I am Now Officially Called "The Crazy Doodle Lady," in Photography Class!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Last week, John and I started another Photography class with the same teacher, Bob, we have had in the past.  When we last left off, it had clearly been established that my fondness for taking pictures of my dogs had labeled me “over the top” by my teacher.  It isn’t that he doesn’t like dogs, but rather that he thinks dog photos are for family photo albums and not great works of art.  From time to time, I will send him a picture to be critiqued and he will almost answer back, “It’s good, but it has a dog in it.”  He says he laughs when I answer back, “it’s for the Doodle calendar and oddly enough that is one of the requirements.”  I even proudly offered him a Doodle calendar with Vern on the cover and Fudge inside and he said he didn’t need another calendar.  I am sure the one he has on his wall probably has stupid pictures of sunsets, birds, or architectural wonders, which in my opinion, would never be as great as a Doodle calendar.  So, I think you can see what I am up against each week in our class.

 

Well, last week the assignment was to shoot three photos, one being objective, one being subjective, and the last one could be either/or objective or subjective. He said there were no bad pictures or ideas, but then he looked right at me and laughingly said, “Unless, of course, it’s Doodles.”  If you know anything about me, those words were like he threw down the gauntlet and dared me to pick it up.  At that point, I knew the majority of my assignment would include some shots of my dogs. All week I would wake up thinking things like….if only I had a milking cow, I could take a shot of the udders with a pail of money underneath and call it Milk Money or Cash Cow…..what about my giant Rooster wearing a pair of glasses, placed crookedly on his face, with a glass half full of water and calling it The Cock-eyed Optimist....a slice of pizza suspended in air, leaning to one side, and calling it The Leaning Tower of Pizza….John’s messy area near his recliner and calling it Passive Aggressive Behavior.  I couldn’t turn my mind off, which most of my family will try to tell you is abnormal for me.  The general consensus in our family is that I often forget to turn my mind on.  I would wake up at night with ideas, and it was right after I told John, I needed to find a dead milking cow and call it Expired Milk, that I was strongly encouraged to go back to photographing my dogs.

 

However, I was determined to prove to my teacher that I wasn’t a one hit wonder and against my better judgment, I could take shots, even if they bored me, of other things besides Fudge and Vern.  Since my pizza shot seem extremely doable, the other morning I headed out to the garage with my slice of pizza in hand and a vision.  John had set up lights out there for this assignment and once I got situated, I struggled with how to get the pizza to look like it was leaning.  All in all, it involved a knife, masking tape, an electrical wire, magazine, black construction paper, and a wrench.  Beaming with pride, I showed John the finished photo when he came home from work and recounted the extraordinary measures I had taken to get a photo of a slice of pizza.  Immediately, he started smiling and asked why I had not just laid the slice of pizza on the construction paper and shot the photo from up above and started really laughing when I said that method had never even crossed my mind.  When I told Megan the whole story, she said maybe my next picture should be of a donkey wearing a dunce cap and call it Laurie.  It is a real shame when true artists are persecuted for their methods.

I give you The Leaning Tower of Pizza!

For awhile it seemed as if I had a theme going on after I shot a picture of Fudge with three different sized balls and called it Size Matters and followed that with my Cock-eyed Optimist idea. 

Poor John had to lug my 5 foot rooster out into the cornfield for me to get the light just right, only to be told the light was all wrong as he moved it from spot to spot for me.  After about the fifth move to the right, he told me what I could do with my large rooster and where he thought it might fit and I told him he was wrong.  The saddest part of all was after all that work, I did not save the picture correctly and it never got added to my thumb drive for class.  I also did a Book Worm idea, but by far, my piece de resistance was a vision I had of Vern in an aviator hat and goggles in a plane up in the clouds. 

I had seem a similar shot from an artist I love on Facebook, but whereas she shot the dog and plane side by side, I wanted Vern in the actual plane.  I worked on that one picture for the better part of a week and never got it exactly right and quickly found out my creative mind was far superior to my Photoshop skills.  In the end, I got a so so shot and John said to call it Sorry Bob, It’s a Dog, but I went with Fly like a Bird.  I had actually thought about When Dogs Fly, which was the first name my teacher said.  It didn’t help that Bob, the teacher, had told me earlier that I had no idea how much he laughed when I sent him some of my dog images, but I couldn’t tell if he meant laughed as in this woman is insane or laughed because they made him happy.  In the end, I choose to think that slowly Fudge and Vern are working their way into his soul and changing the way he thinks about dog photography.

John, on the other hand, did not shoot any dog photos and did two really cool shots called Dancing Shoes and Weight of the World.  It took every ounce of restraint I had not to yell, “DOG SHOTS ARE BETTER!” as Bob oohed and aahed over John’s work.  Bob asked a couple of times if I had helped John with the shot and John threw me to the wolves when he announced that I had not been all that supportive or helpful, unless of course you count me saying, “How much longer is this going to take? It’s been two hours for a dumb shoe shot and I want to go out for dinner.”  This prompted some comments about John having the patience of a Saint and later on the same thing was said about Fudge and Vern.  Despite John forgetting that what happens at our house, stays at our house, I may be biased, but I think his photos were the best non-dog shots there and we had some great photos. One guy set his broken freezer on fire and called it Freezer Burn. Another woman had a shot of her running shoes and a bunch of forks and called it You Can’t Outrun your Fork and then launched into a diatribe about people who work out and then go right home and eat bad things.  Immediately, I wondered if she had followed me home from the gym last week and saw me stop at Dunkin Donuts for a bagel, but before I could ask she was telling the whole class that losing weight is 80% diet and 20% working out.  I was almost afraid to have the pizza picture shown, but felt if there was any trouble; I would just explain that I only ate 20% of the pizza.

I am not sure my photos were appreciated, but I like them and I suppose that is what counts. This week our assignment is to go outside our comfort zone and photograph three shots that represent our mood that day. Bob hates cat pictures more than dog photos, so I told him taking a picture of my cat would be outside my comfort zone and I would work on it for next week and he just groaned.  I might just go to the gym and get on a treadmill, eating a piece of cake, and call it 50/50, but I am not sure if smartass instigator is a mood.   I also thought about showing a happy mood by hula hooping and if I decided to do it completely naked, I just bet all the class would appreciate my dog pictures even more.

[Doris, Knox & Flash]

All I can think is that I would never survive your class! There's no way I could begin to think of something as creative as you have to shoot! Flash with a lightbulb wouldn't cut it, I'm sure! I love the pics of Vern, and if truth be known, I'm sure you're the teacher's pet!