Assignment for October and November

Assignment – Expressing your artistic voice

The difference between photography and art is that photography produces beautiful images and art goes beyond that to make a statement. That is the premise of the assignments for October and November.

For October

Select a theme or topic that makes a personal statement about yourself, or the world in which you live. It could be something like man’s relationship with the spiritual world, the plight of the homeless, or some personal struggle.

Develop this theme in a series of not less than 6 – 4”x6” work prints and bring them to the next meeting. We will review these work prints for each member. The primary focus of the review will be on whether or not these pictures tell your story.

For November

Bring 3 or more finished images to the meeting for the final critique. These images to be critique. These images should tell your story, or at least part of it.

There is no other country in Southeast Asia with the combination of natural beauty and wonderful people as Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The country was closed to much tourism to relatively recently and the greatest proportion of tourists in-country now are, in descending order of quantity, Chinese (they share a common border and are allies and trading partners), day-tourists who come over the border at Mae Sot in Thailand and organized luxury bus tours. The repressive military government has impacted the travel infrastructure which is primitive and in poor repair. Although travelers are not at risk from the government, the terrible roads, ancient public buses and idiosyncratic airplane schedules, make solo travel at once difficult and yet more interesting. Lewis Lorton spent the entire allowable 27 days in Myanmar traveling by bus, boat, train, plane, truck-bus, oxcart and even hitched a ride on a rice truck when a bus broke down. During this 27 days, he met a good selection of Myanmar peoples - Chinese hotel-keepers in league with the government, the genteel daughter of a drug lord, a political dissident who had been exiled to a small town, Ghurka refugees from Nepal without papers, merchants and a whole host of wonderful, real people.

This photo presentation will illustrate the tourist high spots for independent travelers in Myanmar - Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Inle Lake, Mandalay, Kalaw, Mt. Popa and the unmatchable Bagan. The ancient city of Bagan was the capital of several ancient kingdoms and is now composed of hundreds of Buddhist temples scattered across a dry plain on the eastern bank of the Ayeyerwaddy River. It is a center of the Buddhist religion and a incomparably beautiful place. Related post.