Eternally Conflicted

Almost Two from Jorgen Gulliksen on Vimeo.

Last year, I found the website Slideluck Potshow and quickly became obsessed. At its essence, the website serves as a gallery of slideshows that photographers and artists created and set to music. Two or three times a year, depending on where it is held, people submit their slideshows to judges who then pick the finalists and have a big potluck while sharing their work.

I loved discovering not only new work by really good photographers, but hearing new music as well. I put together a slideshow of Kai’s first two years with the music to one of my favorite bands and sent it off for an upcoming event in NYC.

And got rejected.

I’m not going to lie; this one stung a little. Probably because the photos are so personal. I’m not naive enough to think the work is anything that special compared to what a lot of other photographers are doing, but I think the fact that it was my son made it hurt more.

I still like watching it though.

Memories of Mattea from Jorgen Gulliksen on Vimeo.

The paper was looking for some kind of multi-media piece for a story on the one year anniversary of the death of a two year-old girl to a hit and run driver. I had a feeling I could get a decent audio interview, but what would go with it? It’s not like it was a story that we covered for weeks and had tons of photos and/or video in the archive.

Luckily, the family randomly mentioned that they had a slideshow they put together on their computer of the girl. The light bulb went off and with some help from them, I was able to get a bunch of old pics to go with the some audio of the mom. Ended up working out in the end.

Makes me wonder where we would be without photos to go with our memories?