I have been collecting a lot of my photos from my journeys all around the USA. I have such a strange relationship with the country I live in. But in collecting these from multiple CDs, flash drives, and Flickr, I realized that there is a lot of beauty in the United States. Sometimes in unlikely places. I also will be updating you about everything that has been going on if you read on…

I am still on the road to finding out why I’ve been feeling so poorly, wait let me rephrase that, feeling worse than normal. I’m in and out of a lot of Doctor’s appointments, plus I have a person that I have to manage their Doctors visits as well. Today I had to go have testing done, I’m hoping that the results of said tests aren’t too bad, but the one I know the results of weren’t amazing, but maybe the rest will be OK. So my creative output hasn’t been as much as I would like. But for me balancing health and creative production has always been an issue. I’m used to it, but it still sucks.

I did not do Nano Camp this year because I have been feeling too bad and honestly I have almost no free time. But I’ve decided I will be doing NaNoWriMo this year! I also plan on writing a lot more in the coming months mostly my YA novel. But I’ve been feeling really inspired to make music again, super tempted to do that. I’m thinking of making something very different. But I’m also still making at least a video a week, and I’m currently doing a lot of research for an uber-long video about a certain anime series (It’s a surprise topic ^_^) So I’m very busy, but I’ve also been writing poetry here and there when the mood strikes.

I’ve also been trying to read a lot more, although mostly I have been into non-fiction and fiction has been a bit harder to consume. I’ve also been trying to learn a little more about the creative process from other people’s perspectives to see if it can help me at all.

As I mentioned I’ve been collecting a lot of old photos from a spool of CDs I found a while back while cleaning out an old tub of stuff that has been in my garage for a while. A lot of these photos are interesting at least to me because, at the time I developed them, I thought they were too boring to really show to anyone, or they were not high enough quality to really take seriously. Some of these photos were taken in lo-fi camera’s like my Holga and Diana Dreamer on purpose, and for whatever reason I just didn’t care about them, always putting other photos from the rolls up places. But now I look at all these rejected photos with great fondness and love. There is something I find rather charming about them, and in a weird way they seem distinctly “American” to me. I don’t know how to further explain this, these photos are like a hazy dream version of my memories.

I have always been a person who has taken a lot of photos. I got my first camera when I was four years old, and I concentrated on photography in High School. This is what I thought my career would be, a photojournalist. I was ready to go to Art School out of High School, or another college to study Photography and Journalism. I was interested in this because I loved to write (obviously) and I found the photographic process interesting. I started to work in a Camera Lab in the back of a Camera store that developed film and digital photos. To this day it is my favorite job I have ever had.

But life took me in a different direction, I did not attend college right away, instead, a couple of years later I went to Art School initially to study Animation. I changed my major a month into Fine Arts, with a minor in Creative Writing. Even though I wasn’t a Photo major Photography still played a big part in many of my works in College. Photography is always something I come back to.

My style of photography has changed quite a bit over the years. I started out just learning basic cameras, then I went to digital and manual film photography. From there I branched out into more lo-fi and experimental photography practices. I began to shoot slide film, which sometimes I would cross-process, I shot out of a crappy APS camera that looked so Y2k it was ridiculous and I also had another curiosity camera of the Y2k era called the Polaroid i-zone that took mini polaroids some of them sticky like stickers that was somehow even more Y2k! (it even had clear plastic face plates you could change out so the color of them would match your outfit or mood) and really fell in love with film in general, although I did keep a digital camera with me at almost all times too.

This was my APS camera (I’m pretty sure…)

This is what my little “mini polaroid” looked like!

So in High School, I took film photos (a lot of black and white, normally T-Max or Ilford 100-speed film.) with a Rebel G film camera, because digital photography was not available in my school yet. My schoolwork and general photography at this time were very stark photos, with low film speeds and a lot of contrast. LIKE A TON. I used to drive my teacher crazy with the high-contrast filters I applied to already contrasty film. I owned a Fuji Finepix digital camera in 2004 when I started working at the film lab. And I loved that little thing, I was so impressed with its 4 megapixels <3. I still put a little too much contrast on my digital photos, mostly because I had no manual abilities on this camera, so my photos weren’t that nice. Right after I got out of High School, I decided I wanted an older camera, and the camera place I work for sold used cameras as well as the newest and best. I got a discount too, so I went to the location that sold used gear and I looked to see what was available.

That was when I met my true love film camera, my first Pentax K1000. It was cheaper than the Nikon I had originally thought I would buy, and I wanted a different experience than my Canon, so I took a chance on the K1000. To this day this camera is my very favorite film camera. I have owned three different K1000 bodies because I love them so much. (I am hard on camera I’ve broken so so so many cameras.)This was my first completely manual camera (other than the funky point shoots and a 110 camera and disposable cameras I had used before, this was my first manual that could change lenses.)This camera challenged me so much, and when I got my first roll I shot on it back, I was obsessed and enchanted with the results. The photos weren’t professional or perfect but they all had a dreamy quality to them that I loved. I had loved the hazy low quality effects of APS and film before this, but something about this camera is just special. I am such a fan, I even eventually traded a similar Minolta I purchased to have a “spare” K1000. To this day I love the look of those photos I took around this time.

In High School and even a little beyond I had taken my camera’s everywhere and documented the parties and events I went to as well as my travels around the Midwest. When I got the Pentax I started expanding something I had always done which is Urban exploration, or as some call it “Trespassing”. I had always loved to break into places, growing up I played in construction sites and I was fascinated by abandoned-looking buildings and/or places on the side of the road.

So I started to drive around and look for weird or broken-down places and buildings. This is when I began to loiter around churches, cemeteries, and abandoned places. I also started taking a lot of photos of trees and nature along with human or structural subjects. Unfortunately, I was suffering from some mental health issues, so it all got to be very intense. I would begin to take ownership of these places, and they would “speak” to me. But in some ways, it was a very mysterious and magical time for me. Unfortunately over multiple moves and even having to stay in my car for a time I lost many of these photos forever. i cherish the photos and negatives that survived this chaotic time.

From the use of my Pentax, I became interested in purposeful lo-fi photography, and vintage cameras of all shapes and sizes. I even bought some at thrift stores and Frankenstein them into a useful state. I also invested in three different Polaroid cameras, the Land camera, a 600 Cool Cam from the eighties that was pink and grey, and a Spectra as well. I later got a mini-polaroid and I love that as well.

So I began to play with slide film more, more cross-processing, and different film speeds. I became obsessed with Kodak Gold 800 film and even played around with vintage films. It’s also something to note that I began to heavily collect even cameras that were broken at this point. But then I learned about LOMO products or “Lomography”. I begged my Dad to lend me the money so I could buy an original Holga, which he did agree to (I paid him back)and I was on my way with Lomo fueled photo craze.

I began to take my Holga everywhere with me and always had multiple rolls of cheap film, the cheaper the better. I also bought expired films more during this time. I also for the first time got to use 120 films which were very enjoyable. By this point, I think I was on my third or fourth digital camera. My Fuji was stolen, so I got a cheaper Fuji digital camera that I really hated. I ended up after another one or two digital cameras that I hated with a used pink Casio Exilim Z1080, which was OK and definitely was a step up in the megapixel department. But alas remember how I said I’m hard on cameras? My partner accidentally dropped this camera in a large glass of beer when we were out one night. (Don’t ask it was a freak accident…)So that didn’t last long.

So at this point, Camera phone photos were beginning to look good, I entered college after a short time off of school in 2012, and I bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3, (This was an old camera by this point but I found a deal on a boxed deadstock one, so I bought it) which to this day is the best point-and-shoot digital camera I have ever had or used. I began to take this with me everywhere as well as my film cameras, and I also got a Diana F+ Dreamer from my sister around this time. I continued to be experimental but less and less so as the years passed. Also more and more my phone has taken over my digital camera. I still collect some old cameras and lately, I have been filming Vlogs, which can be seen on my YouTube channel with a 2004 Olympus Stylus Verve. I have collected many other cameras but I mentioned all the most special to me here.

My lifestyle has changed quite a bit, and I no longer regularly drive around aimlessly or have as many adventures traveling around as I did when I was in my late teens and early twenties, but I still love photography and cameras are still thrilling. I hope that when my health returns I can become a film nomad again, and visit more places at least close by to photograph. So While looking through these old photos (All are available in the “ART” tab of this website)I was struck with such nostalgia, but I was also so moved by the fact that I had documented my own little experience in so much detail.

I hope if you look at the photos you have fun and enjoy the different styles and scenes I have captured. Like I said before I went and wrote a novel about my photo history, I began to look deeper at my own “bad” photos, the rejects, and I truly love them just as much as the photos I thought were “successful” back then. They tell just as much of a story, and they I feel, capture hidden moments with myself that I had forgotten I had. I have literally thousands of photos printed and even more digitally and I fear so much that they will get damaged or lost. I hope I can find a better way to store all of them. I even have photos I took when I was a child that are odd and grainy and interesting because I don’t remember taking them, but I remember some details from the events they cover. I have curated some of my favorite photos to release to the public.

Note: I am not the best photographer ever, but I like to think that my experimenting and obsessively documenting things was worth something. From my travel when I was young in Korea, to my drive across the Country, to multiple day trips or strange anxiety-driven vacations and explorations I took these images, and they may not be beautiful or perfect but they are mine.

Hope you are doing well, Love and Light,

Aisling <3