I started classes!!!! So (sorry mum and dad) but I dropped a class and added a different one! (AND THANK GOD CAUSE I LOVE IT) I originally came to take Ancient Eats and Ancient Rome and its Monuments, but after seeing how intense and the ridiculous amount of work my professor had planned, I decided to drop the monuments one. So I picked up Pinhole Photography, and my class and I go around Rome, learning how to appreciate it and taking these awesome pictures with our home-made cameras, because after all, I came to Rome to see it, and not to sit in my room all day writing papers.
But anyway, my first class is called Ancient Eats. And I thought it was going to be learning about all these ancient cultures and trying to make some of the food they ate-- well there's just a little bit about that, but the majority of it is reading and talking about all these different ancient cultures, what they ate, why they ate it, how they got it, sustainability, and so much more. It is so interesting! We always end up going back to the idea of constructs, that any amount of time or measure is made up so we can define it. They allow humans to navigate through the years, through the world, from space, even from our home to work; everything is a construct. And what he means by ancient is before the introduction of christianity and islam- for some reason, that deciphers it between just really old and being truly ancient. My teacher is freaking awesome. He wants us to not use his last name and only call him Karl. He is full of information, like, more information I could ever process, and rambles off these facts like he's an encyclopedia. I really think I'm going to learn a lot from this class, mainly because as the class goes on, he explains how what we are talking about relates to our major back home, and how a simple thing as food isn't really simple at all, and basically makes our world and our ancestors world run.
So today, in my ancient eats class, we went to Mount Testaccio, which I think I mentioned in an earlier post. It's this "mountain" or HUGE land mass, created only from broken pottery. Karl told us that it was basically a dump back then because they had so much pottery and didn't know what to do with it. The pottery mainly from shipping and transportation of slaves and food products- especially oil and wine. Even in the ancient times, olive oil was in such a high quantity demand, that the amount Italy could produce didn't reach the demand, so they had to import it from places like Spain, to meet its demand. So the oil and wine came in these huge blocks of pottery for shipping, because it was sturdy and was easy to make, and thus Mount Testaccio was created.
My other class is Pinhole Photography. And it's awesome as well! So far, we have made our own pinhole camera, I made mine out of a Pringles can, have used those cameras to develop negatives of the city sites, and also we have done photograms. For those of you that do not know, pinhole photography is a way of taking a picture from basically a dark, small space, a teensy little hole, and light sensitive photo paper. When the paper is in the dark, it stays blank, but when light is added to the dark, the images it sees are reflected onto the paper, and once the photo paper is developed, then you can see whatever you tired taking a picture of. It's a lengthily process, but it's so neat from how it works. We also did negatives of photograms. That's when you take a piece of photo-sensetitive paper in a dark room, arranging small objects- in my case, jewelry, around on the paper, and shin regular light onto the sheet for about 20-25 seconds. Then once the light is stopped, you develop the paper in the dipping system (first the developer, then the stop bath, then the fixer, and finally a constant water flow onto the paper to get off any remaining chemicals), and whatever position you placed the objects in, will be a negative on the photo paper. There is a way of turning the negatives into positives, so all the objects that were once completely black on a white background, will turn white on a dark background, but we are doing that on monday. That's all we have done so far, but it's so much fun and I'm learning about things that I never have even dreamed of learning about.
My teacher in that class is Bill, and he only wants us to call him by his first name, as well. He is amazing and so relaxed during the class, it blows my mind with how much he knows about photography and cameras, and I'm so excited to learn how to become a better photographer.
I don't have any pictures of the photos I've taken so far, because they needed to dry before I got to take them, but I do have a few pictures from my pinhole camera!
Creating the Pinhole
Well, that's all for now... time for some homework and sleep!
Molte Benedizioni!
You MUST teach me about this photography when you come home, okay???
ReplyDeleteI want to learn! NOW!
Post your pictures!
<3