first place winner!
I am very excited that my work, Drive, won first place at the Visual Art Exchange's For the Love of Art auction.
find me on instagram
hello! if you are looking for me, I am probably on instagram as tricia.darling Here are my "best 9" (most liked) instagram photos from 2016.
tell me twice
Working on prints for my upcoming portfolio review at the Click Triangle Photography Festival. This is "tell me twice."
No matter what the reviewers say, I have already gotten a lot from the process. I've reworked some images and made them better. I've drug images out of Lightroom that had not seen paper & ink previously. I've made new photographs in the last week that I love. I've reminded myself of some of my favorite work and questioned why I am not working more in that vein now. There's more. A mountain of more.
I feel like I'm falling down the rabbit hole and it just keeps getting deeper and weirder and more beautiful.
the big yes
Making test prints this weekend in preparation for my first portfolio review. Trying to be brave & vulnerable & putting in the weird stuff that speaks to me. Above is "the big yes." It is a self portrait, & there are some autobiographical qualities in the story, but mostly I use myself as a model because I'm there. And I'm cheap.
The image strikes some as a dark image. There's a jokeresque quality to her expression-- the line of the mouth, the pointy nose, the arch of the eye brow... But, to me, she is saying yes to something. She looks to the train. Is that the yes? Is someone coming? Is she leaving? Does she have dark intentions? I don't know. Once the image is made, & the whisper of the story is released to the wild, there could be a thousand possible possibilities before breakfast.
The portfolio review is part of the Click! Triangle Photography Festival slate of awesomeness for the month of October in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area of North Carolina.
impossible things
For the love of all things instant and impossible, I bought myself the Impossible Project's newest camera.
For the not-yet-polaroid-nerds, the Impossible Project is the group that purchased Polaroid's last remaining instant film factory in Poland when Polaroid went out of the instant film business in 2008. The Impossible Project makes and sells film for old Polaroid cameras.
Now they've made a camera too. The I-1.
Fred and I spent last weekend on the Haw River just outside of Pittsboro, North Carolina. Photo above from last weekend on the Haw shows one of the photographs from the I-1, the I-1 camera, and a tease of the Haw in the background. One of the gifts of this process is the speed. Or lack thereof. After each shot, I put the photo in my camera bag to develop, and I take a seat on the rocks or the roots and listen to the river rushing by.
30 beats of my heart
Excited that my piece, 30 beats of my heart, was accepted in the Visual Art Exchange's southern landscape exhibition, Scope!
This piece is 30 fuji instant photographs taped directly to the wall. 30 moments near and dear to my heart. All images of the South.
The opening is tomorrow, Friday, June 3, 2016. I've had a sneak peek of the exhibition and it is stunning! So happy to be included.
polaroid + eno river + stickwork
Out with my vintage polaroid camera and expired impossible film last weekend, I found magic. Exploring along the Eno River (Hillsborough, NC), we discovered this fairy castle made of sticks. I never tire of Patrick Dougherty's stickwork structures. I love this image! Soft. Irregular. Dreamy. Imperfect. Beautiful. The little white anemone-looking film spasm on the bottom right is the cherry on top.
afternoon in the woods
Last weekend I had the rare pleasure of spending a day with some of my favorite people in the woods along the creek with my camera.
things as they are
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
- Wallace Stevens
we are like flies stuck in honey
So thrilled that my piece "we are like flies stuck in honey" was juried in to the Visual Art Exchange's Image Exhibition. Juried by Edna Cardinale, Director of the photography-focused Julie Saul Gallery.
we are like flies stuck in honey is 9 fuji instax photographs, and not shown in the photo above, taped directly to the wall with torn masking tape. For me it's about all the beautiful things in life that are fleeting and maybe they are more precious because of it.
i dream of you
I've been working on more personal work lately. The combo of the more personal subject matter and new tools and processes is blowing my mind in the most uncomfortable and exquisite ways. Self portrait. iPhone shot with iPad edit.
five perfect tens
50. Fifty. Five perfect tens. Terrified & excited for this new decade of my life.
gifts from unexpected circumstances
I've crawled out from under my rock and have discovered shooting + editing + posting of photos all from my iphone. Sometimes difficult circumstances gift us in unexpected ways...
My life has been busy and disorganized lately as I take care of an aging parent. Many days & nights in the hospital, at my mother's apartment, away from home, away from my camera, away from my laptop has actually given me the gift of discovering my phone's camera and all the unbelievable apps to EDIT photos on my phone. This idea (shoot + edit + post all on the phone) was not in my universe a couple of months ago.
This shot is blurry. On purpose. I have a slow shutter app on my iPhone and it gives me the most delicious blur. To my eye, blur is mystery. A reminder of of our lives in constant flux. Blurred images look like pieces of a dream. Fragments of thought. Things I'm not quite sure about. Blur draws me in.