Excuses, excuses...
· Saturday October 20, 2007
Friends,
I apologize for the dearth of postings lately, but I am happy to announce our journal article was accepted and will appear in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America in November of this year! Research is going well, and I hope to start writing another article soon.
But I admit there are other reasons for my hiatus from photography as well. As I look back on how my life has unfolded these past few years, I start to see trends that point to deeper truths about who I am. Let’s go back a ways.
I first started taking piano lessons when I was 4 years old, in a dingy and cluttered basement that I would soon escape (though not before my piano teacher’s son, a strange creature named Emlen, infected me with chicken pox). From there, I moved on to truly inspirational teachers who have each shaped who I am today— Dorothy Elfin, Jay Mauchley, Marcantonio Barone. At one point in elementary school, I tried to quit taking piano. It was, after all, interfering with my ability to go out and play with my friends in the afternoons :) My mother flatly refused, naturally, but as a ‘compromise’ she allowed me to take violin concurrently.
I am extremely grateful both that my mom didn’t let me quit the piano and that she allowed me to take the violin. I loved playing in the orchestra in high school, sitting concertmaster for a time, and at university I became very serious about taking my piano playing to a new level.
So what does any of my musical past have to do with photography? From the age of 4 to 22, music was my primary creative outlet. This was no longer true after I left Swarthmore, for a number of reasons, and that was when I began to focus on developing my photographic ability. I feel I’ve reached a modest level of artistic and and technical accomplishment as a photographer, and while I know I have plenty of room to grow, I feel I have succeeded in that I can occasionally make images that I find worthwhile.
One of the ‘deeper truths’ of my character that I was referring to at the start of this article is that at the core, I am a creative person. This is to say that I don’t feel like myself if I am not consistently engaged in some creative endeavor. And recently I’ve reengaged myself in another creative and social outlet through pen-and-paper role-playing :)
However, with the start of the new academic year, there have been a number of new photographic opportunities, and I am excited for the possibilities to come!
— Emery Ku
Thoughts?
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