sami: (pix)
Sami ([personal profile] sami) wrote2009-07-27 12:43 pm

I am at risk of failing again, I think

I have a few major loves in my life, and it's hard to decide which to focus on. (ADHD does not help in this.) I love history, and I'm good at it; I also love Linguistics, and I'm reasonably good at it; I love playing guitar, though I'm not very good at it at all, but I'm gradually improving, teaching myself to be better; I love photography, and I'm oka~ay at it but also improving... alongside a bunch of other various things I like and have different degrees of skill at, like craft projects and so on.

Most things become kind of random hobbies I pick up and drop when the mood suits me.

But I love history, linguistics, photography, and music.

I have no pretensions of getting "serious" about music. I'm serious, for my standards, about keeping it up; I've continued practicing with a dedication that's not normally my style, I've spent serious money on relevant equipment (e.g. my guitar, which is medium-grade for levels of expensiveness in terms of guitars generally, but extremely expensive for levels of a) guitars for beginners and b) stuff bought by me ever at all). It's a mixture of serious hobby and medical equipment, since it's important for my mental health. (As endorsed by my psychologist and proven by personal experience.)

I do have intentions of getting serious about history and/or linguistics; I'm still wavering a bit on which, for a whole bunch of reasons. I love them both, I'm slightly better at history, but career prospects are probably better in linguistics, but I kind of want to be able to use both in my life.

And what would be awesome would be to be able to combine them also with photography. Ideas like going places that are at risk of cultural obliteration and record the language, the history, the way of life - including photojournalistic-type photography thereof. (Yes, I realise that, if I'm not very very careful, this idea has high fail risk. That's not actually the risk I'm talking about in the subject, because that's a vague and distant notion.)

The thing is: photography. Right now, a hobby, but I want to do things with it. I've taken some nice landscape shots here and there, I've taken some neat pictures of animals and of people, I've taken a couple of shots I even like as photojournalistic style... but I want to do some kind of real photographic documentation.

And I had an idea, of sorts, brought up by some recent frustrations and readings and so on: a photo essay on people with disabilities. (Visible and invisible, though representing the disability aspect with the latter is going to be an interesting challenge, when you take into account the rest of what I'm about to explain I want to do with this.)

The thing being, I want to do a photo essay on PWD that is carefully constructed, as much as I possibly can, not to elicit the faintest shred of sympathy.

Because that's not what I'm after, at all - I want a photo essay that's about PWD being people. Pictures of PWD living, laughing, doing - sometimes competent and dignified, sometimes joyfully undignified and silly and having fun. Pictures of management/treatment/medical-type stuff presented in a business-like way, as a part of daily life. I want a compilation from which a hypothetical viewer will take a message that PWD have a lot of stuff to deal with that able-bodied people don't, but the point is that they do deal - with a subsection of presentation of accessibility fail areas that make the fail look like roll-your-eyes idiocy.

I'm not sure how to really go about getting people to be in these pictures, though. Some of them I can do using elements of my own life, as I have some disability issues of my own, but a lot of them I really, really can't.

Challenging concepts are challenging.
nicki: (Default)

[personal profile] nicki 2009-07-27 06:17 am (UTC)(link)
If you were my student in the US, I'd say the major you wanted was cultural anthropology. :P
nicki: (Default)

[personal profile] nicki 2009-07-27 08:07 pm (UTC)(link)
*was teasing a bit, did the double major thing myself :D * Yay with the almost there.
sqbr: I lay on the couch, suffering an out of spoons error (spoons)

[personal profile] sqbr 2009-07-27 10:53 am (UTC)(link)
*volunteers* You could have me like in my icon :D

Yay hobbies.
sqbr: pretty purple pi (I like pi!)

[personal profile] sqbr 2009-07-28 03:50 am (UTC)(link)
Heh, yeah, I meant like in my icon but awake and actually doing stuff :)
velithya: (Default)

[personal profile] velithya 2009-07-27 11:00 am (UTC)(link)
DOUBLE. MAJOR.
velithya: (Default)

[personal profile] velithya 2009-07-28 12:06 am (UTC)(link)
that's how chas did it *shrug*
velithya: (Default)

[personal profile] velithya 2009-07-28 12:21 am (UTC)(link)
actually he pretty much had!