The stairwell leading down to the basement at Gutenberg is one of the few (usually) truly quiet places to study at the school. Today, as I sat at the head of the stairs reading The Odyssey in preparation for this afternoon’s discussion, my friend Jackie passed by.

“I wish I could take a picture of you, Erin! The light and colors right here look so good right now.”

Sounded like a challenge to me. So, being the undying photography geek that I am, after I finished my reading I spent five or ten minutes figuring out how to prop up my camera at the bottom of the stairs so the shot would be framed JUST SO… then I hit the self timer and ran back up the stairs to pose before the shutter clicked.

I really like the peaceful feeling this photo ended up having. It seems to represent the way that I am slowly but surely settling into life at Gutenberg College.

Or, as Noah put it: “That picture is so emo.”

So anyway. I’ve had my burst of creative energy for the day; now it’s time to settle myself back into schoolwork.

A few weeks ago I directed a photographer friend of mine to my website so she could check out my Flickr photostream. I talked to her afterwards and asked her what she thought. “It looks great!” she said, and then added, “you sure have a lot of pictures of yourself!”

“Yes, I do,” I had to admit sheepishly. And then when she asked where I got all those pictures of me I had to admit that I in fact took most of them myself.

I really can’t count the number of times I’ve had a conversation similar to that one since I’ve started directing friends and family to my website. And every time I wonder… should I be ashamed of my self portraits?

And I’ve decided that the answer really lies in what my motivation is. Is it merely vanity and self-gratification that drives me to put these pictures of myself on the internet? No, I don’t think it is—but I can’t ignore the vanity that lies behind this whole endeavour: the blog, flickr, everything.

It would be so easy to gloss over my vanity—to give it a nice label like “healthy self esteem*” and move on, satisified with my ability to explain myself. But if I am perfectly honest with myself, I can’t ignore the jealous, prideful vanity that sits like a warty toad at the bottom of my heart. Because that’s exactly what it is: black, festering, scabby, sinful, ugly VANITY that, but for God’s grace, would probably crawl out of my chest and swallow my life whole.

And it’s this vortex of vanity that makes me yearn for recognition from other people… that motivates me to put pictures and stories on the internet that will gain me that recognition. It’s what leads to putting other people down to raise myself up, and to putting my desires above God’s because I know better. Even self-deprecation is another form of vanity (what a paradox).

And, if you are honest with yourself, you will find this vanity in yourself too.

So, in the light of this regrettable truth about human nature, is it possible to justify self-portraits? Blogs in general? I honestly don’t know. Maybe not.

But I said that I don’t think it’s merely vanity that motivates my self portraits. And I meant it—whatever vanity may be motivating my photography, there are equal parts desire for creativity also motivating it. I can tell you that when I did the photoshoot of myself that yielded my about page pictures, I really was not thinking like a typically vain teenage girl (although I admit to thinking that way for many of my pictures). I was thinking like a photographer—trying to portray my subject in the most flattering light and catch the best expressions.

Is that vanity? Maybe. It could be. But if it is, it is vain in the same way that taking a portrait of any other person would be vain. Of course, perhaps the desire for creativity is ultimately rooted in vanity anyway. But that is a much stickier, more complicated question than I intended to get into tonight.

So I guess I don’t have much of a conclusion—this is not a closed book in my mind. I am interested in others’ thoughts on this subject. Feel free to say “you should get rid of all those pictures of you” if that is really what you think. But be prepared to back up your argument.

* I think there really is such a thing as “healthy self esteem,” but it’s so thinly seperated from vanity that I would not trust myself as a sinner to draw that line.

Update: Thank you all for your thoughts. I highly recommend you read through the comments on this entry if you have not already. I just wanted to add that my friend Deanna wrote a post on this subject today, and I think she managed to communicate a lot of what I was trying to say but didn’t.

Phase one of my grand scheme to take over the world (my friends thought I was joking) via the triple threat of web design, photography, and blogging: MAKE BUSINESS CARDS.

If I had a dollar for every time someone has asked me where my website was and I either went scrambling for a scrap of paper and a pen or just tried to explain how to spell Lylium (”It’s like ‘lily’, but, uh… spelled wrong.”), then I might have had enough to pay for these business cards. Lol.

I have been thinking about doing this for quite awhile, but I finally up and had them printed because I do not want to be empty-handed if I talk to anyone about Lylium at WebVisions this week. And, hey! Nothing makes a good first impression like a card with a HUGE PICTURE OF YOUR FACE on it.

You may also notice that I made the judicious decision to leave any actually USEFUL information off of the card… so that potential web or photography clients can’t call me or email me… but they can sure come read my blog! D’oh. No, that really was on purpose. I would like to be able to hand this out to anyone, without worrying about the unseemly widespread knowledge of my phone number. There’s plenty of space on the back to add my number if I need to—so I guess I’ll still be diving for that pen after all.

Logistics, for those interested: Based on the recommendation of Flickr photographer Bradley Spitzer (whose business card, which clearly inspired mine, can be viewed here), I ordered my business cards from OvernightPrints.com. Their prices seemed pretty affordable, although honestly I did not do a lot of comparison shopping (shame on me). But I am thrilled with the cards. They are nice and substantial feeling, the glossy UV coating (a free option I chose) looks really slick, and the cards were trimmed right where they said they would be (meaning that my text precariously centered between the edge of the photo and the edge of the card really is centered there).

My only beef about the whole process is the fact that the cards arrived one business day later than originally expected—today, rather than Friday. That turned out to be okay, but it’s a good thing I didn’t order them a day or two later. So if you decide to order your own cards, I would recommend not waiting until the last minute like I did. But it worked out okay.

I got 250 of these puppies printed. I will be disappointed if half of them aren’t gone by the end of this conference.

… Just kidding.

(Psst? What’s that? You want one of my cards? Well, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do.)

(Psst? What’s that? You want me to design you a business card? That sounds good too. Write to me and we can talk about it.)

Despite the few nagging physics chapters that need to be finished up from the school year, I am in full project mode here at Lylium HQ. In addition to beginning a rather large web job at the moment, I am, as I mentioned previously, attempting to rework Lylium.org’s design before next week’s Webvisions conference. On top of it all, this week is another Savanna week, meaning that I am unable to work until the evenings most days this week.

So last night I worked quite a bit on the new Lylium.org design. And as I finished my Photoshop session and got ready to go to bed, I looked back on the evening’s work with a firm sense of satisfaction, convinced that I had progressed the design to the point where I could begin coding it this afternoon.

But when I reopened Photoshop today, and after showing the design to my parents, my toughest critics, we all decided that it was missing that ‘je ne sais quois’—that indescribable spark of whimsy that sneaks into my writing and gives Lylium.org the bizarre little flavor that it has.

So I did what any sensible person would do to help the design along. I went into the backyard and shot 124 photographs of my shoes.

What?

You know, the shoes—the inscrutable reddish-orangeish-brownish blobs gracing my current header image. I did not include the shoes in my new design, and I honestly feel like it was part of its downfall. Sure, the image I chose for the new header is nice, but it lacked that special “you can’t quite tell if it’s leather shoes or someone’s arm with big hairy moles arranged in patterns” quality that my current header displays so nicely.

So as I said before, in a moment of perverse determination I grabbed my camera, put on my red leather shoes, and tromped outside to get as many pictures as I could before the light went. And that number turned out to be one hundred and twenty-four.

One hundred and twenty-four pictures of my feet in my shoes without socks standing on the deck, without socks standing in the grass, with socks standing on the deck, with socks standing in the grass, with socks hanging backwards off of a lawn chair and shooting my feet in the air… I was a girl on a mission, and I did not care HOW ridiculous I looked in the process. I mean, honestly—you know that I care about your blog experience if I will hang backwards off of a lawn chair just to ensure a satisfying new design.

… Or I am just a neurotic perfectionist.

But EITHER WAY, you should know that you are loved. Remember that if the blogging is sparse this week while I finish this design.

In case you haven’t heard (this has all happened rather quickly, so I can’t really blame you): 1) I ordered a brand new Canon Digital Rebel XT last week. 2) It made a surprise appearance on our doorstep Friday afternoon, when it was not scheduled to be delivered until Monday. 3) I have been thinking about NOTHING ELSE all weekend.

As the inimitable Glynnis once said, soon after receiving her own Digital Rebel in the mail, “Friday afternoon I have an appointment scheduled to surgically attach it to my face, so get used to seeing me this way.” Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Truth be known, as much as I absolutely love this camera, I don’t really feel like I have broken it in yet. I spent the weekend shooting boring scenes over and over again trying to learn how exactly to set the shutter speed and aperture and mundane details like that. But I did still manage to achieve at least a few fantastic shots this weekend, of which this one is certainly the best: (Be sure to click on over to flickr to see the un-resized version; this is eight megapixels in all its glory.)

I realized when my bundle of joy arrived on Friday that I didn’t even have a camera bag yet! So it got to travel in the fresh air this afternoon as my parents and Brian and Melanie and I drove around town to visit a used books store and a few other places (some of them in search of a camera bag). So if you happened to see a redheaded girl walking around Eugene today maniacally clutching a Digital Rebel XT in her small hands, that was probably me.

The camera bag search proved to be a lot more involved than I originally anticipated! Dad and I ended up visiting pratically the whole city before we finally found that one perfect bag. By the time we reached store number five I was swimming in brand names and sizes and pocket options (and prices! :-p); but I knew the right one as soon as I tried my camera inside and found that it fit just snugly enough, with room for my few accessories and a bit to spare.

It may seem silly, but now that my camera has its own little home, it seems more “real” that it is actually MINE and staying here with ME. I guess I just felt like I was borrowing someone else’s awesome camera all weekend… turns out it was mine all along. And I love it to death.

Oh, I almost forgot. So, you’re probably wondering what the second part of that title up there is all about? You remember when my car got stolen and returned without its hood, right? And do you also remember way back when Elijah’s bag got stolen from his car in front of our house? Well, apparently our neighborhood is turning into the slum of Eugene (it NEVER used to be this way), because Saturday morning when I went outside to go to work, I discovered that my door was ajar, my glove box was open, and my trunk was popped. “GREAT,” I’m thinking, “JUST. DANDY.” I looked inside, and sure enough… the faceplate from my CD player was gone. Not the CD player itself, mind you! THAT it still in there. I just can’t use it anymore, because someone stole the part that makes it work.

I’m honestly having a hard time being too bitter about this because I’m too excited about my camera. But it has hit me when I’ve gotten in the car this weekend and not been able to listen to music… I will really miss that. *sigh * Perhaps after the shell shock of my recently purchased camera leaves my wallet, I’ll look into replacing my CD player’s faceplate. Oh, and getting a car alarm. :-p

It looks like I need to come to terms with the fact that there’s someone in the near vicinity who has no trouble breaking into my car—and who feels free to help themselves to whatever’s inside. What’s next? Engine parts? The rest of the CD player? Well. One thing’s for sure. I will never leave my camera in my car unattended.

Tonight we gathered in the Puccinelli gallery (aka the basement of Gutenberg College) for a little post-art-class soiree. Our teacher set up a wall for each of us with our artwork and a photo of ourselves (taken by me). To see a set of photos from our art class, including from the party tonight, go here.

It’s hard to believe that I won’t be having classes with these familiar faces next year. I know I will still see them… but I don’t know how often. And that thought is a little bit scary. I can hardly imagine a week going by without Natalie’s sweet presence or Noah and Jared’s side-splitting hilarity. But worrying accomplishes nothing, so I will just have to do my best to see them all as often as possible.

Tonight at our art show, our teacher Susan (who is also Noah’s mom) encouraged me to continue pursuing photography. She liked the the portraits I took of her students, and she told me to “really go for it,” to not stay “safe” in my photography, just as she taught me not to do in my drawings.

Funny she should mention that, because…

I love our little Canon Powershot G2. It was the first digital camera we ever owned, and it was my introduction to photography. Some friends of ours (who may be reading this ) gave it to Dad for his birthday a few years back, but they might as well have given it to me, because I have basically adopted it. Sure, it’s not as nice as the really nice cameras these days. But, bless its heart, it sure doesn’t know it. It has worked like a dog for me in the last six months—and has captured some of my favorite moments. It may not be the fanciest of the fancy, but all in all, I am very fond of the little beast.

Why do I bring this up?

I ordered a Canon Digital Rebel XT from Newegg.com tonight.

HASTA LA VISTA, Powershot G2!

Art class may be over, but I feel that I am only beginning my journey in this magnificent art form called photography. Stay tuned for ridiculously exciting new photos. I. CAN’T. WAIT.

Firstly: Choose an appropriate subject upon which to base your drawing.

Fig. 1: duck, suitable for drawing

Next: Begin to draw your subject. Make sure to completely obliterate the character of your subect, and if possible introduce as many dischordant colors and unattractive visual elements into your piece as possible. If you are lucky, this will be your art teacher’s response:

Fig. 2: art teacher takes matters into own hands

Do not be concerned if your teacher begins literally tearing your work into shreds. This merely means that you have accomplished your goal and are well on your way to art. But you’re not quite there yet. Your teacher will probably want to play with the composition of your newly liberated shreds of art…

Fig. 3: picking up the pieces

… At which time she may or may not decide that the piece needs more… ah… coaxing.

Fig. 4: and a bit more deconstruction

After three or four minutes of dutifully watching your teacher work on “your” piece, voila! We have art!

Fig. 5: Art.

… As you may be able to guess, yesterday was just one of those days in art class. Every once in a while a day will roll around in which I have the hardest time creating anything interesting. I mean, first of all, I chose a duck figurine to draw. That was my first mistake. My second mistake was just making a really bad drawing. And although my teacher’s methods may seem drastic, I actually think she is an awesome teacher and her “deconstruction” of my drawing was really helpful.

I may not be able to claim the art as “mine” now, but that’s not really the point of our class anyway. The point is I learned a lot from watching her tear up my piece with reckless abandon–and the fact is, it came out way better and more interesting than it was before. So there you go. A real art lesson.

I have now attended four, count ‘em, FOUR wedding showers for Melanie (my brother Brian’s fiance). This is perfectly okay with me, not only because I am very fond of Melanie, but also because I have somehow been designated wedding shower photographer; and any afternoon that I get to spend wandering around with a camera in my hands is a good one.

This afternoon proved to be particularly fruitful photography wise; not only did I get a lot of good shots of Melanie and her shower guests (I didn’t post many of those online), but I managed to snag a lot of photos of other things that I’m quite pleased with. This is probably partially because this shower, which was for her relatives and family friends, was held at her grandparents’ charming farm house in the country.

I have discovered that not only are Melanie’s grandparents some of the sweetest people I have ever met, they also have a beautiful house full of photo opportunities. Her grandmother has lovely vintage collections sprinkled through their home, and just the fact that the property is a farm provides endless character waiting to be photographed.

I have posted my favorite shots from today in a (large) photoset on Flickr. I would definitely encourage you to check it out; I’m eager to share these photos with you. You can see them here.