Birdie Takes Flight.

       From March-November, my birdie (aka boyfriend, aka Kevin) is working for Intel Corporation in Folsom, California, a suburb of Sacramento. Needless to say, I miss him every day. Much to my delight, he recently flew me out to see him for a week. It was the absolute best week of my life. Lucky for you, I'm a dedicated photographer who can now take you on a virtual re-enactment. Here we go!

My plane landed at the San Francisco Airport, so we stayed there for a few days to see the sights. We managed to pose for adorable pictures whenever possible.

Instead of being normal tourists, we explored "uncharted territory" and separated ourselves from the crowd as often as possible. Note the peaceful absence of people and the graceful bird grazing the water.

One of my favorite parts of western America is the palm trees. Everywhere.

A bunch of tourists were taking pictures of this overlook, so I took a few steps back and captured the moment as it stood, photojournalism style.

Kevin made sure his artsy girlfriend experienced the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). We found ourselves lost in a lot of the pieces. (Holy 3D-looking painting.)

Oh yeah, and Andy Warhol had some work up there.

(Holy crap.)

After the busy San Francisco scene grew tiring (and the hotel reservation expired), we hit the road and headed to Folsom. 

We drove a lot over the duration of the week, and every time we zoomed over the pavement, I was blown away by something new.

I'm sure you've heard happy cows come from California. This is true.

Did I mention we drove a lot?

One evening, we chased the westward sunset.

I'm glad we caught it.

After all the sun-chasing, we eventually needed to fill 'er up. Good thing we could watch the news while pumping gas, since it took a while.

While in Sacramento, we visited the Capitol building.

Complete with palm trees, flowers, and gorgeous dome.

Needless to say, the Capitol building is another tourist-flocking area. We hovered far away from them, as planned.

One of the things I looked forward to most was dining at the famous California-native burger joint, In-n-Out. My gosh, was it worth the 6-hour flight.

Oh yeah, Kevin. He was worth it too. (Thanks for buying me tons of food, babe!)

 Before we knew it, it was time for me to make the dreadful and lonely trip home to Scranton. I continue to miss Kevin every minute.

Dear Birdie,

Thank you for sharing your birdie-wings with me so I could experience this with you. I had the best time, and I can't wait to keep living my life with you in it. I love you. I can't wait to be in your arms again...

(in 127 days, 12 hours, 34 minutes, 26 seconds...)

It's those things you're not looking for...

As a photographer, I take so much joy in finding small things like this
that make my heart beat a little faster
and my camera lens a little fuller.

Julia.

I want to practice portrait photography as much as I can this summer, so that means all my gorgeous friends from home are on speed-dial. Meet Julia.

 Every time I looked through the viewfinder,

it felt like her eyes were going to melt my camera.

Glamour.

My friend Caitlin Watkins is graduating from Empire Beauty School today. Yesterday she turned her friend Kelsey and me into works of art and asked me to photograph the results for her portfolio. I'm new to fashion photography, but I was more than happy to take on the challenge. The entire process took place in her kitchen. No salons or photo studios were used in the making of these gorgeous pieces of work.

If you live in the Scranton PA area, look up Caitlin Watkins on Facebook and contact her for all your hair and makeup needs! She really has talent, and an amazing personality to boot. She's a joy to be around, and she will make you look and feel absolutely stunning.

I only buy organic glow-in-the-dark strawberries.

Self-portraits, drawing style.

These are my latest pieces from my Drawing I class. The first one is a practice composite: on three separate pieces of paper, I practiced drawing my eye, nose, and mouth with charcoal. I then I put them together in Photoshop® just to see how they looked. 

This piece is drawn on transparent draft paper with graphite powder/pencil. The style has a sprinkle of inspiration from Jim Dine's self-portraits. It focuses mainly on volume, with only small portions given meticulous detail. The bottom half of the drawing is my frustration and curiosity revealing themselves with squiggles and texture. 

PS: I have no idea how to draw hair.

Fine Art video (for real this time).

Here's the link to the tweaked (better) version of my original Fine Art video, now that I found out we could in fact use cuts and editing. I'm only posting a link because video quality is horrible on Blogger, so I'll let YouTube do its job.

Here it is in all its glory.

Happy birthday mommy! PS: I am definitely your clone.

My first lightning shots.

       Rochester's weather is completely unpredictable. Completely. I can't even begin to describe it. Today, it was warm and sunny. I got a pleasantly slight sunburn on my way to class. I donned shorts and a sleeveless shirt and opened the windows and listened to birds outside.
I just took these pictures a half hour ago.

2am photographs.

       Last night, fog swirled all around RIT's campus and beyond. My friend and I drove around and soaked in the feeling of driving through a cloud at twilight. As we were about to turn in for the night, we passed RIT's Barnes & Noble book store. What struck me was how beautifully a small hill was framed by a parking lot street light's sharp beams, intensified by the fog. After my friend dropped me off, I immediately grabbed my camera and tripod and headed back over there.

As I prepared to drive back home, I noticed a beautiful shadow on my leg of the condensation that collected on the car window. Yes, I wear men's boxers.

Fine Art Video.

One of my assignments for my Fine Art Photography class is to create a 30-60-second video -- all one take, no editing. After a few days of brainstorming and falling flat on my face with other ideas, this is what I came to complete (and actually like).

I apologize for the quality. Uploading videos to Blogger is useless.

My second charcoal drawing!

My first charcoal drawing.

      I started taking a beginner's drawing class a few weeks ago. Our first project was drawing various animal skulls with charcoal. We were taught to start with a medium tone, then bring out highlights and grind in shadows to create volume and then shape rather than starting with an outline and filling it in. This piece was completed in about ten total hours.

Dark Lust(er).

The eye of the beholder Part II.

      It turns out that my first self-portraits were not satisfactory. Using my most emotionally/personally successful photograph as a base, I created a series of self-portraits revolving around my struggle of starting an adult life without my mother by my side.

      These were the most difficult photographs I've ever taken, not technically, but emotionally. It took a lot to show myself like this. But like I've mentioned in previous posts, I deal with my emotions by throwing them into the world's eye. It makes them real. It makes me less numb. It lets me knock down the wall.

This is the original from the last set.

Nudity = vulnerability. 

Being poised on the outside doesn't mean being happy on the inside.

Philippians 1:3-4:
"I thank my God every time I remember you;
in all my prayers for you, I always pray with joy."
When I remember her, joy is the last thing on my mind.

I look at her face, and I feel disconnected from the world; I just fade, and nothing/no one can pull me back.

Sunshine is the best.

A small pond next to my apartment beautifully reflected the sunset and blue sky this evening. I'm posting this picture in celebration of the unusually warm weather we've been having. Spring is almost here!

The eye of the beholder.

      These are five self-portraits I created for my Elements of Fine Art Photography class at RIT. I tried to make them distinct from one another, since it's difficult to keep interest in the same subject over and over. I'll give a brief description of my thought process for each one, but interpret them as you wish. 

This is the first one I created. It signifies the mental and emotional stress I endure every day when I think about how much I miss my mom (that's her picture in the locket). Sometimes I feel blinded and strangled by this invisible daily battle.

This is the second image I created. This one and the next one go together in a sense, but  their meanings are different enough to keep separate. This portrait focuses on my hair--Nearly every day, a stranger stops to tell me how much they love my hair style. It's happened so much that I feel like my shaved sides and feathery front are what almost define who I am.

Number three: captured in the same style as the previous one, but holds a different meaning all together. This time I focused on what is just beneath my defining hair--it's what constructs every girl's sense of worth and self-esteem at some point in her life. I captured my curves. I love them. I have a very positive self-image; I wouldn't change a thing about myself. 

#4: I am an odd human being. Take this as you wish.

This is the last, and to me, the most compelling self-portrait of the five. I applied makeup to only half of my face and then photographed my whole face and only manipulated and "fixed" the side, which had makeup. This is all one photograph, and the right side of the image is completely un-edited. I wanted this to serve as a wake-up call to those who see beautiful faces in magazines and think all of that magic is just expensive makeup and complex lighting. There is a lot of post-processing involved in the glamour shots we see every day--I altered the arch of my eyebrow, plumped my lips, lengthened my eyelashes, and even changed my eye shape.
. . . Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.