SPE Northwest - Eugene, OR

For me, November means dropping everything for a weekend and heading to the Northwest Region of the Society for Photographic Education's annual conference. The various regions in the country hold annual conferences for artists, theorists, educators, and students to present their work and ideas, and there are opportunities to have portfolios reviewed, rub shoulders with the heavy hitters in photography, that sort of thing.

This year, the University of Oregon hosted the conference down in Eugene. Though the trip was a long one, it was well worth it. I presented the images and theories behind the UFCK photo project—which, after discussions with and encouragement from colleagues, I've decided to press on and continue—and the work was met with many positive questions and responses. It was a good feeling, especially in the face of the head cold I was getting over. 

This year's lineup of presenters and panels was the most solid since I started attending SPENW when I moved to Oregon in 2009. Amjad Faur addressed the current state of contemporary Arab photography, and Justyna Badach showcased her Bachelor Portraits series—and what stood out most to me was her process similar to the way in which I worked for the UFCK photos. Ted Hiebert spoke about the psychic photography of Ted Serios, and Hiebert works with his beginning photography students in psychic experimentation in order to address the tension between information and imagination within the medium. 

Southern Oregon University's Erik Palmer (follow him on Twitter! He commands it!) concentrated an entire talk on social networking and social media, and how these new avenues of connecting allow a photographer to reach a large audience much more easily in the past. He stressed that this is an important paradigm shift in how we teach students, and he also might have mentioned that everything we're doing now is probably not ideal, and we should completely overhaul how we teach photography curriculum. 

Mary Goodwin's presentation about Minor White was hilarious, frightening, and uplifting. If I could get just one student to stare at a photograph for a half hour before responding to it, it'd be an accomplishment no matter what the student said. And that's without incorporating anything having to to with Zen Buddhism. 

Other exceptional presentations included, but certainly weren't limited to: Lucas Foglia, "plain communities," and the "Frontcountry"; Allie Mount and her long-distance collaboration with Irish photographer Gary O'Neill; Christine Garceau and the Kodak Girl; and U of O grad student Ian Clark, who showcased five short films from up-and-coming filmmakers. The whole thing was capped by a quirky and moving presentation by Honored Educator Dan Powell, who overwhelmed me with his poignancy and poetic explanations of his photography and the slippage therein. 

The U of O campus was really a sight to see, even in the light rain that fell almost the entire trip. Eugene is kind of a strange little town—as little as a city of 150,000 can be, I suppose—but full of fantastic food and drink. The conference was held together by its volunteers, its presenters, and the U of O itself. Here's hoping that future conferences are as put-together as this one was, because it was certainly a great experience. 

Now go and vote or something, nerds. 

Steph - 8/25/11

"Don't make fun of my email address. I will be around August because where the shit else will I be."


Thus began my communication with Steph, ufck.org's resident sassypants and alpha female, one of only two women I would photograph during my east coast trip in August of 2011.


Even though ufck.org is usually a non-visual place–as in, many people who regularly participate never post photos of themselves–Steph is an exception for one distinct reason: her tattoos. In early 2011 (or late 2010), she had the face of John Goodman tattooed on her right leg. In the run-up to the project, a Michigan tattoo place ran a contest on Facebook to select a winner for $500 towards their next tattoo. Steph's entry was for another tattoo of her next-most adored celebrity: Sam Watterson, or District Attorney Jack McCoy, from NBC's Law and Order, from whom she happens to have named one of her dogs.


"[G]enerally it works best to have someone come in the backyard so I can let [the dogs] out one by one to meet and so I can tell you what to expect from each one of them. They are all cruelty cases, and three of them don't really need the intro, but one of my girls needs  a minute to warm up and my Dachshund cannot be touched. No one is dangerous, they will not bite, but my Dachshund will probably yap the entire time. I know this sounds neurotic, but such is my life."


Thus was my introduction to Steph and her dogs. I arrived with my photo gear, we shook hands, and then she led me to her backyard and proceeded to let each dog out one at a time in order to get accustomed to me. There were six, including the aforementioned Dachshund–who mysteriously didn't have a problem with me–and a much larger dog who was still a young pup and chewed on the legs of my tripod during the entire shoot. 


In my notes for this photo project, I have nothing written down from my visit with Steph. I don't remember what we talked about, except that in talking about the message board itself, she revealed to me on the boards there is a secret section that is only for women. Steph was watching "a murder show" and drinking a Coke. The dogs wandered around during the shoot, and various ones appear in different proofs and final films.  


Steph is a force in the Michigan thread, though she's only met a few people from ufck.org. She insists that she regularly invites people to hang out, but they always bail. Of all the people I met on the trip, she was the subject most similar to their online personality, most notably because of her lack of tact when it comes to addressing anything, whether it's hairstyles, Jersey Shore, dogs, tattoos, or the melange of characters in the Michigan thread. 


When I emailed her to tell her my schedule was more open than I originally intended, because several of the other Michigan folks had busy schedules or just backed out, she bluntly replied:


"Every one in Michigan is a dick except me."

Kern - 8/24/11

Kern is a Spartans fan. So, naturally, when they lost a close conference game a few weeks ago to the Ohio State Buckeyes, I thought of him. He was at the game and tweeted images from his seat. It was a bummer, and I remember thinking that a guy like Kern doesn't deserve to be bummed out.

That's because Kern isn't the kind of guy who'll bum you out. Ever. He's the guy that everyone is friends with. I learned that the instant I stepped into his apartment during the early stages of my whirlwind UFCK.org photo project trip. He offered to help me carry equipment, he offered me something to drink, he introduced me to his roommate, and he asked me what I wanted to watch on TV. (Since it was August, it ended up being the Tigers game.)

Kern knows everyone on the message board. A native Michigander, he attended Michigan State University with no less than four other board members. They're buddies. They go to baseball games, they go to Slow's for barbecue. They hang out. It's what buds do.

Kern boards from his phone. "With Tapatalk [a message board app], there's no need to even board from a computer any more," he told me. He was the first person I had talked to who mentioned boarding entirely from a mobile device. The scope of the social network within ufck.org - and the Internet in general - changes quite a bit when folks aren't tethered to a computer that's connected to a wall. Kern's jovial and welcoming nature was almost evidence of that; as one of the board members who seemed most plugged-in to the other people on the board, it seems appropriate that his mobile device connects him to the rest of us he can't grab a bite or see a ballgame with.

The Spartans bounced back - defying the "kern curse," so to speak - and won last weekend's Big Ten Tournament en route to a number one seed in the upcoming men's NCAA national tournament. I know Kern will be following them along the way, with his friends, and probably posting what he thinks from his phone the entire time.

Aram - 8/23/11

The Continuing Saga of the UFCK Photo Project: the Aram

With four or five or six photo shoots under my belt, the summer months of 2011 were a frenzy of logistical emails and postings. In the beginning of the year, when the project funding was announced, I made plans to travel during the early summer, around the fourth of July.

Then, I bought a house. It was a good step towards normal, adult, decorum, but that ordeal set me back several weeks, and before I knew it, the end of August, Labor Day, and the beginning of my academic year were all staring me in the face and I had to get on the road for the project.

More emails. More planning. More spreadsheets. I used maps and the Internet to try to figure out the best routes to take. I would be shipping my equipment to my parents' house in Michigan, fly out of Boise, pick up and go. By mid-August, I had a crude plan in place to follow a big loop from Michigan through Chicago, down to Tennessee, back up through the DC area to New York before heading home through Philadelphia.

Sorting through the schedules of almost two dozen people was one thing. Stepping off a plane and meeting someone you'd never met before was another. The first person on my list of subjects, and the main focus of the entire project from its inception, was Aram.

Let me tell you a little bit about Aram.

He's a character. A relatively normal character, but a character nonetheless. On ufck.org he is easily the the site's most recognizable members, both because of his appearance and his personality. His loves include the Beatles, vinyl records, the University of Michigan (and especially its Marching Band), Michigan beer, soul music, playing on a vintage baseball team, his Armenian heritage, and his academic studies, among others.

For whatever reason–most likely because Aram has been around ufck.org since its inception and the inception of its predecessors, which has resulted in a more extensive reputation than someone just joining the boards–Aram gets picked on. A lot. Oftentimes, it's in good fun, and he takes it in jest. It's schoolyard teasing among friends. Sometimes, though, it's, well, rougher than that. He's opinionated, sure, but his opinions resonate across this online community oftentimes like wildfire. He's different, and I knew that before I even met him in person. He's emotional, which rarely serves one well in an online forum as sarcastic and caustic as ufck.org can be. But his specific emotions somehow help him stay afloat and keep a level head through all of the derision and nitpicking.

His penchant for oddball comments, photogenic tendencies–which lend themselves quite well to an almost innumerable catalog of animated .gif images–and general demeanor and reputation as this sort of online forum celebrity were what initiated this project in the first place. In my eyes, he was this walking, living, breathing meme, and I had to investigate what it was that made Aram the Aram.

Because I had shipped my photographic equipment to my parents' house, it put the camera out of reach when I landed at Detroit Metro Airport. So I split my photo shoot with Aram into two parts: the first would be a sit-down visit where we talked about anything and everything pertaining to the message board. Then I would return the following day for the photo shoot once I had my gear with me.

This means that I spent the better part of a day traveling from Oregon to Detroit, picked up my luggage and my rental car, and was driving to a stranger's house to sit and chat about who-knows-what. For the first time in my photographic life, I was nervous, and it had nothing to do with standing in front of a classroom of strangers.

I had a notebook, a tape recorder, and a water bottle. No plan, no questions, no getaway plan if Aram turned homicidal and started throwing vintage 45's at me.

Aram answered the door in a Fat Possum Records t-shirt. If that doesn't say anything about what kind of guy Aram is, then this blog post–and maybe the entire photo project–is a giant waste of time.º

My conversation with Aram, and the photo shoot the next day, went almost too well to describe. He was jovial and welcoming and more than willing to talk. He had a hard time believing his life–or online life–was somehow worthy of interest from an artist, let alone photographic documentation. We met for over an hour and a half that first day, and I learned about Aram's fascination with the city of Detroit, how he managed to survive a year-long grad school program in Chicago (and what he was actually studying), and what he was doing back home in his parents' basement.

The following day we continued the conversation while shooting and over lunch. Aram recounted, as best he could remember, his hilarious and eventful night at his first State Champion concert, why he wanted to take a trip to Israel, and what the deal is with his giant beard.

It turns out that Aram is a normal guy like he insists all the time online. The difference between him and many of the other people who post at ufck.org is that he rarely holds back. He's truthful to his ideals in a way that sets off a lot of people. Hence, the poking fun, the comments.

Aram is probably the person that is most comfortable being himself when he's online. And it's strange, since this whole project started with him and how we're all different–we have to be, right?–online compared to our real lives. For Aram, there isn't really a line between those two worlds for him. He's a bit younger, he's been posting online since he was in high school. (I, for instance,  didn't discover the world of online message boards until I was a junior in college.)

While the story about Aram and our visit could go on and on (and will; see the footnote below), the fact that it was my first stop on a long photographic journey was, in retrospect, one of the best things about the entire project. Everyone who agreed to be photographed was more than cordial and welcoming, sure, but there was something about Aram's demeanorª–and the fact of knowing there are people like him out there–that makes me realize that this project has merit, whether or not the in-depth stories of the characters involved ever get told.

º Aram is by no means an indie music expert, but the fact that he was wearing a Fat Possum Records shirt–celebrating the small record label operating out of Water Valley (Oxford), Mississippi says loads about his personality.

ª He would be the first to comment: tl;dr

Strangers Pick the Best of 2011

Each December, the users of the online forum ufck.org submit their votes for the best albums of the previous year. All of the submitted lists are tallied by some dear soul who has the time to assign point values to each record.

My relationship with the UFCK folks has changed quite a bit over the last year. The UFCK Photo Project was a big step for me integrating myself into the community and becoming a regular. In the past, the only claim to fame I had was the occasional animated .gif I would throw together in Photoshop.

I submitted a list of albums this year for the first time. By no means a music expert, I scrolled through iTunes in the hopes I had listened to some new music during 2011. I had. Nothing extensive, to be sure, but there was enough variety that I culled together my favorites from among the critically acclaimed to the less-so.

Several things happened during this year's UFCK top 25 voting. State Champion, a relatively unknown (save for UFCK.org) rock band from Louisville, took top prize. I met frontman Ryan Davis during my photo trip, and photographed him for the project, despite his never having been a member of the message board. (Though the band has been fodder for many a fantastic board experience.) Enough nice things cannot be said about him, especially considering I met up with him at his place at 9am, while he and his girlfriend were getting ready to head up to Kings Island for the day.

To access the list of UFCK's top 25 albums of 2011, go here. What you'll find is a mix of eclectic and fantastic music. With each entry on the list you'll also find a custom blurb written by a member of the forum. Sometimes the blurbs are ironic, sometimes they are clever. Other times, they are simply a litany of inside jokes that any outsider (or boarder with fewer than 50,000 posts) would fail to understand. The blurbs are usually more descriptive of the person who wrote them than of the record they're describing.

Take a look and you'll learn about UFCK, some new music, and the lives of people who take their music very, very seriously*.

And you'll also have a chance to download, print, and enjoy your very own State Champion Activity Book. Happy coloring!

* This blog does not endorse Dave's Rawk Blog, its opinions, or any of its absurdity. It is worth experiencing at least once, though.

wazzoo & Danner - 3/20/11

Oh, it was so long ago....

It's been almost nine months since I ventured into the greater Seattle area to begin the UFCK photo project. And it's been too long since posting about anything on this blog. And with applications in for both funding to continue the project and a potential exhibition of this work, it's high time I start recounting the stories that accompany these images. Both of these shots took place on the same day during spring break.

I met up with wazzoo (top photo) at his home. My notes describe the house as "a box house." I nearly died making a left turn onto a nearby street, as I had to venture into one of Seattle's hillier areas. (It was an almost completely blind left turn.)

Wazzoo was very quiet and subdued. No music. No noises. I set up my equipment and we made very basic small talk: studies in college, job-related stuff, the photo project.

It wasn't until I - for one reason or another - brought up basketball that wazzoo really piped up. Huge Seattle Sonics fan. Like many people from the area, wazzoo's sentimental streak nearly begins and ends with the loss of the Sonics and their move to Oklahoma City.

From there, the conversation moved to the city and what I had done since I arrived. Wazzoo was full of recommendations for places to visit, from good dinners to nightlife hotspots, which, admittedly, I never followed through on because my quick trip (4 photo shoots) was enough to wear me out by the end of each day.

After a quick late lunch it was out to Woodinville, a suburb in the Seattle/Redmond area. Danner (left) came out onto his balcony to welcome me. After offering me a beer - Danner is a bit of a beer nut - I set up my camera.

Danner was talkative and easily excited. He donned Liverpool gear and we chatted soccer for quite a bit. Liverpool FC is Danner's club of choice, and part of his extensive traveling résumé includes a trip to England to take in a match. UFCK's soccer thread is his sort of home away from home; we never really had crossed paths that often on the boards; his email regarding a potential photo shoot was the most surprising one I received.

Soccer and NCAA basketball were on the television as we talked quite a bit about Danner's journey to the Pacific Northwest. He interned in Dallas for the PGA Tour and has traveled to Spain, Liverpool (twice), and London. He showed a bit of interest in my 4x5 camera and recounted the story of losing his nearly-new Canon Rebel xSi on a plane to Chicago; he left it in the overhead bin and never heard about it again.

Sometimes stuff like that happens.

That long weekend in Seattle in March was the start of this whole project. It would be five months until I stepped behind the camera again for another UFCK photo shoot.

slipereypete - 3/19/11

Following the success of the photo shoot with Seattle-ite Kzoo, I ventured into unknown territory. Kzoo was the only boarder on ufck.org I had met whose photo I would take for this project. slipereypete was the second shoot on that day.

The northwest side of Seattle is highly residential, and very hilly. Lots of up and down in the car with photo equipment in the back. I found the place reasonably well - in that I only drove past it once - and made my way up.

The environment was something like an upscale bachelor pad: the olive green leather sofa, stack of art books, and intricately carved coffee table contrasted nicely with the giant flatscreen television and folding table stacked to the brim with records. We listened to Yellow Ostrich's The Mistress* as we chatted. NCAA tournament basketball and the Vancouver Whitecaps MLS debut game were switched between on the television.

slipereypete's apartment afforded great views of the city as well as great light. Our conversation was lively and insightful, and our best conversation points focused on the board and its structure and communal nature.

"Life is usually convex," slipereypete said towards the end of our meeting. "People tend to travel in different directions, doing different things, going to different places. UFCK is concave: people all collect in one place."

A large presence in ufck.org's soccer thread - and naturally a huge Sounders supporter - meeting slipereypete was a great shoot in the sense that it gave me consolation in knowing other people thought of the social experience of a website like ufck.org in the same way I was. There's something to it besides people all talking to one another.

"Everyone else on UFCK cares about all of the stuff you like that no one else gives a shit about," he said. That's the community that I had really plunged myself into.

But I never got around to asking him where his screen name came from.

* The lead singer behind Yellow Ostrich - Alex - also posts regularly on ufck.org. They're moving up in the world these days, opening shows for Ra Ra Riot and making appearances on NPR and the like. Unfortunately, Alex and his bandmates were on a very different travel schedule from mine during the project, and I wasn't able to line up a photo shoot with them. Check them out anyway and buy Yellow Mistress on super-cool yellow vinyl. 

Kzoo - 3/19/11

This is where it all started. The UFCK Photo Project got underway with one of only three boarders I had previously met. It was a cool, March Seattle day. I'm driving around residential neighborhoods with eighty pounds of photo equipment in the trunk of my car, my school has given me money to work on this project, and I have no idea how it's going to go.

I first met Kzoo back in November of 2009, when I was in Seattle for an SPE Northwest regional conference. I told him I was going to be in town, and we stopped somewhere in the Capital Hill district to grab a drink. He had a cold. He called me "Matt." It was a little weird. But our Michigan connection kept the awkward silences to a minimum.

I parked my car near Kzoo's place and he came out to the sidewalk and offered to help carry my gear.

The place was arranged in such a way as to make photographing anything with a view camera and lights a complicated mess. But I powered through. Even when I discovered that I had traveled five and a half hours from home without power cables for my lights, Kzoo found an extra computer cable that worked just fine.

The art on the walls was done by relatives of Kzoo's absent roommate. Kzoo moved the couch pillows "for a better look." He wore his narwhal shirt. He put on music: Magnolia Electric Company's self-titled final album. After the needle passed through side two, he threw on Neil Young's "Everyone Knows This is Nowhere."

Kzoo was personable and just talkative enough to not interfere with my setup. As it was my first shoot, the entire process took much longer than later shoots that happened in August.

Pictured here is an instant proof from the shoot. The exterior window behind him made the lighting awkward, though this far removed from March, the exact details of the shoot escape my memory. I know the strobe is somewhere off to the right, aimed through this translucent Japanese-style screen thing.

Kzoo is one of the guys from the board that would probably get along with anyone, whether they were invading his space to take his picture, or meeting up at Linda's* for a beer.

* This may not actually be the place we went. But it's close. 

[text] Project Website [/text]

Ok, finally.

There are some parts of this that aren't complete. I still have to write the essay I've been promising myself for the last six weeks. The webpages still show titles as "text" and nothing more. (Thanks, iWeb!) But I can't sit on the whole shebang when only small portions aren't fully realized.

So, here it is: the UFCK Photo Project website, in all its glory. Replete with photos. And links. And essays. Essays about life on the Internet. About being friends with strangers. About technological marvels. About getting drunk and passing out at a State Champion show. There's plenty missing, from the photo of the "SWEENEY" license plate I took while driving through Virginia to the slobber from the dog that tried to eat my tripod.

But when someone asks me what I was up to this summer, it was this. From a proposal for the project compiled last November to the first shots this past March, the circle has been large, interesting, and rewarding as it's come around again.

Proposals for exhibitions are now in the works. More later.

(And, if you didn't click on the link above, you can get to the site by following the link here.)