everything comes together

This week has been so very interesting and wonderful.

On Tuesday, I received an e-mail saying my work was accepted to a lit/art journal that I submitted to last September! I had nearly forgotten about my submission, and any time over the past few months I had remembered it, I simply figured my work was not accepted since I hadn't heard back. In my modern instant world, I tend to forget that some things just take time...lots of time. The journal is published by the University of Minnesota and these are the photographs I will have in it:

Lines, silver gelatin print, 2008.

Hot Dog, digital photograph, 2008.

That in itself was enough to brighten my whole week. However! Last night, I checked my e-mail only to find that I am a finalist in Photographer's Forum's annual Best of College Photography contest! Finalists were announced a few months ago, but apparently I was only contacted through one e-mail, and that e-mail was lost somewhere. While I'm all for digitalizing things to cut down on paper waste, a postcard or something would've been nice in this case. So frustrating that such an important message was lost! I know it was my campus e-mail's fault...it's down quite frequently. Luckily, they sent a second message, which congratulated me again (again...meaning, for the first time...) and asked me to confirm the spelling of my name so that it will be printed correctly, and let me know that I could purchase a copy of the Best of College Photography Annual 2009 that my photograph will be published in, early for $10 off! Yes, I'm thrilled. The photograph that made it into the book is this one:


Then, as I found out last Saturday, two of my three entries made it into my department's annual Student Competitive, which was juried this year by Kerry Skarbakka.

Before the Discovery of Helium, silver gelatin print, 11"x14", 2009.

This is one of my entries; the other is a series of six environmental portraits of some of my college friends doing typical "college things" and is entitled Twenty-Something. They are also all 11"x14" and I like the size of the entire thing when they are displayed together. It was so nice to go to the opening this evening and see my photographs there!

It's been such an exhausting and rewarding week! The weekend will be filled with homework, a little volunteering, and seeing my family for the first time in a month. I'd love to slow down...but then again, my life is pretty exciting, and why would I ever want to trade that in?