Tulip Festival

First off, I just want to say Hi and hello. I am done with another semester, which means I back from the dead:) I'm really excited to spend more time away from the dark room and more time in the warm sun with my camera. It's funny how much the sunshine inspires me, and how not inspired I am when it's dark for months. Slowly but surely I'm trying to put my work of the semester up on my blog. I've learned so much this semester. One thing that I learned from my photo teacher that really touched me is that, "Just like a musical instrument you need to learn the scales and theory well so you can make your own beautiful compositions!" Being a piano teacher I loved that quote and it's really helped me get through this year. Anyways, these are my adorable nieces and sister inlaw. We went to the tulip festival at Thanksgiving point and it was beautiful there! It smelled so good and these little girls were so cute the whole time! It was fun to hang out with them! Thanks girls:)

This week

Yea today is Wednesday and after 7 tonight I'll be done with test and critques and the dark room for a couple of days:) This last weekend Bryce and I had a fun time in Salt Lake. We were able to visit some friends downtown and go out to dinner at a hip place called Stone Ground that was pretty good. And then we had some time to just relax and hang out, watch some of the super bowl with my family. One of my siblings had a baby blessing and oh my goodness my family has been taken over by little kids. There are 22 grandkids now! Our family just keeps getting bigger, but that just makes us have more fun together:) Oh and I received some early valentines roses and I forgot how much I love real flowers in the house! We have our cute little "love fern" haha, but it's not too colorful and doesn't quite smell like roses. Sorry for the random thoughts just wanted to get some stuff out there.

TK

This is my very cute little nephew!! All my siblings have been having lots of babies lately and this is the newest addition to the family. It's my sister closest to me in age first baby:) At first I figured he'd just look like every little newborn baby, but he is pretty dang cute and yes he did come with all that hair!!! He's part Hawaiian, hence the bright colors.

Art projects

Well I promised a couple weeks ago I would post some of my art work that wasn't photography. Sorry for the blur on some of them and some I did quite awhile ago, but it's kind of fun to show other art I've done. My favorite medium besides photography of course has to be printmaking, woodcuts especially, which is the first one.

Photo field trip

Bryce's birthday was yesterday, which was a lot of fun, but we didn't go to bed too early so this Saturday morning my alarm tried to wake me up at 7:30 to get to a "photo field trip" with my teacher and some of my classmates. The last thing I wanted to do on a saturday morning was get up early and stand around outside in the freezing cold!!! But I convinced myself it would be worth it so I went.... It ended up being great!!! I couldn't quite feel my feet half way through, but I learned so much today. We went up a beautiful trail with rivers and trees and the weather was actually great for photographing. My teacher almost always uses a tripod, so that's something I need to work on. Today was another reminder that you can take beautiful photographs almost anywhere in any circumstance you just have to have a good eye and know what to do technically. And I wish I had photos to show you, but it was all on film and I still need to develop. But I'll try to go back there and bring my digital soon.

Ah-Ha!

These last two weeks I've had an "ah-hah!" moment. I started an new photography class and I keep having good and bad feelings about photography, (if that's what I really should be doing.) And I was a little stressed over first hw assignments and projects and thought about quitting. It just seemed too hard for me so I wanted to stop. Which I'm usually not a quitter, but let's just say I'm a really good starter. I'll start reading a book, start washing the dishes, start writing a thank you note, but I don't usually finish. Like I'll do all the dishes except maybe a spoon, and I'll leave that in the sink to do later! Or thank you notes, I have quite a few that are all written I just never mailed!...I'm so weird, I don't know why I have a problem finishing things, because it's the best feeling when you are finished with something, you feel accomplished. But these last two weeks I've realized that when things get hard, that's when you work twice as hard and then you are able to accomplish and learn things you didn't think you could. Sometimes if you don't feel like it, that's when you just need to do it! I'm sorry to my readers who are now thinking this lady is crazy and her mind is way too jumbled. But this is something new I realized this week and I'm loving it!!

Equivalent

So I started another film photography class and we started off with "equivalents" Taking a subject and making it look like something else. I decided to pick something ordinary and try to have a different perspective. Nothing too creative, but I tried turning my bedsheets into milk, sand and waves. I just have to tell ya I still love how fast digital is! You don't have to spend hours in the dark room developing and printing, however a print that you spend a lot of time on making really makes you appreciate it so much more and can have a unique look to it.