. I have to begin another paper soon, so I will have to face it and go through the notes. On the plus side, I got my oral presentation back, a 75 out of 80, not bad. Ok enough with this, I am looking forward to a year here, because everything is bound to get better, the pictures, the people, and the classes. I was asked if I was going to stay here after I did my dissertation, I would say yes, because I love the atmosphere here. I'll see where the tide takes me, so to speak, if it's staying here, going somewhere else in Europe or returning to the States i'm always up for an adventure.

I Could Spend Days in this Place

Recently I went to Bradford, U.K., it's about 4, maybe 5, hours away from London, I went there on a field trip with my Masters of Photography class for three days. Those were packed days for sure, the first day we got there the group went to 2 museums, the second was the National Media Museum, and here's where it gets interesting and fun. We got to go into the archives, behind the scenes, thousands of files with pictures, however the place that made me die and go to heaven was the camera room. That's right the camera room, not only were the newer cameras there, there were also cameras dating all the way back to the 1830's, possibly even earlier. The curator only had us in there for, maybe 15 minutes, but I could seriously have spent hours in there, just looking at the cameras behind the glass cases. Ok, that's a lie, I could have spent days in there, I would have loved to go into the cases and examine all the cameras. I would loved to try all the older cameras and figure out the processes that go along with each camera. After a break, we had a lecture on cameras and methods, I was so interested, I know it had been a long day, there were a couple of people really trying to stay awake. I was writing so much that my hand hurt.

I found a part of a passion that I didn't know was there, I didn't even know I was that interested in cameras and methods, shocker!

 I got to see curators in action, got to see how passionate they were. I want to be that passionate about my work one day. I don't know where this degree will lead me, but for once, i'm just estatatic, I don't even know if that's the right word, I seem to have found a passion for the technical. This trip opened my eyes, and i'm sure other trips will continue opening my eyes. Another thing, because i'm not going to focus on the cameras, however I could and would get into a camera's history. Thursday, 6th of Oct, we got into pairs and wrote captions on photographs, my partner and I were really struggling with the caption until Roger Taylor, who is a curator/professor ex. Photographer, I could go on for a while describing who he is, however I won't. Anyway he came over to sit with us, asked us questions, and it lightened up or view of on the photograph, of the period really.

One thing that I haven't written about is that as a photography student, we get to look at original pictures, original negatives of photographs. Jealous? By looking at these images we're figuring out what processes are used, ook, now i'm just being boring, but like anything that's interesting passion comes along, and i'm slowly finding my passion, it may take a while, but it's there. By watching others who enjoy their work and listening to them i'm way excited about what I will one day, hopefully be doing.