Art & Photo Series Lecture: Chad Smith

     Tonight we heard a lecture from our very own Chaddy Dean Smith. This was my very first time to ever see Chad's work so I was pretty excited. To me his most memorable work were his triptychs. I had never seen photos like that and I think they were really fabulous! However when asked about his work he never really seemed to have an answer which threw me off. I mean he knew why he wanted to take the picture as triptychs instead of panoramas because he said he felt like that gave an all new sight to the subject rather than just taking a simple panorama. But when asked about why he was doing them in black and white he couldn't answer. Sometimes I can see why some people do something they love and they can't explain why they do it but mostly everyone has something else to say rather than, "I don't know." I'm not discrediting his work nor his love of photography but it's just something that bugged me. After his lecture the seminar class talked about it for a bit and Ashley brought something up that I agree with completely. As photography students the number one thing we are being taught is to shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot and shoot some more. However Chad said that he not only doesn't get to shoot that much but he hasn't worked on a new project in 16 years. He said it was because of his son and that he was working on some color photos but had nothing to show us. I like to follow Vaughn's philosophy and just think that how are we supposed to know he is actually working on these color shots when he has nothing to show? All in all Chad's photos are inspiring but his words are less so.