Introducing Scratchpad

Scratchpad

Scratchpad is now live. The purpose of Scratchpad is to have a space where I can completely disregard the idea of polish and take a more anarchic approach to art, thumbing my nose at any rules I wish to ignore. I have needed somewhere I can test out new ideas and be free to make something terrible. You should never expect anything here to be refined. It is, and always will be, a messy space.

A New Direction

Scratchpad

It is time for a change. The Liquid Roses hasn’t had a new blog post since September and little to no activity on social media from around the same time, but there are a few reasons for that. For one, college. My college photography degree has been where most of my time has gone recently (apart from my becoming-more-and-more-unhealthy consumptive relationship with social media and the Web–but I am trying to fight that as much as possible). Another reason is that the Liquid Roses took a backseat to developing a new website for my P.R. Ramer brand, the brand under which I intend to do most of my professional photography. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I came to the realization after I created my P.R. Ramer brand that the Liquid Roses’s original role had been largely supplanted.

Grasping for Words

Scratchpad

Often as a writer I pour over whether what I am writing is something that should command any attention. I reach out for the ethereal words to grasp them from the semi-opaque vapors in my mind that pass for thoughts, trying earnestly to say something significant. It is nearly inexpressible how I often feel that this is an exercise in futility: I can never say it well enough. It will fail, I fear… I believe. I even wrote an untitled poem back in early March that I posted on my personal Instagram (@prramer) that spoke to this feeling of inevitable failure at words.

Edging Forward in Photo 111

Writer's Journal

Going into this shoot I had a solid idea of what I wanted for my composition. I had made sketches of my ideas and chose to merge two of them into a final image. Unlike with the group projects, I did think about the idea of having elements that extend outside of the frame to suggest that there is more to the scene. I thought of this when drawing the ideas for this assignment. (I consider this an improvement to my planning over what I have done previously.)

Am I the Art?

Writer's Journal

Saturday evening I was feeling down from a recent disappointment in my life; thus being me, I wrote poetry to work out my feelings. I plugged my headphones into my phone, started up the Pandora app on my phone, and the first song to play was B. J. Thomas’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.” Given that I had just had a relationship disappointment, I found this song uncannily fitting to my feelings. Because of this, I decided I wanted to record that this song played, and thus I took a screenshot of it.