All Images © Emily Shur
Nature Calls was featured in this month’s LA Times Magazine. Very exciting indeed. Here is a link to the story online.
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 White Buildings, Takao, 2009 Image © Emily Shur Today marks my sixth picture on Flak Photo. This one is shown as part of Flak’s Review Santa Fe 2010 feature. Interesting side note about this picture: One of the events at Review Santa Fe is a public portfolio viewing where all of the photographers stand at tables with their work in front of them and the public is invited to walk around and check out everyone’s work. This has probably been my least favorite part of both reviews (2009 & 2010), but it’s mandatory. Anyway, this year a woman was looking through my work, and she stopped on the above image and looked totally stunned. She was Japanese, and turns out she and her husband lived in those white buildings before moving to the US. Crazy, huh? This not a well known or busy area. It’s a super quiet side street in Takao which is a small mountain town about an hour away from Tokyo. Small world.  The paws just kill me. Photo © Emily Shur Don’t be like The Baroness and sleep your way through life. The week after next brings many exciting contest deadlines. The ones I’ll be entering are The Aperture Portfolio Prize (deadline 7/14), the WIP-LTI Lightside Individual Project Grant (deadline 7/15), the Blurb Photography Book Now Contest (deadline also 7/15), and the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize (deadline 7/18). In addition, there’s an interesting post on Conscientious regarding my least favorite thing to do – writing your all-important (yet maybe not so important) statement.  My shitty basketball hoop came in handy.  Neighbor's crappy lemon tree came in handy.  And the wall that usually has graffiti on it but didn't on this day came in handy, too. All Images © Emily Shur A few pictures from my shoot with Common back in April. The first shot is in the current issue of Complex Magazine. I shot this in my backyard and against a wall of a shut down store across the street from me. With the right subject, you don’t need much more. Shizenkan – Photographs by Emily Shur from Emily Shur on Vimeo. Actually, the husband made it. I just sat there nodding my head yes and shaking my head no. Since I unfortunately won’t be attending LOOKBetween this weekend, I thought I’d post the presentation I made for it on the blog. The song is Sunblocks from the new Ratatat record LP4. Please enjoy.
Image © Emily Shur
I’m back from Review Santa Fe, and instead of a lengthy introspective post, I thought I’d just give some shout outs to people who made the weekend fun and interesting and whose work I liked. So here’s to you in first name alphabetical order:
Also, it seemed this year there was more socializing between the reviewers and reviewees. I’m glad for that because those were some of the best times I had. Yes, I’m talking to you Jamie, Josh, Amani, and David. I had a good, positive experience and will be keeping in touch with all of my reviewers. Who knows what will happen…the feeling I left with was that I need to continue shooting and making new pictures. I think if I build it, they will come…eventually. Now back to work.
 Mine. I got one of the best gifts ever this weekend and for no real reason other than the fact that my husband rules. I have been wanting this book for so long. I never thought I would own it. I was doubtful I’d even get to flip through one at any point. Thanks to the thoughtful husband and the new bookstore in Atwater Village, I am now the proud owner of Takashi Homma’s Tokyo Suburbia. It makes me so happy to look up at my shelf o’ books and see that fat spine. The book is so cool…heavy and slightly used, it makes me excited to return to Japan and continue my project. It has also alerted me once again to the fact that many, many very talented photographers have used the landscape and culture of Japan as their subject matter, have done it well, and I probably need to add something pretty strong to that colossal body of work…not just add some more. As I finish up my preparations for Review Santa Fe and make sure all my ducks are in a row, I get that this is something that will probably come up in my reviews. Am I showing something new or am I just photographing the same interesting things that many before me have found interesting? And does it matter? I guess what matters to me and what matters to gallerists, book publishers, and the like might be two different things. I go into this year’s review having the benefit of participating previously, and I am not as nervous as I was last year. I know how I feel about this work. Whether or not my explanations of the project are what my reviewers are hoping to hear, I can at least go there knowing that other photographers before me have made their own personal masterpieces out of work they felt strongly about.
Image © Emily Shur I just got back from three days in South Beach shooting in some of the craziest weather conditions ever (in my shooting experience…probably not in the overall history of weather). I expected hot. Really hot. I did not expect full on monsoon-esque rainstorms infiltrating my outdoor location multiple times throughout the day. Once it started pouring, after making sure the equipment was protected, there was nowhere for me to stand except in the pouring rain so I proceeded to get soaked. Then, the sun came out. We moved everything back into position and resumed the shoot. Then, it poured again. That sequence of events happened about four more times. Eventually, we decided that the conditions were indeed ridiculous, and we packed it in and moved to the second location of the day. On the positive side, the pictures were shot for promo and publicity for Season 2 of a certain reality show that revolves around a certain group of Italian-Americans and their adventures of fist pumping and fighting at the beach. Yep…that’s right…pretty much my dream shoot. I can’t post any images yet, but I definitely will when I can.
 Ueno Park, Japan, 2006 Image © Emily Shur So, two cool things are happening today. Number one is another conversation with yours truly that just went up on the Nymphoto blog. I like this conversation/interview a lot. It’s honest and an accurate take on my feelings on photography, both commercial and personal. Thanks to the ladies at Nymphoto for always being so supportive of my work. Number two (these are not in order of importance) cool thing is that today is my four year anniversary. Today marks 1,460 days of marriage to my best friend. I will be the first to say that I did not marry a simple or uncomplicated person, and nor did he. I will also say that being married to him has made me feel so happy, so grateful, so supported, and so loved. For now, I will end on that note because as much as I want to shout it from the rooftops, the blog is not always the most appropriate forum for super personal and sincere stuff. I chose the above picture to illustrate this post because a.) it’s featured in the Nymphoto conversation, but more importantly b.) it was taken on our honeymoon. I love you, husband.
Image © Emily Shur
The Baroness and I are busy printing for Review Santa Fe. I can’t believe it’s coming up in just over two weeks. I’ve been doing the color correction, and she’s been keeping a watchful eye on my paper. Stuff ain’t cheap.
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