Early tomorrow morning, I’ll be boarding a plane to head across the Atlantic and over to good ol’ London, England.

I’m spending one month in Kingston-upon-Thames, (a suburb of London) at Kingston University studying British Culture at the university, and Art in London in the city with faculty coming with me and the other ~15 art students. That basically means I’ll be gallery and museum hopping, and sightseeing for a whole month. Yay!

After that, I’m saying goodbye to the group, and heading on to the European mainland on my own to backpack through 5 countries in two weeks. The plan is Paris, France; Arles, France; Milan, Italy; Zurich, Switzerland; and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I don’t have a whole lot planned other than that. Just lots of train rides and city experience. My hope is to come back with notebooks brimming with inspiration, that I will post much of to my blog here. So look out for my return, granted that no more volcanoes or oil rigs explode. Though an extended stay in Europe wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to me.

So be on the lookout for tons of pics and journals when I get back! Adios for now!

I have been addicted to Etsy for the past week. It keeps me up late at night whether I’m online or not. Either I’m endlessly browsing through pages of cute handmade crafts, or I’m dreaming up my own ideas and sighing about creating my own shop someday.

I only have two issues that keep me from starting now. One is that I don’t have the time or space to do any major projects. I have classes and homework to keep up on if I’m going to graduate in three years. (Yes, I’m going to be in college for five years total… stupid requirements.) The other issue is, I don’t have a steady address near a post office, and that is basically essential when running an online business where you need to send customers a product. If I lived at my parent’s house, that would be possible, since we live quite literally, two blocks from the post office. But I’m at college, where I change apartments once or twice each year, and tiny college apartments are not easy to work out of, trust me. Especially when you have to share that tiny apartment with a roommate.

Still, I love Etsy. I’ve found so many great things, made my first purchase, and met some great people as well. I love the seller’s attitudes on Etsy. They have a passion for what they do, and all things handmade, and love to support their community of artists and crafters. Hopefully I’ll be able to be a part of that someday as well. I mean, it’s making me contemplate dropping out of college. If that’s any indicator of my passion, I will have a shop someday! Haha!

So, remember post #73: Look into doing a semester abroad in England? Well, I did more than that. I’m going to England! Not quite for a semester, but for a month this summer with a faculty-led study abroad Art in London trip. I’ll be studying British Culture and touring lots of museums and galleries during that month. As well as a few weekend trips to Scotland, and around the UK.

Then, in addition to that, I’ll be staying an extra two weeks afterwards and backpacking Europe! I’ve already bought a new backpack, a High Sierra Transport.

My destinations will include Paris, southern France, Milan, Frankfurt, and I’ll be heading home in August out of Amsterdam. For those two weeks, I will be traveling by rail, staying in hostels, and living out of this 70L backpack. I’m excited, and nervous, but mostly excited. I’ve been doing lots of reading on travel sites about backpacking, and what to do in cities, and how to get around. It’ll be such a great life experience to have.

This is my first time outside of North America, so why not jump in with both feet and travel a bit out of your comfort zone? Since this is my first time, I would like to ask any readers, have you toured Europe? What was your experience? And do you have any tips?

To introduce my background in photography, I grew up taking pictures as a kid with disposable film cameras that you mailed in to develop. Then I had a cheap, plastic camera that I used for a darkroom class I took when I was about 8 ears old, then never really used it again. When I was in middle school, my mom got a digital point & shoot that I would borrow so often, I probably used it more than she did. (It fit in an Altoids tin, why not take it to school?!) After that, I was exclusively digital, and more and more addicted to photography, buying my own point & shoot, then my first DSLR, and now I’m on my second DLSR, and getting back into film photography for my black & white film class this semester.

And now onto my comparison:

I think digital photography is a faster and easier process but you don’t learn as much or get as in depth in the settings as you do with film. For example, my professor explains people who learn on crappy digital cameras today; they take the picture and if it doesn’t turn out, they keep taking it until they get what they like and just delete the bad ones. They don’t know the settings or what they do or why they work. They aren’t making the photographic decision. It’s trial and error with buttons and settings, not really knowing what they’re doing. With a fully manual film camera, you have to really know your manual settings and record them, so when you develop and see that you over- or underexposed, you can see what you did wrong and calculate how to fix that the next time.

I also really love the “magic of the darkroom.” It’s so much more hands on than digital editing, which is just pushing some buttons and moving your cursor around. Getting a good print in film requires so much more skill in developing the film, exposing the negatives correctly, having the right paper, using the chemicals long enough, burning and dodging right, etc. etc. It’s a much richer experience than “open this image file, tweak, save, close.” I’m not sure if they’re even too comparable. I’m beginning to think they are more like cousin art forms… sort of like comparing a watercolor painting to a printer print-out. Not that there aren’t some very high-end and beautiful art works that were printed on fancy printers, but painting is just a longer and older process that is much more hands on, get dirty in your raw materials as compared to the completely virtual process of digital imaging. You basically never have a tangible piece of art in digital photography until it is printed. Whereas with film, you’re working with tangible mediums with your negatives and your paper.

In the end, digital is a much faster and relevant process for today. Especially for portraiture, where you’re expected to have lots of images in a short period of time, and need a fast turn around and lots of options for paying clients. But I still see a use and a need for the film process as art and as documentation. Silver prints still last decades longer than ink-based digital prints. Personally, I would like to use film more, if darkroom and printing sources were more available after I am no longer taking classes.

Comments on your preferences in film vs. digital? What’s your experience?

Bus Stop from Ellen on Vimeo.

This is the documentation footage of my Time Studio final project. This video was made with the context of the bus stop in mind, and projected onto the surface during the evening in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. (There is no sound.) This was recorded with my lovely new Canon Rebel T1i. Enjoy!