Slide Show

Hey everybody, just got done another week of school and it was a busy one! I ended up going to the pow wow last Saturday and it was pretty cool. It is great to see how the native americans still hold onto their traditions and way of life. The music and dancing was amazing, they had a lot of energy and life. It was kinda hard to photograph though, some indians see it as disrespectful so you always have to ask before snapping away. Even still I got pretty nervous when I was photographing a war dance and a big, weathered, old indian stood right next to me with his very real and very sharp war spear with it pointed just a little bit towards me. Just enough to kinda scare me! For the most part though all of the indians are very kind and are happy to pose for a picture. It was funny though to see how different it was than the rodeo. At the entrance of the reservation, they asked you to leave behind all alcohol, drugs, and fire arms. At the rodeo this was pretty much the name of the game! (well not so much the drugs part.) But still the cowboys and indians in Montana also have a lot in common. They both hold tradition sacred and have their way of celebrating them. (rodeo+pow wow) Both have funny cloths and love America. And I kept finding more and more similarities between the two even though they are traditionally enemies. That is why I decided to make this the theme of my slideshow. (a big project - pick a theme, take pictures based off this theme, pic the best 20-30 images, put them to in a slideshow to music that also fits the theme, and finally have the slideshow shown and critiqued in front of your classmates and teachers. Just a BIT nerve-racking!) So I pretty much worked on this the whole week along with classes. I posted my cowboy + indian pictures on facebook and I also loaded up the slide show so you can check it out here or on the link to the right. Oh, we also had studio class where we learned how to shoot groups and we had to pick a theme to dress up as and photograph. Ours was high fashion. Not my top choice but I ended up getting a killer costume for under 15 bucks! I got some great pics but I'll save that for next time...