This post is mostly to serve as a reminder that my blog has moved, and it will likely be the last post here. But, the second part of my Colorado trip is now up on my new blog! Head over to abigailithompson.com/blog to check it out. And, while there, hit the subscribe button on the left side to continue to stay up to date with my work. Drop me a comment or email to let me know your thoughts on the new site or images as well!
Happy Friday everyone!
I have meant to get a new post up for ages, but graduate school has kept me quite busy. This weekend Scott and I went to visit his parents, which generally means some pleasantly lazy days. Today is no exception, and I am taking advantage of the gloomy, cold day by sitting in a big comfy chair while a fire roars in the fireplace next to me; perfect blogging conditions if you ask me.
Before I get into the images, I wanted to announce some rather exciting news (which is somewhat old news at this point unfortunately). A few months back I finally got a website up and running. I had put it off and put it off because I am too indecisive and couldn’t decide on formatting/organization, but finally bit the bullet and put one together. I am still adding images to build galleries and things may shift around some more, but it is up for your viewing pleasure (I hope). There is perhaps a bit of bad news to go along with this update though. In order to keep things more organized and unified I am going to be switching my blog over to be connected to my website, so soon I will no long be posting here. You can head over there (abigailithompson.com) to follow along though, and I hope you all do!
With that out of the way, let’s get on to the images. Back in the middle of October (almost a month ago at this point, yikes) Scott and I went out to Colorado for a long weekend of climbing, hiking, camping, and a wedding thrown in as well. It was an incredible weekend, and as I slowly got around to editing the images I found myself feeling homesick for a place I have never lived.
This will be a two-part post, so more images will be up soon! Also, don’t forget to head over to the new website and follow along the blog there. There is even a post of moments of light up there that I didn’t post here, so head over to check it out. Happy weekend everyone!
Time for the final installment of my New York City images! I had one pack left of Impossible Project film that I brought along with me, and here are the results:
Happy Wednesday everyone!
As promised, here are (almost) all of the images I took with my phone while in New York City.
This church was directly across the street from the bed and breakfast that we stayed at in Chelsea. I was in awe every time I walked outside.
Maria Lassnig at MoMa PS1.
MoMa PS1.
The International Print Center.
From the High Line.
Seen on the High Line.
The Frick Collection. The Light in the Frick was absolutely incredible, hence the long series just from there. 
Charline von Heyl at The Whitney Biennial.
More from The Whitney Biennial (I cannot recall the artist though).
The largest camera obscura I have ever experienced. This was by far one of my favorite things from the entire trip. I could have sat in that room for hours, and was wishing I had my tripod with so I could do a long exposure and show it off properly. 
The Whitney permanent collection.
Mira Schendel at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery. It is tough to see what exactly is going on in this image, but these drawings were between layers of plexiglass and then suspended from the ceiling. They were all on different planes, so depending on the angle you were looking the entire composition looked different. The red square was actually a ways behind and off to the right of the others as well. It was another one of my favorites from the trip. 
Another piece by Mira Schendel. This room was filled with fishing line suspended from the ceiling. It was quite surreal. 
The Guggenheim of course. 
And from our flight home. 
Time for more images from NYC! Day Three was spent at The Guggenheim, and then at The Whitney Museum for the Whitney Biennial. The amount of art that we saw that day still makes my head hurt a little when I think about it. It was a bit overwhelming even. I didn’t take out my camera at all in the museums, but did take lots of photographs on my phone and plan to do a post of entirely mobile images, so check back for that soon.
That night a small group of us went on an adventure to Times Square. While looking at these photographs I realized that I like cities for the same reason that I love towering forests of trees; I adore being dwarfed by the things that surround me. The massive buildings of big cities make me feel so small, and so do the trees in old, dense forests. Granted, each place has a different impact on me, and I absolutely need a balance of the two, but for some odd reason I truly enjoy feeling small because of the setting I’m in.
I didn’t take any images on my camera really on day four, so I will skip ahead to our last day in New York. Our last day was a free day for us, and since my head was still spinning from all the art, fellow photography grad Myra and I decided to take the day off from art and museum. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, and adventured in Central Park a little bit more, just enjoying the nice weather and our last bit of time in the city.
I will be posting two more sets from our trip, one as I mentioned will be all mobile images, and the other will be Polaroids I shot while there. I’m hoping to get those up as soon as possible because I have lots more (and more recent) to share!
Last month a group of us art graduate students at KSU traveled to New York City with the main aim of seeing the Whitney Biennial (and of course lots of other museums and galleries). It was my first time in New York, and I absolutely fell in love. Since we had a crazy busy schedule and had to stay together as a group for most of it I didn’t have much time to take photographs (especially with cameras other than my phone), but I did manage to capture a decent amount, too much for one post at least.
Day one was spent walking around to some galleries and to visit a KSU alum who lives/works in NYC. Since we didn’t arrive until late afternoon it was a rather brief day exploring the city.
Day two was a much busier day, filled with a lot more walking. We walked along the High Line greenway, through central park, and saw lots of art of course.
More to come, so check back soon!
Day 6 of our trip was, unfortunately, our last day full day in Arizona. We decided to try to pack in as much climbing and adventuring as possible, which resulted in a huge overload of photographs (meaning this will be a long post). We started the day climbing in the Prison Camp area again, since there were still a few routes there that we wanted to do in that area. After climbing until we were exhausted we drove higher up the mountain to catch the sunset. Unfortunately I foolishly deleted images on my SD card before I transferred them to my computer, so almost all of the sunset images are gone. If anyone has any miracles to recover files from a formatted SD card I would love to hear them!
Day 5 of our spring break was a day off of climbing for all of us. It was also a day off from photography for me, with the exception of a few phone images, which I will share here. We drove into downtown Tucson and spent the day there. After eating lunch at a delicious local brewery, we headed to Museum of Contemporary Art of Tucson. It was a difficult place to find, and we wandered around it for a little before finally finding the entrance.
We saw this sign while trying to find the entrance (it wasn’t next to this).
The museum is a pretty unique place. It is located in the old fire station headquarters, and the old garage area is now an exhibition space. Unfortunately the work in the garage was being taken down, so we were only able to see the one exhibition that was inside.
After finishing at the MOCA I really wanted to visit a more traditional museum, so we headed to the Tucson Museum of Art. When we arrived, we were told that it would be free in 15 minutes, so to kill time we visited the cafe and each got an Italian Soda (they were delicious). Photography isn’t allowed in the gallery spaces (of course) so this was the last shot I got of the day, but it was a wonderful, inspirational day for me.
Day 4 started as a nice, lazy day. We had camped the night before, and after waking up just lounged around the campsite for a while; we drank coffee, ate what little food we had left for breakfast, and enjoyed the sun. Eventually we got rolling, and drove up a bit further into the mountains to climb at a new spot. Scott and Ben were pretty exhausted from the day before, but decided to climb anyways. Unfortunately, the route ended up being not as easy as expected, and so they had to bail and leave it unfinished. As I result, I didn’t get many pictures that day, so this will be a short post.
This post will need a bit of background, so I am going to quickly go back to January of this year. At the beginning of January (January 2nd to be exact) I had surgery on my elbow to fix nerve damage there. I had injured it while climbing last spring, and essentially had a pinched nerve for about 8 months. The surgery moved the nerve from the outside of my elbow, where it typically sits, to the inside of my elbow where it is more protected and freed from being pinched.
The day of surgery, shortly after I arrived home.
Since surgery I have obviously been in recovery mode. After lots of physical therapy I felt like I was finally getting back to normal (somewhat at least). I had just started climbing again about a week before our trip, and even though I knew I would have to be extra careful while in Arizona I was still fully expecting to climb almost every day. However, Tuesday morning of our trip (day 3), I woke up in extreme pain. I thought I was taking it easy climbing wise, with only 2 easy routes both days, and yet I could hardly make a fist my arm hurt so bad. The guys were wanting to do a multi-pitch (essentially climbing a route longer than one rope length) on Tuesday, and with the state of my arm I knew I had to take the day off. I went to the base of the climb with them, and hung out in a hammock and read while they were off climbing above me. I shot around a little bit, with my Polaroid and digital camera, but because of the position of the route I wasn’t able to get many shots (or any good ones really) of them climbing.
And the Polaroids. All of these were shot on my SX-70 with Impossible Project film.
Abigail Thompson Photography 