So yep it has been a full three and a half months since I blogged last. Really stickin' to that creed I am (I talk like Yoda when I am feeling awkward?). Anyways I really will try to make up for it, but probably not in the next few weeks because next week is the last week of school before finals :( I hate finals! But after that it's a crazy whirlwind trip home to see my best friend get married, be a bridesmaid, see friends and get my tonsils out promptly the following monday. You may be surprised to hear this but I am way excited to get my tonsils out! It actually varies day to day but today I am feeling good about it. Because I am so excited I decided to make a list of things I will do while spending two weeks on pain pills healing up:
1) BLOG BLOG BLOG! (you should appreciate that)
2) edit. edit. edit. (i NEED to figure this photoshop thing out)
3) Catch up on all the TV shows I haven't had time for this semester.
4) Re-watch almost every episode of the office
5) Draw and work on my skills (yeah I said it out loud in Napoleon's voice too)
6) Actually read all of Confessions by St. Augustine
7) Read all my back issues of Nylon that are piling up. (don't tell them, I am still utterly devoted)
8) Write letters (to whom, I don't know, I just miss receiving them so the solution is to write them)
9) Sleep (majorly deprived this semester)
10) Start of 2011 right... tonsil (and hopefully) illness free!
So I finish about 80% of my lists, you can bet on what I won't done. Oh and I am blogging on my new mac! Her two month birthday is in 4 days! Yay for more blog posts to come!
Ps. Have you noticed I use parenthesis a lot? (I think it's how i break the fourth wall...lol )
Have you ever had the experience where you decide to do something and you think it is really awesome but at some point it completely falls apart and you are left at square one again? This happens to me often, and rarely early. Whenever this happens to me it always seems to be at the last minute when the time clock is ticking. Thankfully though, some things turn out better after a little road bump (ok this was a huge freaking road bump).
When my photography teacher told me about our final I was rather excited. It offered us complete artistic range and allowed us to do whatever we wanted as long as it fit into the guidelines of presenting our photography. I am a bit of a nostalgic person so i thought I would use this wonderful opportunity to take pictures of my upcoming family reunion in Montana over the fourth of July. The best part was, I was going to take the whole thing on my brand new (yet very old) film camera, this way I could develop the film and make the prints myself.
Heres where the snag occurred: I completely murdered my film during the developing process and not even half of my roll of film ended up being usable. At this point it is Wednesday and my FINAL project is DUE the following Monday. Not a lot of time to put something thoughtful and well done together. This is when all my creative powers died and I was left to waste away in a ditch somewhere... Not really but I was pretty devastated.
Once I got all my creative powers together I came up with a photo shoot centered around tea parties and gardens. Definitely something whimsical and fun. My lovely model was my roommate Tia. I had a ton of fun putting it together and editing it and almost having a breakdown in Walmart trying to get it printed but in the end it worked out all right.... I got an A! WOo
Now here are a lot of pictures to make up for all the words :)
I hate being in front of a camera but we had to show a little love ;)
I haven't posted in so long. And now isn't really a great time because I have a 10-page paper due in approximately 9 hours... but I have been really struggling with my drawing class this semester and I think I am horrible at everything. So you can imagine my surprise when i got online and found out that my teacher had posted my drawing to the "wall".. The wall is where drawing teachers put pieces for all the drawing students to see. It was when we where talking about perspective and design in rooms. I posted it below so you could see it. I am so proud of it!
Ok so I will admit at times I am caught looking like a mad women as I yell at my computer and curse the internet to a horrible death....But at times the internet fascinates me and makes me happy. One such encounter occurred today. I have been trying to find a vehicle for presenting my final body of work and while others have proven fruitless and time wasting, today I discovered Jalbums. It's this amazing site that lets you put together web galleries and I will literally be able to finish my final in about 5 minutes (once I take the pictures of course). How awesome is that? I made a little practice album to try it out and see if it as awesome as I thought it would be and it is :) Here is the link and I will get the real gallery on here in a few weeks when it is finished.
So for the lovely holiday weekend I packed it up and headed home with my roommate in tow. I was really missing home and needed a weekend to see the family and my roommate had never been to Seattle. We had a lot of fun even though we spent a third of the weekend driving; still totally worth it. We got in dead tired on Friday morning and spent the day being lazy and watching Dear John. I have got to say that movie is so incredible. Seeing as my boyfriend is in it I knew it would be awesome even before I saw it (I have a Channing Tatum obsession... don't judge me). Also, it came out on the best day ever (my birthday Feb 5th), so it was destined to be good. Saturday we went to the big city for some exploring. We of course picked up my friend Patty along the way and headed in. Luckily there was almost no traffic which was so surprising because Folklife was that same weekend. We explored the market and got Starbucks on Pike. It was Tia, my roommates, first Starbucks ever and she of course had to have it at the very first Starbucks. That is the worst thing about Idaho; NO STARBUCKS! I miss my Chai tea so bad. We then got some lunch down at the water at guess where... Ivar's of course. That is another major downfall of Idaho. There is absolutely no good seafood. Holy frijoles I have missed Seattle. We headed back to the market after lunch to do a bit of shopping like flowers for my mommy and then of course no trip to Seattle is complete without seeing the Space needle. We got the car and ended up parking illegally eight blocks away. I was really worried and told Patty that if my car got towed I was going to blame her. As we started to walk up the hill to the Needle we started to run into Folklife crowds and plenty of crazies. I think Tia was a little taken back by the crazy homeless people and even though we laughed about it I could tell she was a little scared. We took some pictures and went to go look at Seattle center entertainment. We saw the cutest little old couple at Folklife so I of course took a picture. We had a lot of fun and finished the day off with a little shopping. What a good weekend! I know this is super long and probably boring so I added some pics to make it more interesting.
I had no idea what a Malad-Dragon was when I first encountered it. I was out taking some photos when I saw this really cool old bus. As you can see from the picture it said Malad-Dragon on the front. I giggled a little and when I got to editing them I thought that I might try to find out what it is. Well, after some research I found that there is a city in Idaho called Malad and their local high school mascot is the the dragons. The bus appeared to still be in working order but I wasn't sure what they used it for. I probably could go ask the owners of the home were I was trespassing to get the pics.... or not. ENJOY!!!
For a recent assignment my teacher asked us to pick something off our bucket list and photograph it. This is about when I realized that I don’t have a bucket list and most people do. So, drum roll please, her is my superfantasticalridonkulouslyawesome BUCKET LIST (in no particular order):
1. Travel throughout South America
2. Photograph for a major magazine
3. Go to Egypt with my mom / do what my art teacher did (he paid off the pyramid guards and hiked the pyramids at 3 in the morning)
4. Date a cowboy
5. Live in the city
6. a) buy cowboy boots
b) wear said boots to rockin’ Taylor Swift concert
7. Roll down a green grassy hill in Ireland
8. Drive a Subaru WRX STI with a hood scoop and gold rims
9. Learn to longboard
10. Go elk hunting
11. Help people in Africa
12. Document a natural disaster (i.e. photography)
13. Finish every book on my To Read list
14. Offer my photography to help someone
15. Go surfing in Australia
16. Learn Italian
17. Kiss someone under the Eiffel Tower
18. Go fishing in/on a cruise to Alaska
19. Eat drunken Noodles in Thailand
20. Spend a day learning how a farm works and working.
21. Ride a horse (for real though not the dinky let me guide the horse while you sit on it)
22. Visit the rest of the Mayan ruins ( I have already toured Chitchen Itza, Tulum is next)
There’s probably more but this was all that was coming to me and I figure it is a good start. I will add more later if I think of them. So the assignment was to pick something on your bucket list then find a way to photograph it where we are now. I chose #12 and found and interesting little place to take some pictures. While I was photographing it reminded me about the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Thailand, and the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I thought about how others photography had brought that crisis to me and many others and about how I want to do that. Some may think that a photographer isn't important right after a serious event and that the aid is more important but I feel that without putting a face to that crisis and showing it to people they would be less likely to want to help the people. I feel that a photographer is the worlds eyes focused on that one event and showing it people who can't see it.
Now that I am back at school I am taking a photography class and I am unbelievably in love with it. I feel like I am going to explode with all the information and my instructor is a really amazing woman who creates amazing photographs. I so want to be like her one day. I am going to post a few shots of our first assignment and this was my first time shooting in FULL MANUAL. Yes, FULL MANUAL, all the way down to the focus. It was a challange for sure and it took me quite awhile to get it right but I am so proud of myself. Just a side note for the class we are only allowed to use natural light and nothing can be photo shopped, so everything you see is just the product of having an amazing camera. I hope you like them!
This post contains some photos that I took of one of my best friends Ashley. She has been at school for four months and before taking off to her summer internship she was going to chop her hair off so she asked me to take some before and after shots so I of course turned into a full photo shoot because, well, why not. We had a blast taking pictures and she has the most bubbly cute personality which I think sorta comes through in these pictures. I feel like I am learning so much in my class that now I look back and I see all the mistakes I was making but I still really like them. Enjoy!
Well here's the update: I got my awesomely fantastic new camera! I am in love with this thing and I want to take it with me everywhere I go. So from now on I am using a Nikon D3000. It has been interesting getting used to all of the new things to play with seeing as this is my first personal DSLR that is all mine mine mine. I have been taking pictures of everything and anything and I can't wait to share with you some of what I have been doing. I know it's been a while but I hope the next couple of posts sorta fill you in.
This was my first picture with my camera and it is of my cat. Ha! It is horrible I aknowledge this but it was a first so I had to post it.
