Interview: Sarah could probably beat you up if she had to.
MK
Sent to you by MK via Google Reader:
Songs that were in the front of Sarah’s mind the day of the interview. You should listen to this while you read.
I did today’s interview at Sarah’s house, and followed it up with an interview with her roommate Andy, which I hope you’ll get to read soon. When I showed up, we were both wearing our Battlestar Galactica shirts, which was awesome.
SOTD: What is the Silliest thing you can think of about yourself?
Sarah: I remember being ten years or so, and I was in ballet class, I took that for a few years, there was this one girl who was super flexible and she could put her foot behind her head, and so I was working on it for several months and I was like “I’m going to get super flexible so I can put my foot behind my head!” And now I am super flexible because I do Wushu, I’m more flexible than I was then, and I still can’t put my foot behind my head.
SOTD:Tell me about Wushu
Sarah: Basically Wushu is the Chinese word for Martial Arts, a lot of people think it’s Kung Fu but it’s not, Kung Fu means hard work. Wushu is just a word for general Martial Arts, so that includes what people know as Kung Fu and also Tai Chi and all the internal styles. The range is pretty broad, as far as what I do, it’s more performance based where you’re doing forms, so you know the applications but you’re not like, beating people up actively. There are people who specialize in that, people choose usually one or the other for competitions. You have to focus on it to get really good, so you’ve got to pick one, so I picked the forms.
SOTD: When did you first become interested in that?
Sarah: It was kind of accidental, it was like peer pressure basically. I have a friend who was a couple years behind me in college, and her mom and my mom are super best friends. She had gotten into the Wushu club at the U of O because a guy that SHE knew from high school had gotten her into it. At the time the club was really small, she was the only girl who really regularly came to Wushu practice, and so she was like “Hey Sarah, you have got to come to Wushu club with me so I won’t be the only girl” after she did enought of that I was “ok, jeez, I guess I’ll try it.” At the time I was super over weight and I was like “yeah, this is going to go great.” But actually, it kind of worked out funny because I wound up really liking it, and got obsessed with it, and she quit like a year later because she was too busy. It went kind of the opposite of how we thought it would.
SOTD: Did you like it immediately or were you like “Uh, this is hard.
Sarah: I think a lot of people do that, we go through that a lot at the Wushu club, where people will see us do a demonstration and be like “oh! That looks cool, that doesn’t look that hard, I’ve just gotta learn this stuff!” and then they show up to do the basics and stuff and then the next day they can barely sit down or stand up or anything and are super sore, then it gets worse the next day and they’re like “I’m not going to practice.” And we never see them again. I was trying to keep an open mind, basically like “this is going to be hard because I’m hideously out of shape so let’s give it some time and see how it goes.” I don’t know, something about it just grabs me.
SOTD: Did that help you with any clutziness issues that you might have had?
Sarah: I wish I could say yes, but no. I mean, I suppose to an extent it does, just because if I’m trying a new physical activity I am less likely to land on my face and bite it. But I still have big feet and will stub my toes on things all the time, because I can’t track my toes. Stupid stuff like that because I’m not really thinking about it. I’m clearly not a finely tuned death machine
SOTD: So when I hear “Kung Fu Fighting I shouldn’t think of you then?
Sarah: You can think whatever you want, If I HAD to beat somebody up I probably could.
SOTD: Anything crazy happen during a demo or practice?
Sarah: We had this one a couple months ago and all these things kept happening, they had this tiny little stage, and normally Wushu is done on a 20 by 40 foot carpet. And they just had one of those pop up stages that you just roll in and pop up. It was kind of super ghetto and we were kind of freaking out being on it. And we’ve got like 6 or 7 people doing lines of kicks and we can do maybe 2 of them in the space we have, and the guy behind me almost fell on his butt twice. We’re also trying to do forms with weapons and such, and there were these low hanging lights, we were just trying to dodge that the whole time, and then there was a fighting set with a double broad sword and two spears, and they’re supposed to fit that in this tiny space and they can’t move at all. Oh, and in that one I dropped my sword for no aparent reason. So that was great, But everyone thought I was really scary anyway. You just kind of have to pick it up and keep going, there’s no real way around it. The final thing that randomly happened, there were these pop up stairs leading to the pop up stage and they decided to pop down, so we like, broke it. We were just walking down, and they were like “crash.” Oh, and the music didn’t work either, I’m remembering this completely out of order.
SOTD: How long have you been into photography?
Sarah: I’ve always kind of been into it to varying degrees. I took a black and white film class in college, and even before that, my parents bought me this 35 millimeter cheapo thing and I was always running around taking pictures whenever I had film, which wasn’t very often. I didn’t really get into it more seriously until probably 4 1/2 or 5 years ago or so, and a lot of that was just, I had a couple of friends who had just gotten their first digital slr’s and were super excited, and then I got one shortly after, so were setting things up with “models” ie, people who will sit there while I twiddle with my settings. We were just doing a lot of experimenting and it sort of grew into “we should maybe try to make money at this” it was a huge learning experience at that point because we had no idea what the hell we were doing. We did allright because we grew our photo taking skills pretty quickly. I felt like I learned a whole bunch in those first few months, again after we got our studio lighting gear I felt like, every time I shot something I just learned so much what to do next time.
SOTD: It’s probably really encouraging for other people who want to do that, to hear about you doing that.
Sarah: I think a big part of that is just knowing what kind of photos you want to be taking. That’s what I kind of learned a lot about over the last couple years. I basically started out like “Oh, I don’t care what I shoot, I’m happy taking pictures, no matter what they are.” And then I started to figure out “Oh, I don’t want to spend a lot of time doing landscapes, they’re ok once in a while but that’s not really my thing, I’m not so much into the traditional landscape art that lots of people do.” And then you know I’ll say “I don’t ever want to do art nudes, they’re boring.” I’ve never actually shot them, but I see a lot of them because I network with a lot of other photographers. It doesn’t do it for me, I don’t find them interesting. You sort of have to pick and choose. I know I meet a lot of people who also shoot a lot of fashion work, I tell them “I do fashion too, and I also do weddings” and they’re like “oh my god I’m so sorry, that’s horrible.” So you kind of have to find a focus, then you have a better idea how to market yourself and get the types of work that you want to be doing instead of taking everything that comes up.
SOTD: That’s kind of a life philosophy too “you have to find your goal.”
Sarah: Yeah, and you know, part of it is keeping your options open too though. I wouldn’t want to pick one genre and go with it because I think I would get bored. Shooting some event that is spontaneously happening is completely different than doing a fancy conceptual studio shot, but I like doing them both for completely different reasons. It’s staying open but not too open I guess.
SOTD: What are your favorite pictures to take
Sarah: I don’t really have a favorite, sometimes I’ll just get an Idea and I’ll want to bring that to life and that’s always really fun and that usually ends up being something in the more conceptual fashion. I enjoy doing that, and other times it’s just documenting things, documenting people. I think everything I really want to do is going to involve people in some way. On the one side there’s the beatuifully planned and beautifully excecuted thing and then on the other side there’s capturing the more genuine interactions and emotional responses and little random moments that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as they’re happening but you might want to look back at them later.
SOTD: I have some generic questions I like to ask everyone, to compare. Favorite saved by the bell character?
Sarah: You know, back in the day I had such a thing for the pretty men, so I was all about Zack, I had a huge thing for blondes in middle school.
SOTD: I like to know what people think of my theory that screech was a troll. If this were a real person…. there’s no way.
Sarah: He was a troll before there was an internet…. Yeah, well, I don’t know. Counter to that, I knew some really smart, really really smart people in college who had no social skills whatsoever, the results were certainly not as comical as they were in the case of Screech but yeah, I know it is entirely possible to be really damn smart and have no idea how your actions affect other people.
SOTD: Maybe the hollywood version of the awkward intelligent person
Sarah: I think that was the general idea
SOTD: Most ridiculous thng a stranger has ever said to you?
S: Back when I had early Wushu classes after work, I would have to carry my spear in the giant six foot bag around on the max, and I’d get completely stupid questions like “Is that a gun?” Like “I’m going to have a six foot tall gun, yeah.”
SOTD: I’m going on safari!
Sarah: This is a very serious safari.
SOTD: That’s really funny because I recently got asked if my Bo was for beating bus drivers, by a bus driver.
Sarah: Is that a gun, is that a pool cue, is that a fishing pole? It seems like it’s always things that would not logically be in that bag.
SOTD: Best compliment you’ve ever received from a stranger?
Sarah: Strangers don’t usually compliment me unles they’re homeless and don’t have teeth. Usually, “You have really pretty eyes” or something. If this were coming from someone who wasn’t kind of scary I would say thank you. Actually, I do say thank you. Base level of politeness for all people. Something that seems kind of weird right now is that people keep complimenting the color in my hair. I find that hilarious because it’s super faded and I think it looks really janky. like, “I got this done like two months ago and it really needs to be redone but thank you anyway. ” The guy at Trader Joe’s was like “That’s an interesting choice of hair color, did you do that on purpose?” No.
SOTD: Have you ever been in a physical alteration
Sarah: I have not. It’s hard to make me angry so it doesn’t happen very often. The only thing that comes to mind is when I got really angry with an ex boyfriend and I kicked him in the shin, and I threw my keys across the room and I then couldn’t find them for half a day afterwards. Most people, especially now with the martial arts are like ‘I better not mess with you. ” “Ok ! sounds good to me!”
SOTD: Did you ever make prank phone calls
Sarah: I certainly tried as a child, I don’t think I ever sucessfully completed the mission because I would always start laughing in the middle, can’t keep a straight face for the life of me, and I’m not sure if either of my friends I was doing this with could either, it was just a great big exercize in fail, but it was fun at the
SOTD: Do you follow any celebrity gossip?
Sarah: With as much time as I have to spend on the internet doing my work, I kind of do by accident, but I don’t have time for that crap anymore, and a lot of the time it’s people who are famous for the sake of being famous and haven’t actually done anything. I’m worn out on that.
SOTD: Do you watch reality television at all?
Sarah: I’ve been watching project runway because poor Janeane Marie who got kicked off, I think in the last episode. I know her, my own photography studio used to be down the hall from her, we’ve done karaoke together a couple times. She’s super nice and I actually said this to a friend, her clothes are what I would wear in the alternate universe where I’m skinny. She just has interesting construction. It’s all really clean and subtle, I don’t think she was really made for the project runway thing because I think they’re looking for stuff that makes some more obvious statements, and I think she and I are probably similar in that we don’t deal with time crunched stressful situations very well sometimes. She’s great and people should buy her stuff because it’s totally cute. Other than that I don’t think so. There was a phase where I was wathcing AMNTM on youtube and I would kind of have it running in the background, and when the photoshoot would start I would flip over andsee if I could see how they were lighting it. Trade secrets! Which usually they don’t show very much, but occasionally I’d be like “hey that’s interesting.” As far as reality tv I think my big think was, up through all the first all star season, then I stopped caring, but I was super obsessed with Survivor. I was super obsessed, I would sit down and watch it every week. I was thinking about applying but I was overweight at the time and I was like “Im totally not at the fitness level I need to be at to be dropped in a desert island.
M: Any cool stories from your trip to China?
Sarah: the best part ever was that I got to go to Shu Shan Hai, where the Beijing Wushu team trains, and they’re super hardcore, and just to be there with all these teachers and their time tested methods and fancy equipment. Just to be there for a week and train how they train within the limits of my physical abilities and I’m like “Holy crap, I’m in China, and I’m doing Wushu with Chinese instructors and this is freaking cool.” I can’t even express the magnitude of awesomeness
SOTD: Was it very different than hwo youre trained in America?
Sarah: I guess Yeah, actually. It wasn’t SO differnt from how we did things at the U of O because we did longer practices, like a couple hours, spend some time stretching.. .all of of the basics were the same. I think a lot of it was how frequently you got to practice, these people would do it every day, there would be a morning practice and an afternoon practice. You go over there and this is what you did with your day. It really beats the crap out of you, but in a good way.
SOTD: If someone wanted to find out more about you using only the power of the internet, where would they go?
Sarah: sarahgiffrow.com
SOTD: Anything else you want to promote?
Sarah: Definitely our photography website.
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Marykae Owens
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Marykae Owens
http://marykae.net/