A few years back, over the summer I began to write a script of a webseries that was meant as a retelling of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (one of my favourite stories of all time, as long-time readers know), a personal psychological study, and a love letter to favourite spots in the Bay Area. Alice would meet the Mad Hatter at a local San Jose tea shop, for example, or the Cheshire Cat in Kelley Park, or the Mock Turtle down at Natural Bridges beach in Santa Cruz.
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| This scene would have taken place at the San Jose Rose Garden, for example |
It was a cool idea in theory. I still like the story I wrote for it. But let's be real, I was never going to make it. I have neither the time nor the funding to shoot a webseries, and where would I find other actors willing to trek up and down the San Francisco peninsula for 6-minute webisodes in funny costumes?
It was earlier this year that I begun to wonder if maybe, instead of something ambitious as a webseries, I turned it into a photography project? Instead of having to shoot and reshoot around tourists, I could snap photos and edit them in Photoshop?
Art for art's sake, you know?
However, this still doesn't take care of the fact that I have neither time nor money to do so. I have equipment. I don't own a video camera or a boom mic or good editing software, but I own cameras and photoshop! But when I'm working to earn a living and saving for a cross-country move, I just can't afford to do a photography project all over Northern California.
So the solution that presented itself is obvious:
If I ever do choose to do this (and that is a big
IF), I'll have to do so in New York. Thus, I began the task of picking new locations to match the aesthetic I need...
(Photos included are either my own, or labeled for noncommercial reuse and used under creative commons license)
