Planes

to the mountains!

It's taking a while for Winter to find Seattle,

so we headed out to look for Winter instead.

December Days

I woke up to a crisp and clear December morning.

Walking out to the garden,

I found that everything was covered in a thin layer of frost.

The water on our rain catcher froze.

New moss was growing.

Berries were ripening.

And some things seemed like they couldn't make up their minds between being alive, or dead.

Rainy Occupation

Are we tired of Occupy stuff yet? I don't know really how to feel about it.

This protest that I followed about a month ago started out organized but then digressed into random chanting from multiple groups...simultaneously. After blocking traffic in the freezing rain for about 2 hours, the group split up, one headed back home while the other marched on to the community college.

With no feeling left in my extremities, I gladly followed the first group back while a fellow photographer went with the second group.

Even though nothing too exciting happened, I got a chance to shoot nighttime, which was something I hadn't done until that day. It's a completely different world, shooting at night (cue pre-photo-assignment anxiety), so what I got was a butt load of blurry nothingness and a handful of clean ones.

And guess what? It turns out my camera is waterproof! Huzzah!

A student speaks to the crowd before marching to University Bridge.

Protestors marching down University Way on their way to University Bridge.

Students climbing on University Bridge...

Blurry, but cool looking.

Students in the dorms look out their windows at a group of protestors heading back to campus.

Daily Lessons: News Stops for No One

Yesterday was the last night of production for fall quarter at the Daily, but that doesn't mean news stops happening!

I was just about to leave the library to go home today when I decided to check The Daily's Facebook page. Apparently there had been a chemical spill in one of the buildings on campus and the next thing I knew I found myself with two reporters and another photographer down by the chemistry department shooting pictures. Wow, what a rush!

This was the first time I had to go through the whole photo process by myself. It was nerve-racking but I really had no choice but to do what I could since no other photographers were around (the other photographer had to leave early). I can happily say I am pleased with the results! I even got to use my new lens hood! You have to admit, a camera looks so much cooler with a lens hood.

I think I can honestly say editing photos doesn't scare me anymore. Now I just have to overcome my fear of writing cutlines... Those things are surprisingly difficult to write.

Lessons learned:

1. Store a pair of gloves in your backpack. You never know when you'll be in the cold shooting for a long time. You can't get crisp photos with cold hands.

2. Bring a hat too, for the cold ears.

3. When you are absolutely terrified of what you are about to do, but people are counting on you to follow through, you take a deep breath and do the best you can...and hope everything turns out okay.

4. Everything usually turns out okay.

Daily Lessons

By now you probably know better than to expect any sort of chronological continuity from this blog.

That being said, here are some shots from my first assignment for The Daily from October. It was very stressful. Aside from the anxiety of it being my first project, I didn't know how to react to the crowd, where to stand, who to take pictures of, what functions to set my camera to...It felt like everything was out of my control, even my own camera, which is never a good feeling. But like with every new assignment I get from The Daily, I always come home with a pocketful of lessons learned.

What did I learn from this?

1. Be ahead of the crowd when they're marching.

2. Know WHO you are taking pictures of.

3. Always have a notepad and pen with you so you can write down those names (and anything else important because you won't remember an hour later).

4. And don't be afraid to get in people's way in order to get a good shot (which is a problem I still have trouble with).

Sweet Dreams

Make sure you watch this right before you go to bed.

One Pumpkin to Rule Them All...

It's never too late to share cool pumpkin carvings, right?

One pumpkin to rule them all,

One pumpkin to find them,

One pumpkin to bring them all,

and in the darkness bind them...

New Places

So maybe this can be a place for lyrics and poems too? I wrote this after visiting my cousin in Sweden during winter break of '09. She was studying abroad in a little college town called Lund. I have been meaning to put some music to this thing, but I mean to do a lot of things..

Evening, Lund

I've come to a land

Of lamps dressed in icicles

Of cobblestone streets. They are

strangers to my feet

So old, so new.

Dimly lit windows of seven lights

burn away the remaining days

Toes warm, my soles crunch snow

on the untraveled path to my home for the night

All noise is down

My shaking bones find peace at last

Subway man, play your accordion

Let it echo through the past,

around my mind

Let me rest until the morning.

Blog Lovin'

I've been spending countless hours just perusing through fashion blogs for the past week. I already have a list of favorites that I follow regularly, and it doesn't help my procrastination that I am finding more blogs to follow everyday. Thank goodness there's still a bit of summer left. Three more weeks and things will be back to their daily grind with commuting to and from school.

Starting school again is giving me mixed feelings. Part of me wants to get back into a set schedule, with an endless list of things to accomplish. I feel I am at my best when I am producing something. The other part of me just wants to sit at home and scroll through pages and pages of blogs and online shopping. Summer weather is just starting to peak here in the Northwest, but since it took such a long time to get to this point, I find myself wishing for fall weather. Sad, right? Maybe I just think it's unfair that I will have to be back at school when it's still 80 degrees outside.

Following these blogs have made me really appreciate fashion for what it can create, how flexible it is, and how it has helped me develop my own personal style, but also art in general. The blogs have also made me ponder the idea of keeping my own sort of art/fashion diary. It would be something for me to always work on, to always create new pictures and ideas. I think I would really enjoy it. Maybe I'll just start with a photo blog and slowly graduate to whatever. The things with blogs is that they can become whatever you want them to be, and that is comforting, but also a little scary. But I really have nothing to lose. Yeah, what the heck. Let's do this.

My top bloggers:

http://www.jenny-fromtheblock.com/

http://www.thesartorialist.com/ (check out his book The Sartorialist, too. It's great!)

http://www.garypeppervintage.blogspot.com/ (my new favorite!)

Ink and Color

It's amazing what a little watercolor can do to an ink drawing. It took me three years of high school to figure out this combination, and I've never looked back. It's my favorite way to spice up a simple sketch. These drawings by Belinda Chen show exactly what I'm talking about. She draws with simple lines, often contour lines which are so ridiculously fun, and adds that pop of color to pull everything together. BAM