My Daily Practice: 365

I don't usually finish what I start, but I want this to be different.

So, I've been watching 'The Buried Life' on MTV and it had me thinking about life. It had me thinking about how time flies by and you don't even know it. I've been trying to put together a list of things i want to do before I die, and this 365 is on it. I can't mess up and not take a photo one day, because that means that I've screwed up the 365. I want to complete this. I want to be able to cross this off my list.

I'm not sure what is intriguing about this. It's basically taking a photo of yourself a day. Actually, that's all it is. But it seems like so much more to me. It's like a summary of my day. I show my emotion in a photograph, and by the look on my face, you can tell a little about me.

And going back to my fascination on time, this project is perfect for me. I associate my day with my photograph, and it shows me what I was doing at the time. And i'll be able to look at these years in the future and see what I liked. I don't know, it's just something I like to do.

This 365 isn't a hassle for me, and I'd love to keep it up for longer than just 365 days.

today was day 028! check out my 365 from day 001 to now.

www.flickr.com/heyitsashleyy

-ashleycoppolino

Artist Statement

Artist Statement:

Photography has mainly been my art. I was never taught how to use a camera and capture focal points, but as I figured it all out, I have grown a passion for it. I do photography because I take that one moment of time and hold it. With a camera, you have the ability to capture a moment of your life from any angle. Not all photographs look right, but if you move the camera and look at the world, it’s not all right either.

When I take photos, I try to grasp every ounce of color. The contrast between light and dark or dull and bright, to me, makes the picture pop and look stronger. In photography, you’re only given so much space to fit your shot in. And in that space, every speck is seen. If I’m taking a picture of a landscape, for example, and there’s garbage on the floor in my shot, I will not keep the photo. Yes, it’s how I see the world, but no, it’s not how I want to remember my picture. The little details are important, but not my main importance. But like any other photographer, I just want my picture to come out good.

Color is my main focus in a photo, like I have slightly mentioned before. Even in black and white, when you have your pure blacks and your whitest whites, it makes the photo look great. With black and white you could do color splash, which means the whole photo is black and white except the one thing you decided to keep in color.

Even though photography is where my heart is in art, I’m open to any art. Any way to creatively express what I want to, what I need to, I’m open for it. I can’t really describe art, but it’s the things you can’t describe that are most important in your life.

ashleycoppolino

Core Values and Issues: are the same?

Issues:

color - in my photography, I look for brights, dulls, darks, lights and everything in between in all shades of color. In black & white photography, color splash has to be one of my favorites.

emotions - emotions occur in my photos, and writing. lowering the exposure or saturation of a photograph gives it a different emotion that the original. When I write, it's always toying with emotions.

opposites (i.e. dark vs. light)

time - a lot of my photography shows things that change over time. When something is in motion, and I take many, many pictures as it's changing but only use a couple and lay them out next to each other, even though the photographs aren't in between, you see hat changes over time. In my writing, I write a lot about the past going to the future and how things change, and it takes time, etc.

I think I confused myself with the core values and issues.. Is it possible for my core values and issues to be the same? Because isn't core values is what's important, and issues is what appears in your work, so wouldn't it be alright if they were the same?

It's nothing fantastic yet, but here's the beginning of my 365: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heyitsashleyy/

Help!

-ashleycoppolino

What Have I Done In The Semester?

I feel like my first day of tenth grade was last week. When actually, it was about five months ago. Time flies. Half way into the school year, Luke hit us with a question that really made me think, 'What have you done in the semester?'. Well, i couldn't really come up with anything extraordinary. I wanted to impress myself and say that I've accomplished something great, but i couldn't even do that. And this is where I plan to turn that all around.
I'm done with slacking, and believing my stupid choices now won't effect me in the future. I know I'm young and all, but the choices I made six years ago effect me now, and I can't imagine what it will be like this time around. So, i decided to set rules for myself. Rule #1: Don't break the rules.
I know I'll end up breaking them eventually, but I want to think positive, you know, have a little faith in myself.
I also thought of Luke's question not as what I've done, but as what can I do. I want to follow my New Years Resolution and start me make change in my life. I want to be able to look back and say, 'Wow, I did that.'
I know it's corny and all, but I don't really care. It's what I want and I'm going to really try for it.

once again,
ashleycoppolino

365. That's Right.. A Whole Year.

So, Nina has inspired me to get a move on my 365.
I put a lot of thorught into the 365, even though it probably doesn't seem like it.
I've recently blogged about how time is mind-blowing to me. And i thought about it all, and time is in photography. It's that one captured moment of time. And past time and future time is amazing to me. I love holding on to a picture from ten years ago and looking at it now and thinking how it's all changed. I'll give an example! In 2001, my friend and I sat on my front stairs drinking yoo-hoo. I look at it know and think, why did i dye my hair? was i really that short? did i always wear pink? and I look at myself now and wonder how it's changed through the past couple of years.
What I love about doing the 365, is that I can see how I've changed. Going back to time, if i take one picture of myself over a year, it will show what happens in a period of time.
And so, that's my story of 365.

Follow me! It's not updated, but every now and then for the next three hundred and sixty0five days you can drop in and see the changes I've made.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/heyitsashleyy/

Sincerely Yours,
ashleycoppolino

Core Values and Issues in Time

issues:

-communication

-hearing, but not seeing

-voice

-explination

core values:

-color

-emotions

~expression of one's self

-accomplishment

~feeling of being able to move on

~feeling of completion

While doing this activity in class, I had this whole thing going on in my head. I say 'thing' because it was so above and beyond where I began, that I didn't know what to say, which left me speechless.

As for core values, I figured my major core value would be color. Color is so important to me, I’m not exactly sure why color was the first thing to pop in my mind. But then I looked back, and realized that I was amazed by the color theory, and still am! Color has this powerful way to win me over, just the contrast between light and dark, and everything in between in every shade of color, it all just amazes me. Someone pointed out that color might be the reason I like photography so much. Grasping the colors in a photograph could be important to me, and I came to think of it, that color is important to me in photographs. Photography also doesn't have what my issues are. There is no communication in a still life photo. The explination does not have to be communicated, because it is visible. I recently redesigned my room to have every item black and white, with yellow walls. When I thought about color and how it’s important to me, I thought of my room. If everything is black and white, opposite in colors, imagine how the yellow looks. It stands out, and the yellow stands for itself and balances between the black and the white. This whole idea was just mind blowing. It’s like things happen for a reason. I didn’t choose to design my room this way because my favorite color was yellow; I designed it this way because of the theory behind color that completely fascinates me.

One table I was sitting at started a conversation about time. Time has everything in its hands. In order to do something, you need time. Doing a crime, such as killing a person is unlawful because you’re taking someone’s time away. It takes time to grow up and discover your issues. It takes time for each day to pass, and the sun to rise the next morning. You have lived in the past, currently live in the present, and you are going to live in the future, and all three time periods are based upon time! If there was no time, there would be no past, present, or future. What are you without your past or even your present? There would be nothing to learn, nothing to look forward to, nothing to do while trying to pass the time to go into the future! This whole idea of time controlling everything was mind-blowing and I still can’t believe what we spoke about today, it’s just so overwhelming and mind-blowing that I can’t get over it all! Time really had me thinking about what I’m living for. I can’t live for the past, because that time is over, but I could live in the present and live for the future. But if you think about it, how do you measure time? In seconds, minutes, days, years? How do you measure the present time? Time goes by so quickly, that there isn’t even a moment to say you’re living in the present because you are constantly living in the future, and you wouldn’t even know it without time. You can’t even say something like, ‘see you later’ because without time, there would be no ‘earlier’ to compare it to. You wouldn’t be able to say something is quick or takes forever, because you can’t compare the two without having a sense of time. Time also runs along the line of my liking of photography. Photos are a moment frozen in time. There really is not sense of time if it's frozen, but you know it's there because you can't eliminate time. It will always be there, working with you or against you. Do you get it?

I hope that all made sense. If you didn't notice, one of my issues is explination. It's so hard to do, and not explaining makes art so much more intriguing.

I don’t even know how to conclude this blog, it was all just too amazing to not blog about.

sincerely yours,

ashley coppolino

Out With The Old, In With The New

STAC Live!

It was a tough crowd for most of it, not going to lie.

Off-track for one moment...

Well, my New Years resolution was bold optimism. It was to try new things and for me to not be afraid anymore.

I got up optionally to go on stage for the first time in my life. My rosacea probably kicked in, but no one could tell because of those lights.

I kind of liked it. It was weird. I never, never, never would put myself on stage in front of a crowd. But because of my resolution, I did.

My first improv was better than my second, I'm not sure why, but it just happened that way. Actually, that's a lie. I think I do know why it happened like that. I saw one specific person in the crowd during my second improv. Any who, it was all still new to me, so I'm sure if I did it again, I'd get the hang of it, and maybe my rosacea won't be visible during public speaking anymore.

But it was weird, because once I got up there, and the fidgeting stopped, I wasn't nervous and the words flowed out of my mouth very easily. I got compliments from an ex-STACie that I never spoke to in my life before. I got this feeling that I could be invincible. I saw my friends after school, and they were like, "I didn't know you were funny!" and "Who knew Ashley could act!" 'Compliments' like that. They were secretly in the crowd during my first improv, and they even recorded it, that's how funny they thought I was. But I got this weird vibe that they meant a different kind of funny. Like, not laughing about what I was saying, but just laughing at me. So I thought about it all. They've known me for about five years, and didn't know what I was capable of? Really? So, I took what they were saying, and it kind of pissed me off.

I'm going to backtrack a little bit here.

The whole friends situation, ugh. When I forgave them, it still bothered me everyday, and I acted as if it didn't. But I swore to myself to never trust them as I did, because for all of them to turn on me that quick means that they're not true friends.

Guess what happened yesterday. A repeat of the fight, but it's different this time. I won't forgive them. I don't care about them this time.

I know I'm foolish for saying I don't care, because I obviously do, but I don't want to care. That's the thing.

It was through text messages. First of all, text messaging has ruined relationships between people, it has to be a fact. Texts are constantly misunderstood. You can't express your feeling through a text, no matter how many haha's or aw's you include. It just won't happen.

She mentioned, "Actually, it was like you were never my friend after out last fight." I told her, "My acting skills got better since I joined STAC." She was speechless for fifteen minutes. Take note, she isn't a fan of STAC.

But the thing about this specific friend, her texts come out very sarcastic. So when the fighting became intense, I used her sarcastic one-word responses she texts me all the time, and her response was, "you're unbelievable." and my last response to her was, "You just proved my point on how difficult it is to deal with someone like you." And that's it of our friendship. For good.

Quote of the day: "Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." -Dorothy Thompson

The girl who won't change for anyone but herself,

ashleycoppolino