Monday, November 28, 2011

Seems like street lights glowing

Skyline manipulation from Griffith Observatory

Good-bye LA, for now. These last unseasonably warm days have been nice, I'll be sure to miss it in Park City, land of the snow.

It's been an interesting month home. I did a lot of nothing. I did some shooting. But I mostly waited. And all of a sudden, my departure has snuck up on me. I'm about 3/4 packed and still hoping to shoot the lights on Rodeo tonight. Of course I procrastinated and wasted my morning (what happened to me? I used to be the early bird). As always, I made some questionable choices here; one foot's in the past, the other trying to leap into the future. Maybe I'll process on that later, for now it's Utah or bust!

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Over the edge

A man peers down at Los Angeles from the Griffith Observatory

Monday, November 21, 2011

Mac down

Hard drive crashed...could have been worse, I just backed up last week and my new photo shoots are still on memory cards. Lost my editable resume (and the graphic Jessie made me) and Adobe (temporarily I hope).

Silver lining: upgraded to 500 GB

Thursday, November 17, 2011

No doubt

View of Downtown LA from 600 Spring St.

With so much time to think, a large portion of my efforts goes towards the future. Not my next six months having the time in Park City, but my real future. Driving around LA makes me think of the entertainment industry. How cool would it be to be a producer for TV? A Director of Photography for the movies? Or even working more full time in Park City, enjoying the outdoors, doing freelance work. But then I'll click on something like this, the entries for National Geographic's annual photo contest. And I actually want to cry the photos are so good. Look at 27, just AMAZING.

I read this article written by a photojournalist about pursuing a career in the field. He said if you can think of anything other than photojournalism that you're good at and would be happy doing, do that instead. He said photojournalism was more of a calling than anything else, and that it took a certain kind of person to work their nose to the grindstone in order to make a living through it. There are lots of things I can think of that I possess the skill set for that I could be happy doing. But there's this always been this pull towards photography, ever since 9th grade when I developed that first roll of film. The pull keeps getting stronger. So I've realized I can't be one of those 50-something moms who once had a dream, let it go, ends up having some mid-life crisis, and turns around to realize she didn't do what she loved, actually passionately loved. Because if all else fails with this whole me becoming a photojournalist, at least I'd have tried, at least there'd have been some passion, some hardship.

At least I'd have lived.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Monday, November 14, 2011

Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard

Michaela poses in front of a mural on Santa Monica Blvd.

Two weekend ago I did a photo-shoot for my friend Michaela, who with our other friend Monica, have an awesome fashion blog Hemingway & Handbags - check them out. We did a couple locations, one was the colorful mural that was so popular with my high school photography class. It's on Santa Monica, behind a liquor store, makes for fun color. These ladies know how to stretch a college grad budget into something fashionable, I even took some tips and bought the same boots in the photo (gotta love those sales on sales Bloomies has about every 2 days). 



Monday, November 7, 2011

Ye Olde Memory Lane

The egg

This is one of my earliest prints that I was proud of. It's also one of the few early prints I had digitized. Our assignment was to photograph something outside of its environment. We were all given an egg, I took mine to Will Rogers park in Beverly Hills. 

It's probably because I'm home with nothing to do (except think about being homeless in Park City), but I've been going through old high school stuff I found on my computer and it's got me living in the past. Going through these old conversations (thank you random AIM log manager file) and posts (linking to my livejournal will just disgrace my professionalism, but if you are friends with me on facebook, it's there somewhere) reminded me of how volatile I was in high school, my emotions were always spilling to the surface. I was convinced no one understood me. Some of it's rather funny, of course I wasn't the only one feeling what I was feeling; but there were some things that I was entirely too young to deal with. In hindsight it's interesting to see some of my relationships going through the high school experience. Everything was so much more dramatic back then. I think by senior year we finally figured out that it just wasn't worth it to always be mad at each other for the little things. I couldn't even imagine DG with that kind of door-slamming drama over little nothings. 

Everything is so involved in high school. You spend hours and hours with the same friends, classmates, and teachers day in and day out. Then we would come home and spend hours talking and analyzing everything over IM with the same people. I guess it was the beginning of the cyber social scene. But in some ways, the whole IM thing was more personal. It wasn't public sharing, I had some really intimate conversations via IM. 

Thankfully I foresee no one going through my computer and getting their hands on these files. So my embarrassment will be kept to myself. It's kind of like going through old shoots, seeing what went wrong, and figuring out how to fix it. So maybe it's this necessary thing I do, embarrass myself in front of myself so that I can see how far I've come. Make sense? I see now how wisdom does come with age so far, but in some ways I am still that awkward girl nervous of passing so-and-so in the hallway, OMG? Did he see me? Like, what does this mean?!? I guess that's something I'm still working on.

Right now it's just a little awkward to be home. I know that most of the people who were such an important part of high school are across the country doing real life things. So I realize I'm a little alone in my nostalgia. But I'm okay with that. A month from now I will be waking up to fresh Utah powder, ghosts forgotten until another time.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Something's gotta give

The foggy Bay


Well I'm back in the good ol' BH. Living on the couch. Currently in an apartment with the water shut off for maintenance. This is the life. On the bright side: La Provence is a mere 5 minutes away by car, can you say chopped salads all day errrrr day?

My to do list (to be completed before December):
- Find a place in Park City, preferably with other young, fun ski bums
- Purchase skis, boots, poles, and a new helmet (life scholarship, where are you?)
- Service car so I don't break down in the snow
- Clean camera gear, seek advice on my body predicament (Canon that is)
- Put stuff I don't need for 6 months in storage
- Come to terms with not wearing sandals and dresses on the regular

Wish me luck!