Hwhup The Deans List? The Jason Dean here, bringing another end to the Weekend like it was the colorful part of Autumn. That’s right, folks: here in Marquette, the leaves have abandoned their posts, fled for their lives, and now find themselves face-to-foot with whatever comes through that door.

And what’s coming through that door is snow, baby.

Anyways. Let’s get into it.

PSA

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen a couple of folks on Instagram share production photos that I took without giving me photo credit. I’m not going to put anyone on blast, but come on kids. I photograph theatre for free or free-adjacent; the least you can do is promote the guy that took the photo you’re using to promote yourself.

Art shows

Next weekend is my Holiday Art Show debut. It’s getting real, folks! On Thursday I spent a couple hours at the studio going over the printing process. Kurt can attest that I…learned a lot about cropping as relates to print sizes 🤣, but the prints are looking A-MAZING. Can’t wait for next weekend 😎

I’m also quite pleased to announce that I will be at the TV6 Christmas Craft Show in December! More deets to come, but this is a pretty big craft show in the Marquette community and I’m really excited to be a part of it. I’ll be at Booth 255; if you’re in Marquette the weekend of December 6, stop by and say ‘Hwhup’.

100 Day Project

I want to focus most of this newsletter retrospectiving the 100 Day Project I did through the Bonifas. I’ve written a little about it here before, but since this project played such an important role in my artistic development this year, it deserves more words.

I got involved with the project after seeing a Facebook post for it back in January. I’d never really done anything like this, so it seemed like a cool way to take some photos and engage with a new community of artists.

ZERO idea how much growth would happen over those 100 days!

I decided to create at least one photo per day of a glass apple that I bought at a yard sale a few years back for 25 cents. The apple is essentially a quirky lensball. I love that it’s immediately identifiable as an apple (even without the stem and leaf, RIP) and there are spiraling rows of tiny glass bubbles inside of it which do some incredibly nifty things with light when it passes through them.

I also decided that I would limit myself to using my 105mm macro lens with my Nikon D5600. I did this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the 105 is the only macro lens that I currently own and I wanted to be able to consistently capture up-close shots of the apple. I also wanted to show that you don’t need to have the latest, greatest gear to create! Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have a newer, more aweseomer camera than I do. You just don’t need it to be awesome.

Creatively, man, I leveled up. Shooting a small, stationary object over the course of three months, with limited ability to travel (and working during most of the daylight hours) forced me to think of different ways to capture the apple in unique ways while essentially shooting a vast majority of the photos at my own home. And think of different ways I did!

I also grew technically as a photographer. I started to better understand the importance of light and how to use it. I experimented with all sorts of compositions and played around with proximity, scale, and reflection. Perhaps most importantly for my artistic voice, I experimented with focus. The 100 Day Project really pushed me to find new ways to walk the line between sharp and blurry- and sometimes, how to just completely dance all over it.

If you find yourself in Escanaba anytime between November 7 and December 31, you should check out my final version of the project (as well as a lot of other really incredible works of art) on display! Six of my favorite photos from the project are below and you can view the whole collection here.

I took this photo while exploring St. Peter’s Cathredral in Marquette (HUGE thanks to Melissa for the opportunity!). Stained glass is insane. Stained glass through apple glass? That’s an entirely different kind of insane, altogether. This is easily my favorite photo from the 100 Days because I just love all those wonderful colors.

I really like this photo, taken at sunrise, because it’s a perfect encapsulation of the kind of liminal experimentation I was doing during this project. You can tell it’s an apple; but it’s also somehow vague. I LOVE Bokeh Sun in the center!

Our storm door has a chain that, prior to the leaf breaking off, I would sometimes hang the apple off of. I am really going to miss being able to hang it like that 😢

Speaking of the leaf...

I really like the colors here- the golden leaf juxtaposed against the blue of whatever was on my laptop screen at the time (I’ll admit I took pretty poor notes during this whole project and there are days where I have absolutely no idea what the apple photo context is 😬).

I just had to share this one because that’s the Big House in the background. Hail to the Victors, baby!

This image, taken towards the end of the project, is an excellent example of how the project played a role in shaping my style. Just look at all that ambiguity, interspersed with fragments of clarity 🥹

Kind of a longer one today, so thanks for sticking with me til the end. I really wanted to give some space to the 100 Day Project because it had an incredible impact on my artistic journey this year, and my belief in myself and my ability to do this professionally.

If you have a favorite apple photo from the collection, I’d love to hear what it is in the comments! If I get five comments before November 16, I will send each person who comments a free 4×6 photo of that photo 😲😲😲😲😲

See you around,

Jason