Challenge, STRIPES!

I present to you my apartment in all its stripey glory.

I've been noticing the crazy diagonal stripes every time I walk down the stairs out of my apartment complex so I decided to photograph them for the challenge. I'm not sure how I feel about them, there are elements that I like in all of them, but they also feel a little busy for my taste...Also, I feel like all of these pictures could only have been taken in southern California.

Denver Botanic Gardens Parking Lot

So I had to go to a staff meeting at the Denver Botanic Gardens last night, and despite my hopes for the presentation to be in some sort of tropical greenhouse filled with birds and butterflies, it was in a tiled, window-less room in the basement with fluorescent lights and white boards.  I had brought my camera, hoping for some good shots, and though they were nothing like I was imagining, I had a total party.  I spent an hour after the meeting was over wandering in the chilly Denver air without a jacket (which I had forgotten), but it was worth a little hypothermia because I found amazingly amazing shots.  I'm so excited!  And I have responses to two of the challenges.  I'm going to go in chronological order and post the 2nd challenge: in this case, rural/suburban in the urban, and then I have to go through and edit the images for the night shot challenge.

These aren't my absolute favorite images of the night, I thought I would save the best for next, but I do like them as a response to the challenge.  And together, partially because they are slightly different interpretations of the same space, but also because the focus is working exactly the same way in all of them.  I forgot my tripod, so I was setting the camera down on surfaces and had the aperture at like a 3.5 to try and have shorter exposure times.  So they all have a band of in-focusness kind of in the middle ground while the fore and back-grounds are blurry.  It's just working for me with these images, I dunno.

And in case I don't talk to you before, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Underwater Work-In-Progress (Telephone!)

Yo,  I need a reaction to this.  Like in Pam's class, it is one of those I want to see what you think it is before I tell you, because it's a posed shot and I want to re-shoot it after I have some input (I went into the shoot with an image in my mind that just didn't work out, so I want to try again).  It's one of those where I know what is going on, but I'm not sure what other people will be able to see in it without knowing anything about it.

I've never quite been able to pull off red lipstick...

This past weekend, my friend Julia and I went on our first ever photo shoot. Julia Galdo, the fashion photographer who I told you about invited me to shoot with some of her friends at a ranch north of LA. So, I enlisted Julia Chu, who has been one of my best friends since junior high and is nearly 6 feet tall, as my model. (Yeah, there are 2 Julia's in the story.) Julia Chu, wants to get into fashion & styling so we decided to collaborate to create our own fashion shoot.

As soon as I saw your cathedral photo, I thought of this straw hat photo that I took on Sunday. Below are a few more that I'd love to get your feedback on. I'll post some more as I get them edited because I want to get your thoughts on my first "fashion" photos.

Thanks Kaitlyn! I miss working on projects with you!

Telephone!

Photo Telephone...READY SET GO!

In an inspired, excited, stream of consciousness gchat...the only kind of talk that Kaitlyn and I ever have, we decided to start a game of photo telephone. The rules are simple...I post a photo, she responds with a photo somehow related to or inspired by my photo and vice versa. She shoots, I shoot and photo telephone continues. We'd love to hear your thoughts on our photos!

P.S. We've also added a challenges section, where we'll be posting photo challenges for one another to compete. When both of us complete a challenge, we'll post them side by side to see how differently we approach each challenge.

It's Taco Time!

As usual, a fantastic card!

I was going through my photographs while working on a photo project I came across the time I was in San Fransisco.  I have pictures of the Chinatown and this crazy Japanese mall which was amazing, and I decided that either I have to come visit you in LA and we can find an Asian mall there, or the two of us need to reconvene in San Fran and go exploring the hello kitty shops and sushi restaurants and manga stores.  I need some Asian-Americana in my life right now.