Sheikha Manal's Young Artist Award

Next Wednesday will be the deadline for the Young Artist Award http://www.youngartistaward.ae/main/. There are three categories I would like to submit to: Photography, Fine Arts and Multimedia.

I've left my execution 'till last minute; I'm not sure if this was entirely intentional, but there was a lot of trial and error that I had to go through.

A narrative about insecurity

I had to scrap my short film project that I had worked on with my sister. It was planned out and everything, but it just couldn't come together. We reshot but that also fell through, so now I'm using all the leftover bits to see if I can construct anything with it and submit to the Multimedia category.

Just a sketch of what a small portion would look like

For the Fine Arts category, I have revived an old project of mine and I'm now attempting to hang it from the ceiling so you can lay down and look at fish floating over you. I really like looking at art when I'm laying down, so I guess this is more of a personal preference than anything really.

And yea. I have the weekend to sort through all three categories as well as study for two midterms and do work for a final submission and finish a vector drawing.

Wish me luck,

-Deenaaa

Grades and Self-handicapping

I'm gonna admit that I'm pretty much going through this right now:

"Self-handicapping - the process by which people avoid effort in the

hopes of keeping potential failure from hurting self-esteem." -Wikipedia

I'm not doing as well as I'd hoped with my schoolwork; I put in a lot more time and effort into my work and receive disappointed feedback and lower grades. They (the professors and graduates) always tell us that grades aren't important; the important thing is that you learned something from the whole ordeal. As much as I agree with that statement when I'm on holiday, I can't help but focus and obsess about the grades when I'm in school.

If the grades don't actually matter, then why do we receive grades at all?

Well, it's a great way to tell you where you are and how much more you need to improve. It's a guideline that can show you where you need focus and point out the things you're really good at. The grades are there to retain order and standards.

Apparently, the key is the ability to separate the professor's likes and the grade you actually receive. A professor can rave about your work and how much they love it and how it resonates with their souls and so on, but it can fail to meet part of the criteria of the project and you can get a lower grade than you expected.

So that's pretty confusing to grasp. But basically, according to one of my professors and others have agreed with him: "grades are not meant to be subjective, and are based on how original and perfect your execution is."

Which leads me back to why I'm beginning to self-handicap; I've been working really hard, racking my brains to be 'original', sometimes not even thinking and jumping to the execution, using all kinds of methods to take as many risks and experiment as much as possible, all the while trying to control the outcomes, and in the end, I'm told that I'm being conventional and not putting as much effort in as my fellow classmates.
Now I'm beginning to self-handicap. I feel like, what's the point? I'm just going to get bad feedback anyways, because I'm not receiving any constructive criticism. I'm just going to get bad grades anyways, so why bother?
And with that attitude, I probably will continue to get bad grades.
And you know what? The professor probably won't even care that I don't care, 'cause in the end, they're not the one with the bad grades, 'cause it's really nothing to them to hand them out.
Beyond school, they don't really matter. Outside of school, your CV is looked at, your portfolio is looked at, how well you present yourself is looked at. Focus on doing well in school, but don't let grades get you so down that you wanna drop out or feel like crap, just do well enough to get by if that's the best you can do - just get through it.

This kind of feedback doesn't push me to work harder.

This kind of feedback doesn't make me feel good about my work or myself.

It makes me feel like crap that I: spent money to buy equipment for the project, asked people to spare some of their time to help me, spent hours composing my work, spent even more time selecting and cropping and photoshopping and editing the best ones and then reprinting them several times to get the right amount of levels and detail on good quality paper.

Maybe you googled "dropping out of school" or "bad grades" or something else negative like that, and that's how you found this page. Maybe you didn't, but I have, and reading some stuff has either gotten me even more down, or actually helped me a lot.

You have to think about grades in this way:

Beyond school, they don't really matter. Outside of school, your CV is looked at, your portfolio is looked at, how well you present yourself is looked at. Focus on doing well in school, but don't let grades get you so down that you wanna drop out or feel like crap, just do well enough to get by if that's the best you can do - just get through it.

The Cameraman - Buster Keaton

Remember your other priorities in life: family, friends, pets, plants, I don't know, having fun, getting out, networking, doing things that make you happy.

Grades are only a temporary feeling, a temporary 
thing. Don't let them discourage you.

I feel like I'm repeating all of this to myself over and over again, trying to get myself to believe it. And I think I do now, for the time-being at least, which is probably why I wrote this in the first place to maybe help someone else with their day.

Stay strong and keep working hard,

-Deena

The Rule of Thirds

I started this blog with no real understanding of balance. I had read many books and things online that tried to describe balance, but I could never seem to really comprehend the concept. I tried balancing through math, creating my own measurements and proportions that fit within a grid, and I did improve, but it was a very time consuming method. Unless you had a ruler and calculator in hand, it would be quite difficult to find the underlying grid and measurements.

We had a photography project for our Design studio class, and we basically had to describe 'contrast', 'direction' and 'depth' in each photo. My photos seemed underwhelming for the most part, and two of my professors made the comment that it was "interesting that I can't seemto balance". I felt like it was Foundations all over again, and maybe summer made me lose my handle on what I understood of composition. I moped around for a day, believing I really couldn't do this, I should probably just drop out, a lot of melodramatic thoughts etc, and then I forced myself toactually talk to a professor about it.

He looked through my work and said that out of my 18 photos, there was one photo that told him that I had an 'extraordinary' eye but just didn't know it. I felt like that comment was almost useless because I didn't understand what was so special about the picture, but then I realized, I should probably ask him what he finds so extraordinary about it. He told me it was basically three things that made the photo: tonal range, contrast in angles, and the rule of thirds.

And there was one thing that he had mentioned, but I thought it was a conventional thing that should never be used, because I read about it EVERYWHERE: the rule of thirds.

See the thing is, I'd read all these different materials, and I'd run away from the most common pieces of advice in order to have different work and new ideas. But the rule of thirds is not something you want to run away from, and if you look at most good work, you can actually find an underlying system of the rule of thirds.

I decided to look at my most popular work that people told me they thought was very balanced, and I wanted to see if I could overlay a rule of thirds grid on top of it and see if the rule actually applied to it.

The lower right corner is divided even further with its own rule of thirds

The top horizontal row of the photo is made into its own shade of blue

The middle of the horizontal row is cut in half with a cloud

The left vertical column is occupied by the pagoda

The right vertical column is occupied by the model's body,

with the column divided in half

The middle horizontal row is divided in half by the horizon

The lower horizontal is made by the wave

The twig is making the first vertical column

The dragonfly's body is making the middle horizontal row

The discovery of the rule of thirds in my own work really blew me away. I hadn't even realized I had applied it to a few of my photos. I decided to look through Naima's photos because everyone has always said she's got a great eye and amazing sense of composition. And guess what? She really does. Almost ALL her photographs contains the rule of thirds and complex systems where the rule of thirds gets divided up like crazy with even more rule of thirds within each third. What's crazy is that she's never even tried to apply the rule, and she was unaware that she had even been doing it.

So if you're having trouble with composition, I suggest you try applying a grid with the rule of thirds in it. It'll really help with basic composition and help improve the balance in your work.

Although it's been a slow process, I'm quite content I'm making a bit of progress,

-Deena

Abu Dhabi Film Festival, TEDxDubai and Kcymaerxthaere

So this month of October has been wonderfully busy, filled with events that I made sure I made time for. It's very hard as a full-time student to get away from work and classes, but it's really important that you do. I tried to socialize more, network a little, and just get more into the scene here.

I went to Abu Dhabi Film Festival with Naima. This was actually the first time that we've EVER been out together for something that wasn't class related. Pretty lame considering we've been close friends for maybe two years now, but with classes and all, it was hard to co-ordinate anything. Plus, we don't drive and we're usually broke, so there you go.

We crawled into the back of a van that had no seats. Quite dodgey.

At the restaurant after all the film-watching

We watched a lot of student films in the festival. We're very proud of them because a large number of them got into the festival, and they won awards so that's great. We saw 'The Source' in the evening. It's such a great drama/comedy film about these women in a village in Morocco, directed by a Romanian. Naima should be able to elaborate for us, giving a proper film review since she's part Moroccan.

Then the next weekend, on the 22nd of October was TEDxDubai. I had applied way too late, about 20 minutes before the deadline for registration, and I didn't get in. And then I applied for the free photography position, but I didn't get it either. Naima told me that Jumeirah Hotel was hosting this competition about making up a fake future hotel in 140 characters on Twitter, so I made something up and tweeted it. I sincerely lost all hope that I would get intoTEDxDubai this year. I mean, I wrote about how passionate I was, I sent my photos in, and if my passion and photography couldn't get me in, then how could my writing? And my writing is one of my biggest insecurities.

Well, somehow, I was selected as one of the winners and I got to go to TEDxDubai.

And because I was one of the sponsors, I got to sit in the front row with the speakers

Unfortunately, Naima couldn't make it, so I ended up going alone. I was excited to be independent and all, but I think the experience would've been boosted if she could have come too.

Christian Boer, typeface designer of 'Dyslexie'

I got to meet Christian Boer, who's a Dutch typeface designer that designed Dyslexie, which is a typeface that dyslexics can read. It's really interesting stuff, and if you know about typeface design, it's even more interesting because he manipulated his typeface and broke the rules of type design to make this typeface that actually works for dyslexics . It's really impressive stuff.

Check it out, and if you have any dyslexic friends, then spread the word:

http://www.studiostudio.nl/

And I got to meet Chris Colwell,

(http://www.google.ae/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=chris+colwell).

Please google him, it'll help him get more hits and increase his chances of being found and inspiring more people. He's such an admirable soul, so positive and really truly inspiring.

I had to get his signature to put on my wall

It was a very busy week trying to juggle organizing my time and submissions and allow myself to do things in the outside world. I collected a lot of business cards at TEDx, and I think it's so important to put yourself out there and be assertive enough to get noticed. I found that leaving my group of friends at TEDx was actually beneficial, because I got to walk around and talk to strangers and meet new people. I'm thinking of making my own business card so that I can hand it out randomly and get a bit of attention.

And then on Tuesday night, I got to go out with Naima again. This time we were headed for the XVA Art Hotel in Bastakiya, Dubai. We were on our way to meet Eames Demetrios and unveil a plaque he had installed there.

Eames Demetrios giving a talk about Kcymaerxthaere

Plaque unveiled in linear Dubai!

Bilingual plaque (click on it for closer view)

"Kcymaerxthaere is a parallel universe that intersects with much of our linear Earth. The name comes from the cognate words kcymaara (meaning "the true physicality of the planet") and xthaere (which is a shape with almost an infinity of edges or dimensions--infinity minus 29 to be precise). We explore and tell stories of these other realms through many media, but most famously by installing bronze plaques and historic sites that honor events from the parallel world in our linear world. "

http://www.kcymaerxthaere.com/ (Taken from the website, which will be updated soon).

The stories are really quite lovely and dynamic, and I encourage you to read them and get involved. It meant a lot to me that Naima and I could make time for this and go to the special event because it was really worth it. Plus, we got his business card, so that was another highlight of the evening.

Being awesome in purple

And yea, that's been October for me. It was also two of my bestfriends' birthdays; Lex and Megan. So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to them and I wish them the best this year!

I'm tired 'cause this post took forever to make, but I had to immortalize this month.

Lessons learned: make time for yourself, go out with your closest friends, meet new people, network a little, and balance it all. It takes a while to get a handle on, I'm still working on it, but I know it's worth it. I actually asked if Eames Demetrios if he ever sleeps, because he gets so much done, and he said that it's really all about balance. Which made me laugh inside, considering I started this blog and I design the way I do because I can't balance in the design world and my professors tell me I have a serious issue with this whole 'balance' thing. I'll try my best to balance my schedule though.

And that's it,

-Deena

So Far

Alright, I apologize for not having posted for a while.

Naima and I are finally in Second year, getting closer and closer to what it feels like to really study design.

We're both incredibly busy, and spend most of our free time either eating or crying.

I decided to come by to drop off some photosketches I made for our Photography Basics class.

I really wanted to work with lighting for our first project, but I soon deviated from that into almost underwater photos. My models are basically submerged while I stay above water and desperately hand-signal to them in order to try and direct their movements. It's been quite the challenge.

My first issue was with shutterspeed, and I brought in two huge lights to eliminate my speed issues. So now I can shoot relatively fast and get really clear images without all the water dust particles showing. I'm aiming for a crystalline look while trying to simultaneously distort my model's face. It's hard to find a meeting ground. On average, we take a minimum of 500 photos just to have 3 photos come out nearly close to what I'm looking for.

It's been five weeks in the process and I feel closer to the outcome.

Just a bit more to go...

-Deena

I did not die! But there's tons that's happened/happening.




n.aw

Back in UAE

So we left Malaysia last night and arrived safely in Dubai. It was a pretty awesome summer overall, spent a lot of time with the family and one of my bestfriends, Megan, came to visit for three weeks. We fasted during Ramadhan, and then she left to Thailand, and I celebrated Eid with my family. Had a couple of shoots with my sister.

Did quite a bit of writing, have loads of essay drafts about art and other related topics saved in my notebook and laptop. I'll probably brush them up and post them to the blog one day. I realized that one of the most important things I should work on this summer was actually my writing and increasing my vocab, so I worked on that. Finished reading a book with no pictures, 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi, which is a sci-fi book set in 23rd century Thailand. It was a great read, highly recommended if you're into that kinda stuff. The author's insights into South East Asia are also really accurate and eye-opening, I appreciated the honesty although some parts were completely made up and the author admits that, so please don't take too much offense if you do read it.
I'm now reading 'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett, which is awesomely fantastic so far. I'm on a complete roll with that one, can't stop thinking about the characters either, as if they're people I know personally in real life.

Hope everyone had a good summer.
-Deena