norwegian wood - the beatles

And another set of photos, though none of these are artistic. These are all from my going away party. A lovely time was had by all. Anyway, the photos are fun and silly and so forth, so my comments will aspire to be the same. And hopefully, this will make up for my lack of posting over the past few weeks. So enjoy!



I'll welcome you to the party with a photo of Julie and Jen's salad. Quite a delicious salad, and Jen had to defend it from all the people who were going for early munches



The majority of the younger folks in the kitchen. From left to right: Greg, Julie, Gian, me, Jen.



And some of the older folks! From left to right: Kim's friend Helen, Kim, Grandma, Aunt Penny, Cheryl, Liz



More of that delectable salad, now for Jen to show it off. Also, Julie to show off her salad-stealing skills.



Julie meeting Lysander through the screen. While Grandma was over, the cats were kept out. That didn't stop them from trying to get people to let them in.



Ms. Uribes and Mrs. Montgomery toasting the camera



More of the above



Jen with her new fan, a gift from Drew I believe.



More of Jen, now somewhat blurry. Can you tell she was in a good mood?



Blurry and not a great photo of the Dwyn but I wanted to show off the rice cooker I got. I am already certain that this will come in handy very much during my time in college.



And this is Pink Teddy, my beloved childhood stuffed animal. I've had him ever since I was born. Sam borrowed him the week before my party and returned him with this brillant get up. It's a good new look for him, don't you think? He'll be joining the staff on my other blog soon, just as soon as I get my stuff together



Pink Teddy again, now the back. You can see Sara in the background being amused by Pink Teddy. He's just so adorable!



Jen and the amazing cake and I. Impressive, right?



And here's just the cake. It was pretty spectacular. Jen ordered it and I didn't get to see it until just then.



Sam and I. Can you see the lovely mola in the back? I love those things



Jen, Sam and I



A group of us doing Jazz hands. It feels important when talking about New York and Broadway. From left to right: Julie, Greg, Jen, Drew, Sam, Gian, me



Finally, Grandma, Mom, and I.

That's it for this week!

gloomy sunday - billie holiday

So there's been a bit of a delay.... Chalk it down to busy preparing for college. Anyway, here's a make-up post, complete with double the number of photos. With any luck, another post will be up very quickly with photos from the going away party. Woot! Let's get on with the photos. Comments are short cause I'm tired and busy.



Boats in the harbor outside the hotel room in Half Moon Bay [HMB]. I'm not totally in love with this photo but I liked the idea of it, the grey water with the grey sky and the sort of depressed feel. I rather enjoyed the area but anyway. I took several of this shot and this was the best but still, I think something is almost off. Any idea what it might be?



Part of my resolution for HMB was to do more landscapes. So this was one of the landscapes I encountered on my walk the first morning we were there. I was heading out towards the beach and I thought the shape of path with the long line of the fence and the barest hint of water was sort of compelling. Despite landscapes not being my forte, I think this one is a pretty decent shot for an amature.



This clump of flowers was encountered on the same walk and I found them so lovely that I made a full stop and took my time in looking for the perfect shot. I did not originally like this shot, I felt there was something blurry in it that just didn't quite work. However, the damn thing has grown on me and now I love it, particularly the sharp, bare stick that sort of pokes up over the top of the flowers and looks a little dangerous and strange among these lovely flowers.



I fear this might be a somewhat generic shot but really, I loved those flowers so much so I couldn't help myself but be all over taking this. So I did and it came out alright. Maybe a little darker would be better? I'll mess around with it and put it up next week in the color altered version. It's really not a bad shot, just needs a little adjusting to be made absolutely perfect!



Once more, this is something I love because of the grey on grey. All the different shades work well together in a very interesting way. Also, the wall of rocks I like, mostly because they are interesting because they are a contrast to the soft shapes in the background and the soft, rolling shapes of the plants in the foreground. And it does help that the wall is about a third, maybe a little less, into the photo. Rule of thirds anyone?



More flowers, these ones were in front of the RV parking area. I'm a sucker for things with petals as of late and I found these just such a contrast, all cheery and bright in such a grey area. Also, this particular patch seemed to have a lot of dead flowers, which was another nice contrast, dead to bright and life-filled.



And this starts my series of three close up rock photos. The rocks were piled up in a wall that made getting down to the beach a little tough. However, all these lovely little things were hidden in the cracks and whatnot so I got a whole slew of photos of the hidden treats. I really liked this pipe that just seemed to come out of nowhere and go to nowhere.




This probably needs editing but I loved the shape created by the three rocks. That is all



Once more, all about the shapes, especially the little triangle of water on the top.



Is this as generic as I fear it is? Anyway, I liked it, a lovely, very typically ocean image, with the tower and the sea walls.



Oh look, my two favorite things! Flowers AND rocks! More of those hidden treats I talked about earlier.



More of the ocean, now with surfers. I'm less sure I liked this but I liked the IDEA of it, with the surfers siting out on this massive grey-ness, waiting for something to move.



A little crooked and almost certainly generic. Ah well, I like it and it shows where I was.



Basically the same as the one above but I really love the small spots of sun in the sky. A light beyond the darkness maybe?

the way we get by - spoon

Ok, so I was the queen of lame this week and I completely just didn't bother with a blog post. I was just super busy and super forgetful. My next blog post will feature stuff from my week in Half Moon Bay because I got some nice practice with landscapes and nature photography. Anyway, this week (this late post anyway) is my mother's photos. Why? Because I think she is a brilliant portrait photographer and I have proof of this, namely, a bunch of photos of me when I was little and she was taking like hundreds of photos of me. So enjoy, I'm not commenting. There is two bonus photos though and all the photos are of a much younger me. On with the photos!

[oh, and all comments will be forwarded to her, so she can know how amazing she is!]

back of my hand - the rolling stones

Hey everyone! So today's blog is really much too late and I am muchly sorry. This week ended up being much more busy then I expected. So I've got seven photos for today and I'm not doing comentary. All of them are from pride, one is a photo from last week that I have cropped. Tell me what you think! As ever, comments are loved!















Quote of the Day
What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains. ~Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, 1947

just a season - the byrds

So I'm a day late, which is not so cool. I am muchly sorry everyone, I just got a little busy yesterday, what with the art camp ending and going out to dinner with my mom and one of our family friends. On the plus side though, I'm getting a new computer soon, so that's pretty exciting! Woo! But enough of my chatter, on with the photos!



So to make up for being forgetful and posting a day late, I've got photos I really like this week! And this one is the first one. Here is Alicia and her lovely poster she made for the parade. Though she is perfectly centered and in focus, the photo is still interesting because of her facial expression. It's unusual which makes it fun! Also, I like the slightly unbalanced feel, with her body curving slightly in one direction and the pole on the other side. Also, as I'm typing this, I've noticed that the shape created by her legs and the sign is slightly eye shaped. Fascinating, I really do like that, especially because I totally didn't intend it. Fun when something neat happens that you didn't expect!



And here's one of the kids who was with the group across the street from us. I think I love this for a number of reasons, my favorite being that while everyone is paying pretty close attention to whomever is talking, this kid is totally not interesting. He's just kind of doing his own thing with the balloon, not too concerned with anything except having fun. And really, isn't that the way it should be? Also, I'm loving that while everyone else in his group is dressed like one would expect families to be dressed, he's got this wonderful little Buzz Lightyear costume on. Basically, this whole thing is what I think Pride ought to be. Just sort of day where you can wear whatever costume you feel like. And hell, if you want to play with balloons, you go do that! Or something like that anyway.



This was a fun photo because these women just had the most lovely costumes. I really enjoyed them! Anyway, the lovely thing about this photo is the contrast of this sort of crazy, unusual looking pair of women and behind them, there is a normal looking building and what looks like the window of a stationary store. This is another beautiful thing about pride, when you've got all the sort of more normally dressed people and then this other group of people who are all in these insane costumes and then the two groups just blend beautifully. Sure, if you're in a costume, you get the stares when you're walking around but no one makes a big deal about it. Lovely. Oh and I'm also digging that aside from the costumes, these two women could be just very normal every day people you wouldn't notice on the street. The way they are standing/walking is such a typical pose of a pair of friends. Were they dressed in anything else, you'd never give them a second look.



This photo is of one of the floats, which had sort of a fairytale theme. I just found the guy in the dress to be too eye catching to resist snapping a few shots of him. I do have one of his face without his arm in the way but to be honest, I like that his face is partially obscured and that his hand isn't fully out. It's more interesting as a subject in my humble opinion. I don't have a lot else to say, more analysis can be left to you, my dear readers!



Back of the same float, this I mainly like because of the contrast of this pretty fairy-type girl and the tree and the frog with the bit of coiling barbed wire. There's a lot of soft lines on the float and then there's the hard, sharp lines behind which, unlike the float, are not colorful or inviting. Aside from my love of contrast, the girl's face also has drawn me to this photo. Her smile just makes me so happy. She looks like someone who is really enjoying being a fairy on that float, which is nice to see. And to be honest, I bet that's a fun thing to do!



One of the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence. She was really nice, posed for a friend of mine and while my friend was snapping her photo, I took this. I'm thinking I might crop it a little bit, take out the other person but I kind of like the contrast of the white face makeup to the darkness of the other costume. Tell me what you think, I'm always excited to get input.



This I just plain love. There's the charming little corner of the paper umbrella she was carrying, the lovely lines around her eye and the sort of faint hints of facial hair. Seriously, the sisters are always the best for photos. And this sister just had the most lovely face. She looks so kind, like someone who could be anyone's best friend. Perfection!

And that's it for this week. Thanks to all the people who have commented (either directly on this site or through facebook or one of this things), your comments always make my day! Happy belated Pride and happy fourth of July!