Project 365

tuesday, 1/20/09

2009-01-20T20:43:00.003-05:00

oh, hi (:

http://www.twodaysinfebruary.com/blog/

see you there!

monday, 1/12/09

2009-01-12T21:58:00.002-05:00

flickr, meet daneile
Originally uploaded by let love in

how do you measure a year?
in moments, in memories, in report cards, in mocha frappaccinos, in used post-it notes, in oil changes, in mortgage payments .. or maybe in photographs?
for the past three-hundred and sixty-six days (yes, i know, i failed to realize the leap year until very late in the project) i have attempted and been successful in my endeavor to visually record an entire year in my life.
from day one, i have never been short on things to say, people to name, or experiences to describe. what began as a means of photographically exploring a year quickly turned into a very literal documentation, as well. i never set out to detail the happenings of my day, to find myself online at 3 am desperately trying to remember what i wanted to talk about, or even to have over fifty "mysterious blog readers" that would track my trials and tribulations over the course of the journey. (yes, i have a sitemeter that keeps track of you all, but not by name. no worries :) but yet, despite any planned or preconceived course of development i may have had for this project, this is how it turned out. and i do not honestly think i could have ever predicted just how much of an impact it would have upon myself, and others, however unintentional it may have been.
i did not write this blog for anyone but myself. never once did i hit backspace, in fear of saying something that might negatively portray myself in the eyes of everyone reading, nor did i ever spend much time planning what i would say. everything you have read for the past three hundred and sixty-six days has been nothing but raw, true thought, and likewise with my pictures.
life is not sugarcoated like movies on the big screen, with blissful endings and perfectly scripted plots, and i wanted this project to reflect that.
and that is why, on this last day, on this seemingly indescribably important ending, this landmark of a day, the picture i have shot and chosen is ordinary. because this project is and was entirely about the ordinary. because the the word extraordinary cannot be formed without it. because the ordinary is beautiful.
if you have been following along for the past 12 months, you have probably gathered thus far that my career plans are to become a high school photography teacher. i live to be inspired. i like finding hope in ordinary things, finding faith in unlikely people, and finding peace in everyday places. it's all about the journey, and i have been lucky enough to find mine through photography. now i want to help other kids to find theirs.
it is for this reason that there will be one more post following this one. i have no idea when it will be posted, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next week. this post will not be a blog, it will not contain a picture. it will, instead, contain a link. what you choose to do with it, where you choose to go from there, it's just that: your choice. this is the end of this path, this metaphorical route that i have taken for 1/16th of my life. but the journey is far from over. in fact, i think, it has only just begun (:

sunday, 1/11/09

2009-01-11T21:24:00.002-05:00

flickr, meet norton
Originally uploaded by let love in

i'm blogging unusually early tonight because as usual i'm buried in homework and stressed up to my ears. ah, and to think i chose this ...
anyway, today was a very busy day! i woke up early and had planned to go to a second study group at my friend nicole's house with a bunch of other people, but decided that working on my 234345 other assignments at home, by myself, would be a better choice. so i worked all morning and helped my mom around the house after lunch.
around 2, lexi came over and we drove to ms. harriman's house in vero to shoot her friend, norton. he looks so much like my artbook artist (rene magrrite) so much that it's scary, and he was such a great sport while i spent the afternoon shooting him.
a lot of the shots required us to basically re-arrange ms. harriman's living room, and also required multiple trips to her various artistic neighbors, for clay and easles and a cigarette for one shot.
my artbook entry that i'm working on to turn in tomorrow will include all of the pictures that i shot today, which are modeled after a series of self portraits that magritte did throughout his lifetime. i'm really excited about this entry, and it was so much fun to finally get to meet norton! he's been printing all of my photography contest entries for the past two years or so, and helping me pick pieces for my portfolio, all without us ever having met, haha. but he's definitely one of the coolest old guys i know now (:

picture for today is a combination of the final two shots i took of him. it is so strange how much he looks like magritte, they honestly could have been brothers. maybe theyre related!

ps - first day of exams tomorrow: wish me luck!

saturday, 1/10/09

2009-01-10T03:09:00.001-05:00

flickr, meet mom
Originally uploaded by let love in

okay, so it's three am, and i need to go to sleep. so i apologize in advance for the absence of today's picture. i promise i'll add it in when i have the chance.
today was such a funny day, wow. i went to michaels and picked up a bunch of random props for my shoot tomorrow, which included a never-ending hunt for a decorative bird cage ... i think i'm going to have to go searching tomorrow morning.
after that, a ton of us met at panera bread to have a big semester exams study group. originally, me and lexi had planned it for just four or five people, but about fifteen ended up showing up and it was crazy! there were so many of us crammed into this tiny little booth area, with all of our laptops and ib textbooks/notes/bags/food, wow. i have no idea how we all survived. needless to say there was a lot less studying that got done than what was planned, but it was fun (:
after running to walmart to get superglue to repair a special pen (don't ask) and having to deplete the store of it's napkin supply to soak up the 3847 gallons of tea that we spilled on the floor (again, don't ask), we managed to cover a good amount of history material for monday, and take so many bizarre / funny pictures with the photobooth program on my macbook pro. all in all, despite the chaos and lack of studying the entire time as previous planned, it was so much fun.

okay, i'm about to leap from my office chair to my bed and hit the light switch in the process because i have to wake up around nine tomorrow and get ready for my shoot in vero, finish studying, work on my artbook, and do a bunch of english journals. oi vey. goodnight!

friday, 1/9/09

2009-01-09T00:41:00.002-05:00

abe lincoln / andrew kusel
Originally uploaded by let love in

happy friday! i know i'm posting this a little late, so it's likely that you'll be reading this on saturday .. but i do hope that everyone enjoyed / is enjoying their weekend.
this is a significant post, because it begins the final weekend of this project. monday will be my last post.

aside from the gloominess that seems to surround talking about the very-near end of this project, today was a great day. most of my teachers had read about my mom in the newspaper, and were sending their congratulations. she's been so excited the past few days from all the emails and phone calls and positive feedback she's received after being given the award / becoming a finalist. it's nice to see her so happy.
in portfolio, roxanne and i took a trip to the drama room (which involved trekking cross-campus all the way to the middle school and missing a good 15 minutes of portfolio, i was not happy, haha) to get a suit jacket and a tophat for my rene magritte shoot with norton on sunday. we picked out a big jacket that will hopefully fit him (he's apparently like 6 feet tall!) and a top hat that mildly resembles one that abraham lincoln would've worn. magritte painted a lot of his pictures with bowler hats, but we couldn't find one of those. so i'll have to work some photoshop magic on the top hats in post-processing to make the pictures look a little more authentic.
in history, we found out that the other history teacher, mr. gray, needs more kids for his 7th period class. he teaches the majority of the junior ib history classes, but about 20 of us were put in 6th period with mr. wyder, to split things up at the beginning of the year. so now the tables have turned, and things need to even out in the other direction, and they're going to be pulling kids from mr. wyder's class and put them in one of mr. gray's. what's funny about this is that, if you've been following my blog since august, you'll remember that when i received my schedule for this year, i was so upset that i wouldn't have mr. gray's class. i tried and tried to get the guidance councilers to switch me, but it never worked out. and now, five months later, i'm being given the option of switching .. and i'm choosing not to! i'm comfortable with the way things are now, and my history class has more or less come to grow on me. it's far from my favorite, but it isn't miserable, either. i like sitting in our little corner of the room with lexi, katie, rachel, alex, and tyler, and i can't imagine being anywhere else now. so i really hope that i'm not picked to switch; we all do. moving one class almost always affects your entire schedule, and no one wants that half way through the year. oi vey.
after school, amy drove me home and i got to meet carmen! carmen is her little touch-screen GPS that she got for christmas, and she's pretty smart. she took us to walmart to get gas and then back to my house with no trouble at all. i am definitely going to need carmen (or perhaps one of her siblings) when i start driving in may. i inherited my father's sense of direction .. (;

picture for today is andrew modeling the top hat for me. i shot it with my little point and shoot canon camera in ms harriman's room, so the quality isn't exactly fantastic. but he was a good sport like always, and i like how the shot came out!

thursday, 1/8/09

2009-01-08T23:29:00.003-05:00

sunny with a high of 75
Originally uploaded by let love in

currently, i am listening to this backstreet boys song that i've had on repeat all night. periodically i'll raid my cd bookshelf (i'm such a packrat that i need an entire bookshelf for all of my cds, yes) for an old cd that reminds me of someone, or something. in this case, i associate the backstreet boys (and nsync, and hansen, and every other 90's-era boy band) with my first best friend, julia. i think i've posted about her, but she moved to japan and i haven't seen her in seven years. she is still, however, and always will be, one of the most important people in my life.
this backstreet boys cd reminds me of her because i can so vividly remember all of my friends being obsessed with boy bands and pop music back then. i, on the other hand, absolutely hated it all. i grew up on james taylor, seals and crofts, john denver, and the beatles. so in my pre-teen years, i couldn't appreciate the music of my own era for the longest time. but i did eventually grow to love it, mostly for it's nostalgic qualities. so listening to this old backstreet boys cd is less about the computerized quality of nick carter's voice, and instead has everything to do with remembering the past.

fast forwarding a little ...
today was good. i missed artbook and half of biology because my mom had a flat tire, which was entirely fine with me because that left me with an extra two hours to drink my tea and shoot pictures in the early-morning light that i rarely get to see.
in portfolio, andrew and i discovered that today is bubble bath day. i vowed to go home and take one, but i failed to remember that i have a walk-in shower that does not at all resemble a bath tub. nor do i have bubbles ):
after school, we had our national honor society induction ceremony. this involved changing into formal clothes, which i dislike almost more than tomatoes (almost being the key word here) and walking on stage to light our candles and recite a pledge. i actually used to enjoy being on stage and performing in our christmas and spring programs at st.andrews, but like so many other things, that has completely changed.
however, i survived, and am now a member of the national honor society!
but that's not the only exciting news. i'm not sure if i posted about this, but a few weeks ago my mom was named the school board employee of the year for her division. all of the division honorees were then narrowed down to finalists for the county employee of the year, and she's one of them! ms. harriman got the email when i was in her class today and she ran over to tell me, it was so exciting.
i am so proud of my mom.

picture for today is a self portrait i took this afternoon. the weather was beautiful beyond words today.

wednesday, 1/7/08

2009-01-07T21:43:00.007-05:00

bundled up
Originally uploaded by let love in

today was interesting. it began rather horribly, but i can never seem to stay in a bad mood for very long. and that is definitely a blessing.
lately i've been titling a lot of my flickr pictures with quotes, and earlier i found one that i absolutely love:

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.

~Anthony J. D'Angelo

and so, today ended up being a great day.
for my next artbook entry (different from the 3D thing i mentioned a few posts ago), i've decided to focus on a series of self-portraits that my artist did in the 1950's. many of them were done with large format black and white photography (not traditional 35mm), and i'm going to attempt to reproduce them!
while recreating our artist's artwork using different mediums like oils, pastels, etc is very challenging, i've found that it's the hardest to recreate a photograph. i have the hardest time doing it, too, because i believe so much that every one's creative vision is unique. photography, for me, is raw emotion. it's exactly what i'm feeling at that point in time,a memory of what i've once felt, what i want to convey, or what i need to express. getting behind a camera is such a personal experience, and a way of finding yourself, in a sense. so imitating the work of another artist just feels wrong. it has never felt right to me to "copy" my artist's pictures, even though that's what my whole book is supposed to be. having no choice in the matter used to irritate me to no end, but i can see where the art examiners are coming from when they make the rules. they're assessing us on our ability to interpret and re-convey, in a sense, an image that was already a masterpiece. it still doesn't justify the whole thing in my mind, but it does make sense. so i concede.
that being said, i am so excited to start shooting!
ms harriman has a friend named norton that looks almost exactly like my artist. so she volunteered him to spend sunday afternoon with me doing a portrait session for my artbook. i'm going to pose him in a number of different ways, just like magritte's self-portraits, and hopefully i can find the props that i need.
rene magritte was famous for his bowler hats and classic black suits, coupled with his serious face and jet black hair. i just need to find somewhere that sells these bowler hats. maybe a party store? i'm going to have to do a little hunting. if you're curious as to what exactly a bowler hat (and magritte) looked like, click
here!

after school, lexi, amy and i stayed for an ib bio semester exam study group with our teacher and about 20 other kids. it was really helpful, and i was glad that my teacher decided to set one up. there's going to be one the day before the exam next monday, too, so i will definitely be attending that, too.
lexi's mom drove lexi and i to her office afterwards, and that was probably the best part of my day. apparently she passed one of my business cards around and a lot of her coworkers visit my flickr account, so they all knew me when i walked inside! it was so cool / exciting to talk to and meet them all, and a lot of them had a personal interest in photography. one man was telling me about how he used to work with kids after school in a darkroom that was funded entirely by the government. if only the economy could have remained in a similar state. i would give anything to be able to run one and teach an after school class, especially if it were for processing color film.
but all things in time, i suppose. (:

tuesday, 1/6/09

2009-01-06T23:47:00.001-05:00

peperoni ripieni
Originally uploaded by let love in

what a crazy day today was. i'll try to narrow the craziness down to all of the positive things. so, i believe this calls for everyone's favorite: a list! (okay, maybe they're just my favorite. but this is my blog so i make the rules :)

1. today is national bean day! today is also the day that francisco pizzarro concored peru, and named the capital lima. i find this supremely coincidental, since today is bean day .. and they named the capital lima. even though it's pronounced differently, i think it's a big conspiracy to promote the popularity of lima beans.

2. i need to stop eating reeses peanut butter cups before posting.

3. and yet i'm unwrapping another one as i type this. they came in a gift basket from one of my clients as a thank-you gift. i was so surprised to find it waiting on my doorstep today - it was so thoughtful of them to do something like that. i am definitely enjoying the chocolate (:

4. my make-up biology test didn't go particularly enjoyably because my teacher had me, lexi, and amy take it in the auditorium where she was setting up with all the science fair projects that the regular kids have to do. sometimes i think that's the only perk of being in ib - not having to deal with science fair, haha. anyway, it was impossible to concentrate because of this obnoxious group of freshmen that decided it would be a mature idea to start singing and dancing while we were sitting there testing.
it's funny, because when i was a freshman, i could never understand why all of the upperclassmen looked down on us, and it bothered me when my older friends would laugh and tell me i had so much to learn. but now that i am an upperclassman, i see exactly where they were coming from. it's all about perspective, sometimes. i'm sure ten years from now i'll look back at this post and shake my head (:

5. we had a test in portfolio today (that i had no idea about! i need to stop drowning things out with my ipod), and ms harriman gave me the option of taking it, but i think i'm going to take it on thursday instead because i was so busy today. i spent the period working in adobe illustrator because i brought my tablet to school! i'll be posting some design work later this week, hopefully.
i'm still studying religiously for my adobe exam, which i'm hoping to be able to take the first week in february. i'm nervous!

6. which leads me to my next dilemma .. i have no idea what major to choose for risd this summer. i've narrowed it down to four: digital photography, traditional photography, graphic design, and illustration. the program is for six weeks, so whatever i choose needs to be something i think i can learn six weeks of material about. i need to make a decision soon, because i'm mailing the application as soon as ms harriman writes my reccomendation! ahhh, i'm so excited. i really hope i get in.

7. after school i worked from 3-6 at the studio, and then went shopping with my mom for something semi-formal to wear to the national honor society induction ceremony this thursday. i'm sad that i have to miss work to go, but it's something that will look really good on my college applications, and i'm definitely not passing that up.

8. it's almost midnight and i still have precalc and artbook homework to finish, goodnight!

monday, 1/5/09

2009-01-05T19:47:00.003-05:00

When the power of love overcomes the love of
power, the world will know peace.
Originally uploaded by let love in

i am so tired! and to think that i barely slept last night for no reason at all. supposedly, i was going to be making up a biology test, taking an english quiz, turning in eight english journals, and turning in my artbook today .. but of the aforementioned, the only thing that ended up being collected was my artbook. which is possibly the highlight of my entire week, despite the fact that it's only monday. i got a 100! i absolutely loved visiting the gallery and talking with chris, and i really think that this entry conveyed that. i pushed myself and used a number of different mediums i had never used before (including metal hardware and oil pastels). i'm so proud.
our next assignment, in addition to working on our weekly 10-page entry, is a 3D project on a lunch tray that i'm kind of excited about. i'm sure i'll be posting pictures as it progresses or toward the end, because it should be rather interesting-looking, to say the least. i have no idea where she comes up with these projects but they definitely keep my on my toes, artistically (so to speak).
okay, i need to go study and attempt to knock out a good portion of my workload for this week, because it's going to be a busy one. so far my planner says .. monday (today): nexus; tuesday: work; wednesday: after-school biology semester-exam review; thursday: after-school history semester-exam review, and working; friday: national honor society induction & prop-shopping afterward with lexi for my next shoot. and that leaves saturday and sunday to do nothing but cram for next week's exams! oi vey. hope everyone's monday wasn't too treacherous (;

sunday, 1/4/09

2009-01-04T18:15:00.002-05:00

the stack
Originally uploaded by let love in

and so my two weeks of relative peace and happiness have come to a close. well, maybe that's a little dramatic (;
surprisingly, i'm excited to go back to school. kind of. the second half of the year will be starting in about a week, after we take our final exams, and this is when things are really going to get interesting. because i'm an ib junior, everything is starting to come together and i'm going to be under a lot of pressure to do some pretty big things. (but seriously, what else is new?) i'll make a list.

in 2009 i will be ..

1. interviewing with the art examiner from europe, and shipping my artbook off to be graded by another examiner somewhere overseas.

2. taking my adobe photoshop certified expert (ACE) exam down in miami. i haven't decided whether i'm going to take the illustrator or dreamweaver exams, too. if i pass, i'll be qualified for a number of really big jobs in the design / photo industry. as of right now that's not something i need, because i absolutely love working at the studio i'm at right now, but when next year when i'm in college up north my adobe certification will play a huge part in getting me a job in the same field.

3. particiapting in the skills usa 2009 photography competition. i'll be talking about this more later when it draws nearer.

4. going to boston?! possibly. this is possibly the biggest thing that will be happening, if things play out the way i want them to. again, more details about this when i have them.

5. spending six weeks of my summer at the rhode island school of design .. hopefully. i've been filling out my application for the past few nights now and i all that i have left to do is get ms. harriman's reccomendation, and choose a program. from then on it's all up to the admissions people. i am so unbelieveably excited! i wish i could go back to socapa with all of my friends, because almost everyone i met this summer is doing the same program again in vermont, but i don't feel like going back would benefit me creatively. it was an amazing experience that i wouldn't trade for anything, but spending another six thousand dollars just to be reunited with my friends isn't fair to my mom, who so graciously pays for this stuff. risd will be a really intense program, probably similar to my workload in ib, but i can't wait.

6. becoming a senior!

7. turning in my 4,000 word extended essay (in november)

8. applying early-admission to a number of art schools.

the last three are all more than six months in the distance, but i felt like including them because they will be happening over the course of this year. it's really weird to put it in perspective like that, but i am so excited. it's going to be a lot of work and a lot of sleepless nights, but i think i'm ready for it.
i'm posting this early tonight because i have quite a bit i need to get done tonight in order to be ready for tomorrow, including finishing my artbook entry about the tiger lily gallery. i printed the picture of her from the other day and included it in my last page of the entry, and i really love how it came out. i think it's funny how i used to be so adverse to portrait photography, which was one of my deciding factors in wanting to become a teacher rather than running a full-time studio. i think that people fail to realize that pursuing photography doesn't leave a whole lot of career options for anyone that is uncomfortable working with portraits. so i think that's probably something i'm most proud about learning to love.
okay, enough of my unending retrospective. this post was supposed to be entirely the opposite! enjoy the week, everybody.

saturday, 1/3/09

2009-01-03T00:43:00.001-05:00

truth
Originally uploaded by let love in

i'm not happy with myself right now.
i think that we are often defined by the experiences that we're delt, and in turn, we define ourselves by the way we react to them.
and i think that i've made a mistake that i wish i knew how to fix.
i am a very straight-forward, honest person. i've always been proud of this, and being able to talk to just about anyone about just about anything, especially when something is bothering me. but this time, for reasons i'm still deciding upon, i chose instead to vent to everyone around me about what has been bothering me. and that's fine, but i'm realizing now that the way i was going about it was entirely unnecessary. i'm not a petty person, i don't like drama, and i don't enjoy putting other people down. but that's exactly what i've been doing for quite a while now without realizing how very unattractive and unbecoming it is to be like that.
being upset over something is no excuse to belittle that person and speak about the problem with everyone but the person that caused it in the first place. so for everyone that knows what i'm talking about, i owe you a sincere apology and will be speaking with you individually to let you know.
i don't think that i will be taking this up with the other person. i refuse to make any more decisions out of spite or anger, and instead, from this day forward, i am going to make a more conscious effort to keep my actions in check and remember the effect that they have upon everyone around me.
learn from my mistake, guys. spreading negativity is a one way ticket to nothing but more negativity. it's just not worth it.

friday, 1/2/09

2009-01-02T00:58:00.002-05:00

flickr, meet chris adams johnson
Originally uploaded by let love in

today was such a fantastic day for so many reasons! it being friday was definitely a contributing factor (;
i woke up semi-early and did some homework, and then my dad picked me up and we went to vero. for my artbook class, we're required to do gallery visits every so often, and we have to pick two artists from the gallery, paint details of their work, and then write about their biographies and the mediums that they work in.
normally this is one of my least favorite entries to do, because i'm so busy during the school week and it's really hard to find a gallery that doesn't mind a high school kid coming in and sketching things that they make money off of. but today was quite different!
after eating lunch on hutchinson island, we drove downtown to a studio co-owned and operated by seven different women. they all work in different mediums, and share the studio/gallery space in this beautiful old church. the ceilings were really high and the light from the stained glass windows was enough to make me overcome any shyness i might have had and ask to take a portrait (:
the picture is of chris, the artist that showed me around and told me all about the studio. she even knows someone from risd, the school i want so badly to go to, and we're going to get in touch over the next few weeks. i'm so excited!
chris's mixed media sculpture work is absolutely amazing, and i can't wait to go back to talk to the photographer she shares her space with. from what i saw of her work, she's got an incredible eye for black and white photography, and i want to talk to her about the kind of paper she uses.
now i want my own studio space! i've been kind of toying with the idea for a while now, and i've been researching how much it would cost me to rent something for the next year. i'd love to have a place downtown somewhere that i could set up a small darkroom inside, and then have a space to paint, too. but economically, it doesn't make sense for me to spend money on a project like this right now, because i'll be graduating next year. so i'll just have to start looking for space in providence!

thursday, 1/1/09

2009-01-01T23:12:00.000-05:00

I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor
Originally uploaded by let love in

it really does not feel like january. i'm always a little disoriented during the last few remaining days of christmas break - the in-limbo ones at the beginning of january that make me feel like it isn't really a month at all. i'm not making much sense, i know. haha, all this analytical thinking is going to be particularly evident over the next week or so as i try to grasp the new year.
i didn't mention yesterday that giulia and i spent the afternoon at this amazing old park near the ocean by st. andrews (my old school). it's next to an old rail yard, and right across the street is about a 20 foot steep drop down to the shoreline of the ocean. there wasn't much of a beach, but the tide was low and we were able to walk out to a sandbar and get some really great shots of the hundreds of birds that had collected there.
the rail yard was my favorite, though. i tried to climb the fence to get inside (the weeds were this gorgeous golden yellow color) but it was too tall and i was wearing the wrong kind of shoes.
i bet you didn't know that about me, though, mysterious blog reader. i love to climb things. trees, fences, whatever. i'm still six years old at heart sometimes (:
it's funny, because i think that giulia and i are such good friends because we're such good opposites. she's cautious and rational, always my level-headed voice of reason; i am spontaneous and free, often inspired to do things spur-of-the-moment and for no other reason than because it feels like something i need to do.
we had brought some feather masks with us, and although we couldn't get into the rail yard, we improvised by standing on this big metal box, and took turns wearing the masks looking into the sunset and taking pictures. i absolutely love how the pictures have come out so far, and yesterday's picture was all i had time to process. but more will come later, i promise (:

i spent my first day of 2009 in north florida with my grandma, and also doing homework at panera while my mom did some shopping. have i mentioned that i love this macbook? lately it has gone trekking around town with me everywhere.
i admit that i have no excuse for not having a picture up yet for today. only eleven days left in this project and i'm getting lazy! i'll try to do some processing tomorrow.
i feel like i should be saying something wise and introspective about my first day of 2009, and the many more to follow, but i can't help but feel like my new year hasn't really started yet. this project has come to mean so much more than just a blog and a bunch of images. it's become a frame of reference in my life.

wednesday, 12/31/08

2008-12-31T23:56:00.002-05:00

no day but today
Originally uploaded by let love in

as a child, i always hated saying goodbye. i hated endings, i hated the cold, permanent feeling of feeling something uncontrollable slip through my tiny fingers, without even a moment to consider my desperate pleas. time is utterly unforgiving.
i never liked watching the ball in times square drop. it seemed to solidify something with which i already associated a general feeling of resent: change. i could never understand why everyone around me seemed to be in such a hurry to move on. couldn't everyone just leave things alone, if only for a moment? it bothered me to no end that i had absolutely no control over the cold, sold, inevitability of the passing of time, and with it, the coming of change.
i'm older now, and wiser (or so i'd like to think ;), and i know now that what i am not responsible for, what i am incapable of changing, i must accept. i find that i have a hate/love relationship with change, as it stands right now.
for me, obama represents change. my impending graduation, my move back to rhode island, my plans to travel in europe after high school, my thoughts of purchasing the nikon d300 - all good changes in my mind. i'm excited for them and the impact that they'll have upon life as i know it.
but there is always another side to the story, another perspective. i am deathly afraid of graduating. i am afraid to leave everything that i know behind, i am afraid of making the wrong decisions, i am afraid of losing sight of what's important. all of the aforementioned are made possible by your friendly neighborhood reality check: change.

i have no doubt that this double-edged sword is present in even the most optimistic mind. but maybe all we can do is continue on. pick up our feet, and keep moving by the forward motion that compels us from the inside - the drive that reminds us why we're continuing to get up every morning and face the world. the hope that it will all be worth it in the end.
do i have all the answers? hardly.
am i looking for all the answers? yes.
will i find what i am looking for? perhaps, perhaps not.
but i do know that i will be doing everything in my power to enjoy and learn from the journey along the way.

goodbye, 2008. hello, 2009.
what will the next page in your story be?

tuesday, 12/30/08

2008-12-30T02:25:00.000-05:00

we intertwined
Originally uploaded by let love in

so right now i'm wearing this big black ski cap that covers all of my head (and with my ridiculously thick head of italian hair, that's quite a feat) and the greater portion of my face. why? well, because at 2:06 am, one is often compelled to do things a little out of the ordinary.
haha, i need to go to bed.
aside from what seems to be becoming a habit of staying up so late, today was a fun day. i cleaned my room (i'm becoming more and more like my mother every day...), worked from 3-6, ate dinner at panera, saw my old principal, went to michaels, came home, and made a bracelet!
i was inspired today by this woman's bracelet that i saw, with all of these tiny little leaves on it. so i decided to attempt to make my own. i bought a silver chain and silver earrings with loops on the end, so that i could attach the little silver leaves that i bought. (i like silver, gold has always seemed tacky to me.)
i love how it turned out! despite having to cut off all my fingernails to squeeze the bracelet links together, it was definitely worth it. maybe i'll take a metalworking class at risd this summer if they offer them. i think i've found myself a new medium (:

monday, 12/29/08

2008-12-29T02:24:00.000-05:00

flickr, meet joe
Originally uploaded by let love in

it really is a beautiful thing to be able to blog this from the warmth of my yellow and white paisley print bedspread-ed bed. it reminds me a lot of this summer, blogging from my dorm room at socapa with the old laptop. and now that i think about it, it's funny that i'm mentioning this, because the 29th of june was my first day there. so that means that today was the 6th month anniversary of starting camp. that's so unbelievable to me. has it really been 6th months? as usual, i'm indescribably amazed by how quickly time moves. i guess that means i've really been having fun (:
today was interesting to say the least, and because it's 2 am and i have work tomorrow, i'll make the obligatory list.

1. obligatory is my new favorite word
2. giulia picked me up and we spent about two hours driving around jensen in an attempt to find this graffiti-ed building that i remembered passing a while ago, but we never found it!
3. we did, however, end up back at barnes and noble
4. after ordering my obligatory (yes i really do like this word) african autumn tea, and her caramel mocha frap, we spent about an hour working on our macbooks
5. i had a lot of fun teaching her to use lightroom!
6. we made a new friend named joe, who was visiting his grandparents and lives in connecticut. so we ended up hanging out with him for the remainder of the day, going to panera for dinner and then the mall afterwards
7. i came home relatively early, around 8, and spent some time with my mom watching a movie
8. i had planned to go to bed early ...
9. but as you can see in this post and practically every single other, that never works out!
10. goodnight (:

sunday, 12/28/08

2008-12-28T02:47:00.000-05:00

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
Originally uploaded by let love in

haha, i love how it's 2:35 in the morning and my eyelids are less than a tenth of a millimeter from closing .. but yet, i am still awake.
i was telling vinny earlier that i'm slipping back into my summertime night-owl habits. i've always loved being awake this late. things are always so loud and obnoxious around the house during the day: my mom's work phone ringing endlessly, the lawn guy mowing at all the wrong times, my grandpa turning the tv volume up loud enough that he doesn't need his hearing aids to listen to brian williams, the cat purring in his lap (okay, i don't know if i've mentioned this, but hobbes is half bob cat. so he purrs loud enough to be heard in another room on the other side of the house .. with all the doors closed. no exaggeraton.) so you get the idea. i've come to really value the quiet, and at 2:35 am, there is nothing but the quiet. and i love it.
so today was a relaxing day. i went drivng with my mom in the afternoon, managing to wound 8 pedestrians and cause a few rollovers. just kidding. although that's what you'd think was about to happen, if you heard her yelling. "wait until you have to teach your sixteen-year old to drive!", she cries. ahh, can't wait, mom. can't wait.
after picking up and eating chinese food for dinner, i shot my final self portrait for the year along with this lightbulb picutre that turned into the photoshop comp that is my picture for today. i had this idea, to represent the past year, and the year to come. this idea of growth. and today's picture is what it turned into. click to see it larger, i really like how it turned out (:

i'm not really sure if i've mentioned this before or not, but i've been doing a self portrait project for the past year. i began last december, taking a picture of myself once a month, and now the project has come full circle. i haven't decided what to do with the images yet, although i have a few ideas. suggestions are always welcome, although out of the 50-something views a day that i track to this blog .. very few of you "mysterious blog readers", as i've affectionately come to call you, choose to comment. and that's fine too, i suppose.
goodnight, hope everyone enjoyed their weekend!

saturday, 12/27/08

2008-12-27T22:40:00.001-05:00

saturday morning
Originally uploaded by let love in

african autumn tea is quite possibly the best thing to ever be invented.
that is, after spaghetti, 35mm film, and molskine journals.
i never know what to do with the tea bags after i'm done, though. part of me wants to keep them (packrat-tendency at it's best), although i'm not sure why or what i would do with them. i imagine they'd all pile up and begin to make my room smell very african autumn-like. which wouldn't necessarily be too tragic, because it does smell really good.
as you may have guessed, today was another lazy day, leaving me with nothing better to type than my own incoherent musings about the fate of my tea bags.
i love saturdays.

friday, 12/26/08

2008-12-26T01:49:00.000-05:00

pea pods
Originally uploaded by let love in

the day after christmas is always a little depressing, but surprisingly i think i liked today even better than yesterday.
it was a lazy day, which are always my favorite, and involved nothing other than continuing to read my jodi picoult book, watching the sisterhood of the traveling pants 2 dvd (thanks, aaron!), eating spaghetti, and playing with my new tablet!
it's a little tough to get used to, but i'm already so excited to start editing with it. i sorted and catalogued most of the pictures from the shoot on thursday, and although i didn't really have a chance to process any of them, i did play in lightroom with the tablet on a few of the group shots. it's called a wacom bamboo, and basically what it is is a black square about the size of my keyboard, and it comes with a pen and a special mouse. when i draw with the pen on the tablet, my strokes appear on screen and sync with whatever program i'm using. so i can do really in depth editing with my pictures, or illustrate graphics by hand in adobe illustrator, or write my signature on a business letter to my clients. it's very cool!
okay, enough about that. it's 2 am and i'm exhausted after a long day of relaxing. how oxymoronic is that? happy friday, everyone!

thursday, 12/25/08

2008-12-25T23:42:00.004-05:00

flickr, meet austin
Originally uploaded by let love in

i am blogging this tonight from the keyboard of my new macbook pro! words cannot convey how i excited i am to be able to say that.
my original plan was not to ask for anything big this year, because i got my nikon last year (hard to believe it's only been a year, more on that later), and truthfully, i didn't want to burden my parents this year with the economy in the state that it is. but my mom assured me that it would be okay, and agreed to let me help pay for it. so that made me feel much better, and i could not possibly be any happier right now. finally, i can edit and design and work at the speed that i've always wished i could, unhindered by the previous horrible-ness (to completely un-technify things) of my old computer. i can't wait to start working!
so, needless to say, today was a fantastic christmas. i got a wacom tablet that hooks up to my computer so i can illustrate and draw things that will appear on screen, a new office chair, some random camera accessories (including an awesome new reflector!), tea, new molskine journals, and some random other things.
i bought my mom a little purple ipod nano and a big book on the history of nursing (that happens to have some excellent photography inside), neither of which she has put down since opening. my grandpa got the lighthouse that he wanted (a mini one for the backyard, not an actual 500-foot ship-guiding tower), and i gave my dad some pictures of me and a few bottles of coffee syrup that i bought while i was in rhode island this summer. no one down here makes it, so he was really surprised to see it in his stocking (:
after opening presents and recycling all of the boxes and paper, lexi came over and we drove to tradition to meet my friends giulia and rachel to set up for the shoot. it lasted about two hours and although it rained a little and it was kind of overwhelming to pose fourteen people and three babies .. it worked out well. i haven't begun editing or even looking at the pictures yet, so hence no picture for today.
for dinner we went down to my neighbor/adopted grandma's house, and as i was taking pictures of the dog she's babysitting, i found myself coming to the realization that i was sitting in the very same spot, doing the very same thing that i had been doing on december 25th of 2007. i had just gotten my nikon that morning, and was struggling to understand why exactly the autofocus wasn't working for the macro i was trying to get of the leftover dinner remnants. haha, thankfully i've progressed past the common naive dependency on autofocus.
i wanted to post about this tonight because growth was one of the big reasons for starting this blog, in addition to preserving and recording every day in my life, of course. however, i'm going to save most of my mushy-reflections until the end of this project (which is in sixteen days, guys!). i will say this, though: i am so thankful for how things have changed, both for the better, and maybe sometimes for the not so better. i'm thankful for it all.

i hope that everyone had a fantastic christmas day, goodnight (:

wednesday, 12/24/08

2008-12-24T22:06:00.002-05:00

he was a burning and shining light:
and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.
Originally uploaded by let love in

i type this with a mouth full of peanut butter cookies. yum.
i'm normally not real big on baking, and honestly the only thing i'm good at cooking is spaghetti. but that's more than simple. so you can imagine my surprise when the peanut butter cookies i spontaneously decided to make from scratch after church tonight actually came out .. edible? may wonders never cease.
today was another relaxing day. i did some early-morning shopping with my mom to buy a few last minute gifts for my younger cousins, and bought some clothes for the church service we attended tonight and the big photoshoot i have tomorrow.
after lunch, i met andrew back at my house so he could pick up the print order of him and his brother, and together we put the pictures into the big frame that he bought. i really think his mom is going to love them (:
after he left, i spent the rest of the afternoon lazing around the house, reading this jodi picoult book that i got for my birthday and never had a moment to read. she's one of my favorite authors, and i love how easily i can get into her books. they're pretty long, but the way she writes is so intriguing and real that i can sit down, open to the first page, and immediately be engulfed in the story. i absolutely love to read, and really regret not having the chance to do it more often (aside from the ridiculous required books for my english class, like shakespeare's macbeth. yuck.)
after dinner my family went to church, which is always my favorite service on christmas eve. we all light our candles and stand in a big circle around the sanctuary, singing o holy night. i wish i could've taken a picture, but sometimes it just isn't right to photograph something, for fear of ruining the moment.
it's 10:05 right now .. 2 hours until christmas! happy birthday, jesus (:

picture for today is of this beautiful chandelier that was hanging above my head in the dressing room at my mom's favorite store: white house black market, or the black and white store, as she calls it. everything they sell is very formal and comes in one of two colors (or a combination of the two)- yes, you guessed it: black and white. we were there to pick out a gown for her to wear to this big gala that they're having at the end of january, because she was picked as the school board employee of the year. i'm so proud of her!

tuesday, 12/23/08

2008-12-23T23:28:00.002-05:00

away in a manger
Originally uploaded by let love in

merry christmas eve eve, everyone!
not much to post about today in contrast with the past week or so, other than sleeping in and avoiding any shopping whatsoever. i worked from 3-6, and then came home and watched freedom writers. i always forget about how much i love that movie, and how inspiring it is to me, especially because i want to be a teacher.
today was also a fantastic mail day, too. i love mail, at all times of the year, but especially around the holidays because of all the holiday stamps. i think i have a secret stamp fetish or something, haha.
when i went to check the mailbox this afternoon i found: three cards, one letter, and four packages. the cards were from my family, the letter was from my friend, and the packages were as follows: a last-minute print order for andrew and his brother, a gift from aaron, a gift for my friend that i'll have to be mailing late ... my copy of the 'a message for obama' book that my picture was chosen for a while back, and my macbook pro! oops, i guess that's five. i never claimed to be good at math (:
i can't open the laptop until christmas, but i'm infinitely excited to finally be able work at a larger volume, on a larger scale, and maybe even be able to have itunes and photoshop open at the same time without crashing the computer! what a novel idea. (;
tomorrow should be a fairly busy day, so i think i'm going to go drink some tea and read a book in bed before falling asleep.
picture for today is of a fun little experiment i did in my dining room tonight. normally, bokeh (the unfocused circles of light in the background of images) is round, but in the spirit of the holidays, i have attempted and succeeded at creating tree-shaped bokeh! it looks much better when viewed larger and on black, so click the image and in the caption there's a link to see the larger version.
merry (almost) christmas!

monday, 12/22/08

2008-12-22T01:33:00.000-05:00

picture book
Originally uploaded by let love in

okay, i'm offically over christmas shopping. like way beyond over it.
forgive me for sounding like a whiny sixteen year-old, but after doing nothing but anything for more than two days in a row .. you'd be tired too. and i'm sure you are, mysterious blog reader! is there anyone out there that has managed to escape the hysteria of pre- (and post!) christmas? i think not.
i honestly cannot wait to be able to leave my house and make it to my preferred destination in a timely manner that does not involve angry honking, speeding drivers. isn't christmas supposed to be about peace? oi vey.

anyway, all my negative christmas-qualms aside .. today was actually a very fun day, admid my exhaustion. giulia and i woke up early, planning to go to the beach, but ended up driving to vero beach (a sort of near-by town, most of them end in the word 'beach' when you live in south florida).
first, we ate lunch at panera bread, meeting sammie and dominic there for a few minutes while we sipped our soup (if you've never been and are considering it, the black bean soup is worth any second-thoughts you may have had). then, we proceeded to finish giulia's shopping at walmart, target, best buy, and finally .. the mall. aka the center of all hysteria. i couldn't stop laughing the whole time because i managed to run into one parent, two teachers, three friends, and one enemy all in the course of about eight minutes, and all taking place in a mall in another town that i hardly ever frequent. so strange!
my only errand of the day was to mail my final christmas card, (which was ironically addressed to a resident of vero beach, but i like stamps and envelopes and mailing things, so i paid to have it sent) and afterwards, we returned to giulia's house around 8 pm. from there we went to quiznos and had these amazing subs for dinner, and afterwards decided to accompany her mom to toys 'r' us and barnes & noble. definitely no complaints on my part (:
i didn't get home until about an hour ago, which must've been somewhere near midnight. i'm exhausted!
i came home to find something very amusing on my desk - an old progress report from portfolio from back in november, when i had been working on my website and hadn't turned in anything for a content grade in a long time. so, naturally, my progress report had a few zeroes on it because i hadn't yet turned in anything. not a big deal, that's just how the class works. you turn in things when you complete them, ms harriman puts in the grade. however, apparently i never explained this to my mother, though, who felt it necessary to circle the zeroes and draw in a giant question mark in black sharpie on the bottom half of the paper, and tape it to my computer monitor, haha. i really can't wait to hear about this tomorrow. she must think i'm some kind of juvinile delinquent, which is entirely preposterous. i don't think they allow cameras in jail (:

sunday, 12/21/08

2008-12-21T00:41:00.000-05:00

flickr, meet giulia
Originally uploaded by let love in

today felt nothing like a sunday! but that's just because i'm always thrown off schedule when we aren't in school.
that isn't to say that today wasn't great, though (:
originally, my family had planned to wake up and accompany my grandpa to church .. but we all slept in instead. so around noon, giulia picked me up and we went to the mall to do some christmas shopping for our parents. we ended up spending about 3 hours in barnes & noble, and i had this really fantastic hot tea called 'african autumn'. i will most definitely be returning to buy a few bags.
after heading to walmart to pick up an ipod for my mom (it's so cute and purple!), we went back to my house to put ornaments on the tree and eat spaghetti (rhyme untintentional). we had planned to meet amy and her brother at the movies, but that didn't work out, and we wanted to get to bed early so that we could wake up early tomorrow and go to the beach. it's currently 12:40 am, so you can see how well that worked out. but we are going to attempt to wake up before noon tomorrow. (;

saturday, 12/20/08

2008-12-20T01:00:00.002-05:00

goodbye
Originally uploaded by let love in

wow, is it really already december 20th? where did december go?
okay, so i'm backtracking. i still have to catch up on friday's post and add in pictures for tuesday, wednesday, and thursday .. but i figured i'd write today's while i still remember.

today was busy! i woke up early, ate breakfast, and did some online christmas shopping. then .. i went to the bank to get money, and continued my christmas shopping around town with my mother. we're normally never this last-minute, but i think christmas kind of snuck up on both of us this year.
i went to jiffy photo in the afternoon to pick up some reflectors for my big shoot on christmas, which i'm wicked excited for. i also met with the woman that contacted me about it today, and we scouted locations for all fourteen of her family members that will be a part of the shoot. it's certainly going to be a challenge!
after running a bunch of other errands and stopping at home once so i could quickly import my pictures into lightroom and clear my memory card, (yes i do take that many shots in one day, pathetic, isn't it?) my family and adopted grandparents went out to dinner to celebrate my grandpa's 91st birthday! we ate at carrabbas, the best italian place to ever exist. it's currently 1 am and i'm contemplating whether my leftover meatballs are worth a trip into the dark abyss that is my kitchen ...
goodnight! (:

friday, 12/19/08

2008-12-19T01:13:00.000-05:00

the rule of thirds
Originally uploaded by let love in

today was a half day at school, and also the last day before christmas break (:
i spent the majority of my day bouncing back and forth between my regular classes and ms harriman's room, and eventually ended up spending all of lunch in there with lexi so that we could finish putting up the rest of the a-team flyers around school.
i think the only class that i actually 'worked' in was precalc, and that's because we had to take a quiz. i don't even want to see the grade on that when we get them back. i can't wait until i can be in college and not take math anymore. numbers and i do not agree, unless we're talking f-stops (:
i can't remember much else about the school day, since i'm posting this almost two days late.
however, after school, giulia picked me up and we went to the beach! this is quite possibly the only thing i love about living in florida: being able to do this in the middle of december.
we spent the afternoon at her beach condo that her parents never use anymore, and picked up food from her dad's awesome peruvian restaurant along the way. we didn't swim, but we did lay in the sand and listen to music and catch up while we ate. i miss her, and hate that we see each other so little! but now that i've got two weeks that are relatively free from homework, that's going to change. friday was the perfect way to start my winter break, and the most relaxing thing i've done in a long time. we've decided to make it a ritual (:
i'm coming down with a cold and wasn't feeling well the rest of the night, so after shopping in anthropologie downtown and staying long enough to see the palm trees lit up with the christmas lights, i came home and fell asleep promptly at around 9. when was the last time i fell asleep at nine pm?
i love vacation!

thursday, 12/18/08

2008-12-18T23:02:00.003-05:00

portional
Originally uploaded by let love in

i bet you saw this coming, mysterious blog reader .. but today is another terrible excuse for a post. pictures later i promise!

1. i missed 1st & 2nd periods because i managed to get a large wad of superglue stuck in my hair and had to cut it out .. not fun!

2. on the upside, i missed the big bio test i mentioned yesterday!

3. i designed these flyers for our school's a-team, and used a stock image (photography for sale online to designers that need it for their work) of a bald man's head, and it has all the different subjects coming out of it (eg: math, science, social studies, art, music, etc). now, my history teacher is coincidentially also bald, and upon seeing the flyers after school became rather upset with me, or so i've heard, thinking that i took a picture of him and used them for the flyers. can't even wait to try and straighten this one out tomorrow ..

haha. have a great friday, everyone!

wednesday, 12/17/08

2008-12-17T22:04:00.005-05:00

and this is my english teacher
Originally uploaded by let love in

another list today because i have an enormous test tomorrow on a million intricate details of enzymes, photosynthisis and cellular respiration.
in 7th grade life science, this stuff was so easy. sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water help the plant to produce food and oxygen during photosynthisis. in cellular respiration, glucose and oxygen are broken down to make carbon dioxide, water, and energy. pretty simple, or was until i ended up in ib bio II.
now i have to attempt to make sense of NADPH and NADP+, PGAL, the calvin cycle, glycolyis, oxidative phosphorylation, RuBP, acetyl, and god knows what else. this stuff is like another language to me.

continuing on...

1. at the carnival last friday, i took this really funny picture of my english teacher making a crazy face at the camera for me, and ms harriman told me to print it out and give it to her, so i did today. and she absolutely loved it, lmao. she's so funny.

2. i got a 96 on my last precalc test!!! (i know, i didn't think pigs could fly either ;)

3. in portfolio, the other kids are making/personalizing oragami animals and hanging them around the room for content points. so i took pictures of andrew's ears and cropped/printed them so we could add them to his giraffe, which we named harold fitzgerald. we also printed and glued a pink argyle sweater vest to him. he's a very attractive giraffe.

4. i had a dentist appointment after school today, and found out i have to get my wisdom teeth removed ): i don't know when that will be, but apparently it needs to be soon because they're growing in rather sideways and this poses a not-so-good threat to my other well-behaved teeth. i hate people poking around in my mouth as it is, never mind having some kind of dental surgial procedure. i'm scared!

5. it's now 10:30 and i need to return to attempting to decipher electron transport systems,
goodnight!

tuesday, 12/16/08

2008-12-16T21:56:00.001-05:00

the scaled boy
Originally uploaded by let love in

ugh, another missed post. i'm running short on time right now (what a suprise!), so this calls for a list and my usual apology for not having a picture right away.

1. let me just say how much i enjoy teachers that make me cry
2. note the above sarcasm.
3. on a brighter note, i presented my IOP today (tuesday) and managed to do so without shaking (too much), stuttering, or doing anything else mildly embarrasing. and i got a 7, which is ib-speak for the highest score you can get! (my artbook will be graded on the same scale, along with basically everything else that is scored to be sent to the ib headquarters in cardiff.) lots of other people have gotten 6's and 7's, too, and it's definitely an awesome feeling because we were all so worried over it. so that almost made up for having a horrible first half of the day.
4. worked from 3-6
5. came home, did no homework, and slept for a good 12 hours!

phew. picture later, when i have the chance.

monday, 12/15/08

2008-12-15T21:33:00.001-05:00

empty bowls project
Originally uploaded by let love in

well wasn't today just a great day (:
the cold weather has momentarily lapsed into 80 degree humidity again, and i think that was probably the only downside to an otherwise perfect monday.
in artbook, i turned in my book and then took my stuff and left to go ask ms harriman a question about my extended essay topic. i ended up spending the entire period in there because i had no inclination whatsoever to return to art, so i worked on my powerpoint presentation for english and hung out with vinny until it was time to leave for biology.
i was supposed to have my oral presentation today (IOP that i spoke about yesterday) but ended up not having to go due to my swift erasing skills, and we'll leave it at that (:
in portfolio i had a lot of fun shooting a bunch of the pottery bowls made by kids in mrs d's class. (remember her? she helped me from severing off a few limbs with her giant paper cutter a few weeks ago ;)
she, along with a bunch of other art teachers in our school district, help out with this project called 'empty bowls'. kids from a number of different schools make and design bowls in their pottery classes that are then taken to the local farmers market and sold for $15 a piece. all of the proceeds go toward feeding the hungry in conjunction with the treasure coast food bank. it's a very cool project and i'm glad i was able to be a part of it!
mrs d ordered a mini table-top studio for me to shoot the bowls with, and although i had some issues with the seamless backdrop, it was otherwise a lot of fun to spend the period shooting in a mini studio enviroment. definitely not my usual style, but i loved the challenge.
after school i stayed after for nexus and spent most of the time studying for my adobe certification (which is in less than a month!) with this new program called exam-aids. ms harriman bought it online and it's basically an interactive test-simulator that asks questions very similar to the ones that will be on the actual exam. it's a lot more difficult than i anticipated it to be, and i have a lot of studying to do between now and january. but i think i can do it!

picture for today is of some of mrs. d's bowls. i think my favorite was this really cute red and green ladybug-themed one done by a younger girl. i might even have to get down to the farmers market in march so that i can buy it before anyone else does (:

sunday, 12/14/08

2008-12-14T21:17:00.000-05:00

fearless
Originally uploaded by let love in

woo another day doing nothing but homework! it's mostly my fault, because i should've started this english IOP (individual oral presentation) weeks ago, but now i'm finished (:
IOP's are a pretty standard thing in IB, this is our first one so far and i'm pretty nervous for it, because the grade carries over into next year.
i've also been hard at work on my artbook all weekend (what else is new?) and i'm wicked proud of this entry. right now i'm doing the writing portion which is always tedious, but i am so happy with the way all of my pages came out this week.
-negative statement regarding my grades in that class and the teacher has been removed in my on-going attempt to stay positive-
(:

i'll add in today's picture tomorrow.
11 days 'till christmas!

saturday, 12/13/08

2008-12-13T21:18:00.000-05:00

perched
Originally uploaded by let love in

missed this post for no reason other than my usual swamped-ness (now i know that's not a word but i'm tired, okay? ;).
i'll add in the picture in portfolio tomorrow, or maybe after school.
nothing particularly exciting happened, with the exception of starting (and finishing!) something very exciting that all of you mysterious blog readers will find out about in roughly 26 days (:
oh, and i skipped homecoming for the third year in a row, haha. originally it was because i was meeting with a client saturday afternoon/evening, but that ended up being canceled, so i probably could've gone. but then i wouldn't have had a chance to start/finish the exciting aforementioned thing that i can't disclose anymore details about.
goodbye!

friday, 12/12/08

2008-12-12T10:55:00.000-05:00

yay shower caps?
Originally uploaded by let love in

sorry i missed this post last night, too. i was actually home and on the computer, but got really caught up in all of my picture orders that i'm trying to get done.
today we finally ended up having the carnival at school, which was fantastic because it lasted 6th and 7th periods, and not 5th. meaning i got to go to portfolio! i think i was quite possibly the only person in school excited about attending an extra class.
we had to work, more or less, in 1st through 4th, though. i guess that just comes with the territory of being in ib.
in portfolio i finished the a-team flyer i've been working on for mr. arbello, and i really like how it turned out. it should be up around school next week sometime after he approves it, and then i'll be designing a second one that has more information on it that will be distributed to all of the homeroom teachers.
after fifth hour, we left our bags and went to the carnival. i spent the entire time running around with lexi, juan, and occasionally shipe or andrew or a number of other random people that felt like escorting me around to take pictures. i'm still weeding through them all because as usual i filled up an entire memory card, but it was definitely worth it. (:
the freshman class sponsored a pie booth, where teachers that we voted on as a school had to stand and be pied. they gave them shower caps, goggles, and big yellow ponchos to wear. it was pretty funny to watch, because all of the teachers that were picked were good-natured about it.
ms harriman of all people ended up being begged to participate because the carnival was scheduled to run a little longer, and the booth would've been short a teacher. so of course when we all walked into her room this morning and saw her with giant "pie me!" signs on her back and all over the door, everyone laughed and couldn't believe she'd volunteered for it.
i think only two people ended up paying to pie her at the booth because she's just not a mean person. everyone wanted me to do it, but i would've rather spent my money on a certain administrator that probably got the highest number of votes out of all the teachers, but she opted out. so i was content to watch and photograph (:
after the carnival we went back to our fifth period classes, which made me quite happy because i had an extra 20 minutes to work in photoshop before we left to go home.

picture for today is self-explanitory, haha.

thursday, 12/11/08

2008-12-11T09:21:00.000-05:00

2010
Originally uploaded by let love in

sorry i missed this post entirely! i fell asleep after school and didn't wake up until it was time to get up the next morning, ha.
it was supposed to be the pep rally / carnival day at school, so everyone was busy running around setting things up and getting everything ready. however, the weather apparently had other plans and decided to drench us with torrential downpours in the mid-afternoon. fun.
it was a great day, though, because we didn't have to do much work in any of our classes, and had substitutes in a lot of them because our teachers had to help set things up downstairs.
in biology i was taking pictures and somehow the entire class plus mrs hosie ended up in one, and it turned out so cute. i'll have to post it later when i get the chance.
in english, we had a really strict sub, so i got a pass and went downstairs to hang out in portfolio and work on my extended essay topic with ms harriman. it's due monday and i've had mine picked out for months, but then my desk ate the proposal paper and i found out i had to narrow my topic down more .. it wasn't fun. but now everything is resolved, no worries.
in precalc, we worked on our homework and then found out that
1) the carnival was canceled because of the weather,
and 2) the jersey day that was planned for friday was canceled because the administration was upset that so many kids had been "out of dress code" the day previous. note the quotation marks.
our school's administration is entirely new this year, and while everybody agrees that they're better than the tyranny we had before, they're often very unclear about what they mind / don't mind in terms of dress code. so, to make a long story short, things that we had been allowed to wear in the past (like leggings + soffee shorts, concert tshirts on 80's day .. etc) were things that they apparently deemed inappropriate this year, so the teachers got yelled at for not implementing the rules, and they in turn were quite frustrated that they didn't even know the new rules, and as a result, the flocks of kids that got sent to the dean's office were not exactly pleased, either. oi vey.
after lunch we went to the gym for our pep rally, which only lasted 20 minutes and is almost always a waste of time. we don't even have a football team (we're an 'academic' school) so our pep rallies are centered around the basketball game that follows later that night. however, they always turn into a war between all the classes, mostly the sophomores yelling at the freshmen to 'go home freshmen, go home' and then the seniors yelling '09!!!! 09!!!!' the entire time. it's fun to be amongst the chaos, but it gets old. i'm so ready to be done with this high school stuff.
afterwards, it rained really hard, i made a new friend, i had to use pliers to make andrew's defroster work on the way home, and i did not go to work because my dad didn't want to drive in the rain. so i then proceeded to go home, sleep, and not do any homework.
haha, what a day.
picture is of lexi doing our class of 2010 symbol. it's really surreal to think that the next pep rally i attend will be my last, and i'll be a senior. time flies so fast!

wednesday, 12/10/08

2008-12-10T23:54:00.001-05:00

80's day
Originally uploaded by let love in

today was 80's day! in my hurry to get a million other things done, i didn't even get one picture of my leg warmers or crazy tights ):
i may have to put them on again just for this very purpose.
i did, however, have a lot of fun running around with my camera shooting other people and their crazy attire. i love spirit week.
i felt almost 100% better today, and am barely coughing at all anymore. i don't have to use my inhaler anymore either! i'm so happy to be over this.
after school i took advantage of it being wednesday (aka the only day i don't have something going on) and took a much-needed three hour nap. i then met lexi at walmart to get tshirts, paint, ribbon, and glitter to decorate our shirts for the pep rally tomorrow. i'm excited!

picture for today is of my friend chris's vest, with all of his 80's-era-related pins.

tuesday, 12/9/08

2008-12-09T23:56:00.001-05:00

Joy is not in things; it is in us
Originally uploaded by let love in

at least i'm consistent when i go through periods of picture-less posts, right?
as you've probably inferred, this post will be missing it's picture. and as usual, it's late and i still have a ton of homework to do. what an exciting life i lead, haha.

i'm going to make a list because i've been meaning to mention a bunch of things!
1) felt much better today, wheezing has been reduced to a minimum and i'm actually able to breathe without that horrible stabbing feeling in my chest. i'm getting better!

2) i got a phone call yesterday from the hallmark institute of photography, and talked a lady in the admissions department who was very friendly and had a lot of insightful information about the school. i still have my heart set on risd, but i'll definitely be applying at hallmark next fall.

3) took my math and biology makeup tests today - biology was less than fantastic but i actually think i may have done okay on the math test. knock on wood (:

4) i'm designing a flyer for the a-team at my school, and i worked for the entire period in portfolio on this vector of a human head (you'll see, i think it's going to turn out very cool) but illustrator has been acting up on my computer and i was quite late to history because neither me nor ms harriman could find a way to save the file. when i left she was still working on it, so i'm hoping that i'll go in tomorrow and she'll have worked her magic or something!

5) it's spirit week at my school as mentioned yesterday, and i'm excited for 80s day tomorrow. i will most definitely be posting pictures.

6) i'm preparing for this absolutely enormous shoot that i have scheduled on christmas day. it's going to be a big family of fourteen, plus four babies under the age of one. they want group and individual shots, and it's going to be crazy! so today i began recruiting people to help out. so far i have four, and if you're reading this and think you'd like to tag along and get CAS hours for it, i'd be happy to give you directions and more specifics. (:

okay, i think my list turned into more of an actual post than i intended it to. goodnight!

edit - picture added!

monday, 12/8/08

2008-12-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

peeking
Originally uploaded by let love in

well, i survived my first day back! i felt very up-and-down today as far as what remains of my illness(es): in the morning, i felt lethargic and was wheezing a lot, toward the middle i was okay, and by 7th period spanish i felt so nauseous! very odd. but after school i went to beta club and then to nexus, where i felt the best i've felt in so long. a very up-and-down day indeed.
i'm so beyond thankful to all of my teachers (except one, who will remain nameless because her negativity and poor attitude don't even deserve the short sentence i'm devoting to describe them) for being so understanding and accommodating with all of the work i've missed. i only had to take one quiz today out of the 6 or so that i've missed, and i feel like i did well on it. i can't thank them enough for being so flexible (minus the one mentioned previously, why am i mentioning her again? i think it's because i'm so irritated with her...)
okay, enough.
i have lots of studying to do tonight, and unfortunately my picture for today is yet again missing in action. i did take quite a few today, though, so i'll be sure to post them when i get the chance.
(after school giulia picked me up and we met lexi at the mall to pick out clothes for 80s day on wednesday, and i can't wait to post pictures of the crazy purple legwarmers we got!)

oh, ps - i was supposed to go to the doctor again this afternoon to refill my z-pack prescription and get my new (green!) inhaler, but i was feeling well enough to push the appointment back until later in the week. my mom's been really busy lately, and i hate that i've been such a burden on her lately with everything that's been wrong with me. so i'm definitely happy to be feeling semi-back to normal.
normalcy, afterall, is certainly something i'm coming to appreciate!

sunday, 12/7/08

2008-12-07T22:54:00.002-05:00

oh hello
Originally uploaded by let love in

i am determined to go to school tomorrow! spent today catching up on an infinity's worth of makeup work, and i'm still not finished, hence why this post is so short and the lack of a picture. goodnight!

edit - picture added!

saturday, 12/6/08

2008-12-06T19:21:00.002-05:00

sick
Originally uploaded by let love in

today was not a good day for a number of reasons. i'll make a list.
1) i'm still plagued with pneumonia and pleurisy
2) makeup work is beginning to make me nervous
3) all my muscles hurt
4) i missed the biggest concert of the year, buzz bake sale, where 20+ bands gather at sound advice ampitheater and play all day.
5) today is the anniversary of my dog, diva's death. they had to put her down last year while i was at the concert, so i never had a chance to say goodbye. i miss her immeasurably and would give anything to have had a chance to see her before they put her down. it still bothers me that i was never able to gain any closure in the matter.
6) i had the urge to clean my room and rid it of all the germ-y air, but could not because i'm still too weak to do much of anything. this frustrates me to no end.

however, today was also a good day for a number of reasons. (you should know me well enough by now to know that my negativity is always fairly short-lived :) although the bad list is larger than the good numerically, i think that the better points of today far outweigh what wasn't so great.

1) i started my "10 things" set today, inspired by how much comfort my baby blanket brings me. it's my picture for today. here's a secret that should've gone into my secret series: i can't sleep without it. it was given to me by my grandparents when i was born, and they brought me home from the hospital in rhode island wrapped in it. today it usually resides behind my pillow, but when i'm sick or stressed or worried or feeling anything out of the ordinary, it gets wrapped around my neck and rubbing the silky part on the outside never fails to make me feel better. how's that for a secret? i'm sixteen and i still love this ratty blanket to death. (:
2) it was a beautiful day today, and although i couldn't go outside to enjoy it, waking up to the cool breeze and sunshine was definitely rejuvinating.
3) the death of my dog last year is, (among a few others) one of my reasons for starting and sticking with this project in the first place. having not been able to say goodbye, i realized how important every moment with the people you love really is. so essentially, that was my intent and purpose when starting this project: to accurately record every day, every important moment, and all of the little things in between. it's all important, big and small. because one day you'll find yourself very far from where you began, and having not taken the time to appreciate what you had is a very, very upsetting conclusion to come to.

friday, 12/5/08

2008-12-05T22:58:00.003-05:00

feel-better food
Originally uploaded by let love in

still sick. not much else to talk about, having done nothing but laid in bed and gone to the doctor's to find out that i have developed pleurisy as a result of the pneumonia, which would explain my awful chest pains. apparently there's a good amount of fluid floating around in there to make the friction not so bad, so the pains aren't as bad as they could be, according to my doctor, although honestly i can't imagine anything worse right now.
on a happier note, it's johnny rzeznik's birthday today, so that's exciting. happy birthday, johnny (:
not that he reads this, but i figured i'd put that out there.
no picture again because i'm tired and everything hurts. sorry that these posts have been so unbearably dismal lately, check back in about a week and hopefully things will have regained some sense of normalcy.

thursday, 12/4/08

2008-12-04T17:47:00.003-05:00

glass of bokeh
Originally uploaded by let love in

i like a lot of things. waffles, moccasins, post it notes, adobe illustrator, the state of vermont, meatballs, etc.
notice the absense of having pneumonia from the above list.
today i slept until around noon and then went to the doctor. they gave me a z-pack and an inhaler, which have antibiotics in them that will hopefully fight an epic battle with the bacteria in my lungs and win. i'm not happy to be missing all this school. i can't go tomorrow either, and i'm going to have a monsterous amount of make-up work awaiting my healthy return. being sick sucks, to sum it up.
tomorrow i have to go for a chest x-ray because my chest pains are getting worse.

picture for today is my glass of cough medicine.

wednesday, 12/3/08

2008-12-03T23:18:00.004-05:00

sooc hobbes
Originally uploaded by let love in

so apparently i've been diagnosed with pneumonia. it's early-stage and hopefully won't spread to my lungs, but really scary! i've been having chest pains on and off lately but today they were really, really bad. it felt like someone was sitting on me.
in 4th period i had horrible chills and couldn't stop shaking, and in portfolio i still couldn't get warm. ms harriman told me that my symptoms were just like hers from this summer when she had pneumonia, so i decided to go to the clinic and call home. my mom picked me up and took my temperature, which was 94.6. that wasn't good. normal body temperature is around 98 apparently, and anything below 95 is supposed to be really bad. so i was bundled up in half of my closet and set in front of one of the vents that had heat coming from it, and now it's up to 96-something. that's a little better.
i'm not going to school tomorrow, but i'm hoping that i can make it to the doctor's office to get everything straightened out and pick up some mediciation that will make me stop shivering. i'm never sick! this is not fun ):

picture for today was not taken today and has nothing to do with today. but i'm sick. illness warrents privlages such as cheating on your project 365.

tuesday, 12/2/08

2008-12-02T00:04:00.000-05:00

flickr, meet charlie.
Originally uploaded by let love in

this is turning into quite a hectic week, wow.
today i was finally able wrap up all of the contest-related picture stuff i've been doing! i was a little late to artbook because i was busy carrying this absolutely enormous, titanium, heavy-duty cutting .. mechanism (for lack of a better term) into ms harrimans room from mrs ditullio's car. she's the pottery teacher, and i have to remember to thank her for all the help she's given me over the past couple of days, especially in assiting me to not dismember myself with the enormous cutting blades, haha.
i finally have everything mounted and matted, and the last set of entries to be shipped will hopefully go out tomorrow! phew.
in other, non-contest related news .. i am determined to conquer math. the reason why i was so upset yesterday was because my math teacher seems to think i'm not the one doing my homework, because i usually do so badly on her quizzes. what she doesn't understand, however, is that i'm really just a horrible math student in general. when i'm doing the homework, it doesn't make sense, but i'm able to do the work. which is why i can never apply what i'm "learning" to quizzes and tests. it's always been this way for me and math, we just are not at all friends. we don't even pretend to like each other anymore. it's more of a peaceful, mutual hatred.
it makes me sad that this is the way things are, because i really want to like that class. my teacher is really good and a lot of fun, and is probably the best math teacher i can remember having. i really wish that math could be one of my strong subjects, because i know i'd enjoy that class a lot if it were. but no one's perfect, and at least i've come to accept the things i suck at, right? some people go their whole lives in denial. i'm glad math and i have reached this mutual understanding. (;
anyway, i worked today from 3-6 like usual and it was a fairly peaceful day. we're trying a new workflow that involves me using lightroom a lot more for exposure and tonality correction, so i'm excited about that. i know i don't post about it often because it's such a small part of my week, and sometimes i complain because i'd rather go home and sleep .. but i really do love my job.
after arriving home around 6:30 and eating cheesecake with my visiting californian uncle, i somehow ended up on the RISD website that i've memorized like the back of my hand. i was reading through their graduate degrees and programs, which i realized i had never looked at before, and apparently earning a MFA (masters degree of fine arts) in photography will also put me very close toward earning my teaching certificate! in all of my college searches i've been looking at undergraduate courses (for earning a standard bachelor's degree), but i don't know why i never thought to research graduate school. and so, as a result of my research, my current goal has changed (:
as of today, 12/2/08 .. my plan is to get into risd, double major in graphic design and photography, and minor in art education, earning my BFA's (bachelor of fine arts) degrees in all three by the end of my standard four years. then, i'll apply to graduate school (hopefully risd again!) and work toward earning my master's degree in photography, which will, like i mentioned before, put me very close to getting my teaching certificate. the program offers a lot of in-classroom experience for the first year, and then by the second year you're allowed to teach your very own class! i am so incredibly excited. if you follow my incoherent ramblings even sparatically i'm sure you've come across numerous posts where i talk about how badly i want my own classroom of photography students. and i'm so determined to make it happen.
the best part?
graduate school at risd will only require one math credit. (:

monday, 12/1/08

2008-12-01T21:46:00.002-05:00

the road less traveled
Originally uploaded by let love in

and so begins the month of december! my horoscope was right (as always) in saying that ..

"Today is a really big day for you in one way or another, but you are fully prepared to handle all kinds of extremes. You may need to take a deep breath just before jumping in, but you can do it."

i had quite a bit on my plate today, but like my horoscope's perpetual accuracy, that isn't anything new either! i feel like i'm fighting a constant battle with time, something i never seem to have enough of during the school week.
on another note, i'm trying not to focus on the other battle i'm fighting on an entirely different frontier - math. that class really put me in a miserable mood, so i don't even want to go into my usual explicit detail. i just felt it was worth mentioning because it reminded me that sometimes you need the darkness to see the light, you know? yeah, bad stuff is bad, but it only helps you more easily recognize and appreciate the good stuff, and good people. that's my take on it, anyway.
so, with precalculus equaling darkness .. that would obviously mean that portfolio would equal the light. i think if i had a lens for everytime i've posted here about that class never failing to be the best part of my day .. i'd need a way bigger camera bag. way, way bigger (:
it's really crazy how i can be having the most ridiculously terrible, treacherous, dreadful day .. and i can often be found walking into that that room carrying with me all these bad feelings. but when i sit at my computer, plug my ears with my ipod's earbuds, slowly i'm able to drown away everything and anything that's weighing me down. really the only thing i can compare it to is being home in rhode island. it's that same kind of internal peace. and i wouldn't trade it for anything.
today, after working on (yet another) redesign for two days in february for about twenty minutes, i set to work cropping, cutting, matting, labeling, and finally packaging all of the images ms harriman and i are entering in the student/teacher photo contest i've mentioned endlessly everyday for the past century. i'm so excited about it!
this whole process ended up taking more than just one class period, so consequently i missed a great portion of history, all of reading time, all of lunch, and attended 7th hour spanish long enough to ask for permission to leave. i've always been really greatful for having teachers that understand how important all of this is to me, and i've never had a problem with asking to leave to go do something in her room, which is especially nice during the spring when all of the really big photo & design contests happen. i'm excited for those, too! but i'm getting ahead of myself, as usual.
after school, i went to beta club, which only lasted about a half hour. when it ended, kim, daneile and i all headed back to the lab so i could finish packaging and move some pictures between flash drives. after that, i took today's picture, and then my dad picked me up.
i've just now realized how tediously long this has become, so with that i'm going to end this post and attempt to tackle math. wish me luck (:

sunday, 11/30/08

2008-11-30T20:49:00.001-05:00

the beast!
Originally uploaded by let love in

happy last day of november! i am quite excited for christmas.
today i began making my list, which i'm making in adobe indesign this year. in previous years i've stuck mostly to photoshop (and paint shop when i thought i was cool in middle school) but this year i'm definitely branching out. i don't use indesign as often as i'd like to, because i haven't had time to take on any graphic design clients since august. but i'm hoping to change that soon!
back to school tomorrow, and i'm hoping that my dad remembered to move my conflicting dentist appointment to friday, because i have beta club and nexus after school tomorrow. busybusybusy.

picture for today is my oldest polaroid camera - appropriately named The Beast. it takes large format film and is really tempermental, but is also probably my favorite of all my cameras.

saturday, 11/29/08

2008-11-29T00:31:00.000-05:00

remaining daylight
Originally uploaded by let love in

so, all that stuff i mentioned yesterday about spending today and tomorrow getting down to all the school-work i have to do? not so much. not today, anyway. bwaha.
truthfully, i really did intend to get some work done today .. but apparently my mind had other plans and i ended up not only waking up mid-afternoon, but also taking several naps outside in the 70-degrees-and-sunny weather.
i also single-handedly cooked a second thanksgiving dinner, because everyone else we ate dinner with the first time ended up taking home most of the left-overs. and turkey sandwhiches simply cannot be made without enough left-over turkey. so, contrary to popular belief, i'm actually as awful as i and everyone else thought when it comes to all things kitchen-related, and i was able to (mostly) sucessfully re-create thursday's dinner! the parenthetical "mostly" refers to the mashed potatoes that i tried to cheat with and microwave, before i was intercepted and made to cut up real potatoes instead. so close!

friday, 11/28/08

2008-11-28T23:48:00.001-05:00

the kusel brothers
Originally uploaded by let love in

wow, is it seriously friday already? this means i only have two days left before monday, which in turn means that i have to yet again slip back into my ib-kid skin and actually get some work done.
but what a great day today was to end my mini-break!
i woke up quite early, having also gone to bed last night quite early. it was nice to have the whole day to myself, or most of it anyway. i spent the early morning catching up on a bunch of the design blogs i follow, and reading some of the books i checked out from the library about darkroom setup. (they're horribly overdue, but i know they won't let me check them out again until the end of eternity because i've renewed them so many times .. this is such a bad situation, lmao. my solution is to keep them until i find time to read them all or graduate .. which ever comes first. and then i'll face my own self-induced punishment and pay the likely $600 fine that will ensue. good plan, right?)
around four o'clock, rachel came over and helped me pack up my camera stuff and get everything ready for the shoot i had booked with andrew and his older brother this afternoon. they wanted a portrait session of them at the veterans memorial park, with brad (andrew's older brother) in his air force uniform. he attends an air force academy in colorado, and is currently back in town for the weekend. the prints that they decide to order from today's session will be a suprise christmas present for their mom. (:
the shoot itself was a lot of fun, because they both have great personalities and were very flexible with me when we had to work with some tricky lighting. sunset is my absolute favorite time to do portraits, but it's also the most difficult because the sun is either glaring in the subject's face, or backlighting them from behind and making it almost impossible to properly expose their face without getting a silohette. however, with the help of my trusty reflector board held by one of my trusty assistants, along with the beautiful trees and foliage that had the perfect amount of shade, i ended up with some really awesome shots.
picture for today is one of them, but you can check out a few more on my flickr and definitely be on the look out for more! i'll probably process the rest on monday in portfolio. have a great weekend everyone!

thursday, 11/27/08

2008-11-27T08:51:00.002-05:00

thanksgiving diptych
Originally uploaded by let love in

thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. in fact, if it weren't for all the pretty christmas music and if christmas trees weren't so photogenic, i would venture so far as to say that thanksgiving is my favorite. but i'm indescribably excited for christmas (:
anyway, today was such a great day. my mom and i cooked all morning and around four i went driving again, which was mildly sucessful: i'm alive to tell the story.
we ate dinner at 5 with our family friends from down the street, and the food was so great. i was quite thankful to be having my second thanksgiving feast after the one we managed to pull off at school on tuesday, haha.
i'm posting this a day late, but i'm caught up again with all of my pictures and posts. hope everyone had a fantastic turkey day!

ps - picture for today is called a diptych! put simply, it's a combination of two pictures that convey a similar theme, or that contrast each other. sometimes they're an artistic sort of expression, but other times they're just a great way to combine two pictures that you really didn't feel like uploading to flickr separately .. (;

wednesday, 11/26/08

2008-11-26T02:08:00.003-05:00

drrrip
Originally uploaded by let love in

wow, today felt nothing at all like a wednesday! it's very strange having half the school week off. not that i'm complaining, though (:
i woke up earlyish and spent literally the entire day working in adobe lightroom, trying to catch up on all the pictures i've been needing to catalogue and process for clients. it's so easy to get backed up with everything, and i'm really thankful that the only disruption i had lasted for roughly fifteen minutes.
i have two stepsisters, both in their early 30's. one lives in england, and one lives a few towns away. kim (the england one) was visiting at my dad / stepmother's house today along with her husband and new baby. now, i've never been particularly close (to put it nicely) with anyone from this 'side' of the family, so obliging to go over and visit for this short amount of time was mildly comparable to having six teeth extracted.
okay, maybe not six. but i like the dental procedure analogy.
after surviving that, i returned home (12 houses down and around the corner, how ironic that my divorced parents would end up living so close to each other, right?) and continued to work with my pictures until around four, when i went driving (:
i'm an awfully nervous driver. i don't like big roads, but i'm afraid of the small ones, too. when there are a million cars around me, i'm prone to bite my lip and feel my knuckles turn white .. but when i'm the only one on the road, i find myself being paranoid that i'm either lost or going in the wrong direction. i am not at all a fan of driving. but i think i did well today, and there were no fatalities. i'll take that as a step in the right direction.

all disparities aside, today was actually a great day off from school and i'm looking forwarding to spending the rest of my break in a similar manner. it's now 2:18 am, and i never did get around to processing any of the pictures i actually took today, but my flickr has a few new shots from the shoot i did at ms. harriman's house over a month ago, that i just now got around to processing. i'll add in todays picture in the morning.
happy almost thanksgiving, guys!

tuesday, 11/25/08

2008-11-25T21:05:00.003-05:00

distance
Originally uploaded by let love in

hahahaha. that's all i have to say about today. i can't help but laugh everytime i think about it.

now you didn't really think that three lines would be all i had to say about today, did you? okay, good (:
so as previously implied, today was absolutely ridiculous. but in the very best way. it was a half day, so all of my classes were half as long, except for portfolio! i'm working on a few design projects in there and spent the period working on those and talking with ms harriman about all the upcoming photo contests we're / i'm doing. i ordered all the prints from the lab for the PIEA contest last night, and they should be here by tomorrow! i'm so excited, the lab i use is so much better than walgreens/cvs and the wait is definitely worth it.
the next upcoming contest is through a university in the midwest, and i couldn't decide which images to enter, so norton (ms harriman's photographer friend guy) is going to help. i always hate having to choose pictures for contests and portfolios, because suddenly i loathe everything i've ever taken. not good, but apparently it's a common thing.
okay, enough of the usual stuff. here's the unusual part of my day!
amy, katie, lexi, and i all cooked thanksgiving food last night and brought it to school today so that we could have a mini-feast at lunch. food included: an entire chicken, mashed potatoes & gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, bread rolls (& butter!), pumpkin pie, and brownies.
so before the bell rang this morning, we dropped off all the food in ms harriman's room where she kept guard over it until 5th period, when she snuck me into the teachers lounge to use the microwave and heat everything up! when it was time for lunch, lexi and i swiftly took all of the food in two huge insulated bags and snuck ninja-style into the lunchroom without being noticed by the dean or any other administrators. (: bwahaha.
we had way too much fun dishing out all the food and trying to quickly hide everything every time the principal or the dean walked by our table, and we totally pulled it off - until the very end. lexi bought a pumpkin pie, and the dean walked by right as we were cutting it. she was pretty mad, and kept repeating over and over that what we were doing was "not permitted" and all of this nonsense. i'm all for rules and following them (most of the time), but it's just silly to tell kids they can't bring food from home and eat it. it's no different from having your mom pack you a lunch!
but nonetheless, we still had a blast cleaning it all up and explaining the story to half the lunchroom that saw the whole escapade. it was quite legendary!

after lunch, my crazy (but awesome) spanish teacher decided that we weren't being responsive enough, so she grabbed a pinata bat and gave it to alonnah and roxanne, who she pitched little foam baseballs at. injuries include: her getting hit in the head, me getting hit in the shoulder, and various other people ducking to escape similar fates. my teacher ended up dramatically falling on the floor next to my seat and attempting to drag my desk with her, lmao it was really interesting. that class is so much fun, especially because she's decided that we aren't allowed to speak english, and we loose five points (cinco puntos!) everytime we forget. 'cinco puntos' is turning into a catch phrase for our class, haha.

so this has been quite long, and my picture for today is of amy. she drove lexi home today too and i asked her to stop on the side of the road so i could take this picture with her aviators. i love how it came out!

monday, 11/24/08

2008-11-24T23:19:00.001-05:00

make a splash
Originally uploaded by let love in

have i mentioned that i love mondays? because i do (:
although i was admittedly rather grumpy this morning after not getting a whole lot of sleep last night, today was a really fun day.
in artbook, because we don't have an entry due until after thanksgiving break, she gave us a down day to what we pleased with the class period. for a room of 15 ib kids, that translates roughly to "an hour to cram for the quizzes you're parinoid about but not entirely sure of their actual scheduled days, an hour to finish three hours worth of precalculus homework that you fell asleep with your face in last night, or an hour to catch up on that sleep you've so desperately been trying to fit into your impossible schedule." ah, yes. the perks of being an ib kid.
i did a combination of all three of the forementioned, as well as spending a good twenty minutes making an army of snowmen and a saggy-looking giraffe with some of daneile's left over clay. i did take a picture of them, as well as the dismanteled state they faced by 5th period, but i like this picture much better. as to not break tradition, i'll explain at the end.
after school, lexi and amy brought me an italian bmt from subway! after not eating lunch, it definitely made my day. at nexus, i was able to give everybody a quick run-down on how to edit and use the new website i've built, and i was so happy to see that everyone was easily able to figure it out afterwards, even without any prior experience in adobe dreamweaver.
i spent the rest of the meeting going through my flickr with ms harriman, trying to decide on 10 images for the student-teacher photography contest we're entering through PIEA. i'm uploading the print order to the lab as i type, so hopefully i'll be able to write more about this when they come in tomorrow or wednesday. i know she's doing a florida wildlife portfolio, and without even having seen the pictures yet, i know they'll be wicked good. i hope we win!

tomorrow is a half day, and tonight, lexi, amy, katie and i all went out to buy different thanksgiving foods to bring to lunch tomorrow. we're having a mini-dinner at our lunch table and i'm so excited! i'll talk more about it tomorrow.

picture for today is one i found from an old folder from rhode island this summer! i was digging through all my raw files (a type of file format prefered by many photographers because it allows you to always return the photo to its original state, regardless of the edits made in photoshop to it) and i came across a whole folder of pictures of this beautiful little bird bathing in a fountain at the fantastic umbrella factory! i'm sure i posted about it the day we went, but it feels like so long ago! time moves so quickly.

sunday, 11/23/08

2008-11-23T20:21:00.001-05:00

peace
Originally uploaded by let love in

i'm posting early tonight because i have lots of biology & math homework to finish, and i'd really like to get to bed early. (ha)
today was a lazy day, and my grandpa finally came home from the rehab center! hopefully he'll be home to stay.
i only have a one-and-a-half day school week coming up, so i'm definitely excited to get these next two days over with.
hope everyone had a fun weekend (:

saturday, 11/22/08

2008-11-22T10:11:00.000-05:00

curious
Originally uploaded by let love in

haha, and yet another post that i missed. i've been so busy lately!
giulia slept over friday night, and as usual we stayed up the greater portion of the night/morning talking. she's the only friend i have that things haven't changed with since graduating from st.andrews, and i love her for that.
we slept in late saturday morning and she left around noon. i spent the remainder of the day being relatively lazy, and enjoying the fact that i
a) did not have work
and b) do not have an artbook entry to do this weekend (:

picture for today is of hobbes, hanging out on this pile of wood behind my house.

ps. my toes are cold!

friday, 11/21/08

2008-11-21T15:16:00.002-05:00

sorry i missed this post entirely! i'm finally caught up with everything (because it's now saturday) and i'll recap what happened yesterday.

friday was a very bi-polar day. it started off quite awful, because i'm incapable of waking up to an alarm clock when i didn't get enough sleep the night previous. so consequently i was 30 minutes late to 1st period, having woken up only when my dad arrived at my house at 7:30 to take me to school. oi vey.
in biology, we did a lab on mrna transcription that i was completely confused about, and we got our tests back. i did really, really awful! it caught me off guard because i haven't gotten anything below a 90 on any of them since the beginning of the year. but i should've seen it coming, because i didn't realize that the test was on more than the section that i studied. i moped for the rest of the school day after finding out, and it just seemed like everything was going wrong. not a good school day ):
but afterwards, amy and i went shopping to buy a card for her friend, and i got orange chicken and potato wedges from the deli.
now that i look back on it, from the orange chicken / potato wedges onward .. my day became much better! food solves everything (;
after she dropped me off at home, i changed my clothes and met lexi at raquel's house to make posters for her and juan's homecoming prince/princess campaign. remember i took pictures of them about a month ago? the posters came out really cute, and i'm excited to see my pictures on them up in the hallway next week!
around 6, giulia came and picked me up and we went back to her house to get ready to go back out. she got her license a few days ago, so now we're going to be able to hang out a lot more.
it's still pretty cold out, so we grabbed venti lattes at starbucks and headed over to this friday night festival at tradition called westfest. if you've been reading this since the beginning, you might remember me shooting a band called 'rare earth' there, as well as a jimmy buffet tribute band and a lady named lisa.
the band playing tonight was 'the critters', and we hung out on the lawn with thomas for a few hours before going out to the pier and taking pictures by the water. it was a lot of fun! i saw a bunch of people i knew, some of whom i hadn't seen since freshman year. that's always kind of surreal.

picture for today is the three of us on the lawn.
and so, my bad day turned into a really great night! (:

thursday, 11/20/08

2008-11-20T15:06:00.000-05:00

charlie's hand
Originally uploaded by let love in

three days in a row, i'm on a roll. no picture again because it's 2:20 am and i have to wake myself up tomorrow (well, today) because my mom's on a business conference for the next few days.
today was stressful, and i didn't go to work.
this is a really sorry excuse for a post.
i apologize.
i'm going to do my best to catch up with pictures sometime this weekend.

edit - picture for today is of charlie's hand! he sits next to me in portfolio, and i told him not to blame me if he gets ink poisoning. he did do a pretty cool job though, maybe he has a future career as an illustrator!

wednesday, 11/19/08

2008-11-19T14:52:00.000-05:00

clipped
Originally uploaded by let love in

okay, i'm a terrible person. i didn't have time to post yesterday's picture today, and i don't have time right now to even be writing this let alone edit any of the shots i took today and post them. so pictures will have to wait.
it's been a busy week! my artbook assignment is due friday instead of monday, so i'm trying to adjust to having to fit in all this painting during the school/work week. oi vey.
i stayed after school with amy, lexi, and jessica today to help film jessica's ib documentary for her project in ms harriman's class, and then i fell asleep for quite a while after i came home. so here i am, at 1:07 am, posting this while my second to last page dries, reversing the beautiful 12 hours of sleep i got last night. it was so nice being awake in class today, wow. i had forgotten what it's like to make it through the day without falling asleep. (;
hopefully this weekend i'll have some down time because my artbook won't be due!

tuesday, 11/18/08

2008-11-18T14:51:00.000-05:00

hello sir
Originally uploaded by let love in

sorry i missed this post last night, but i was sleeping (:
i slept for close to 12 hours! how completely awesome is that?
i sadly fear that this is turning into another one of those "you know you're in ib when..." situations, because i'm not sure that i know of any other sixteen year old (outside of my class) that becomes this excited over actually getting a good night's sleep for the first time all year. haha, it's the little things in life, huh?
i'll post today's picture in 5th period today if the computers aren't blocking my blog again.
have a great wednesday, to everyone that is up early enough to read this before the day begins (:

monday, 11/17/08

2008-11-17T23:33:00.002-05:00

monday morning
Originally uploaded by let love in

yesterday's sweater weather is apparently supposed to continue for the rest of the week! i am so excited.
school was nothing short of ordinary, but i did talk to ms harriman about my adobe certification exam that i'm hoping to take sometime in the near future. i can't remember if i've actually explained what this is before, so forgive me if i'm being repetitive. in a nutshell, adobe offers certification exams in all of their creative suite software programs (eg: photoshop, illustrator, indesign, flash, dreamweaver, lightroom, all the other programs i always talk about but probably don't mean anything to anyone but creepy design-obsessed kids like me ..(; ). the exams are hosted in different locations around the state, the closest for me being about 5 hours away in miami. they're 74 questions long, multiple choice, and if you pass, they almost guarantee you a pretty high paying position in any sort of creative career. it's basically like a way of showing future employers and clients that you know what you're doing. so it's a pretty big deal! anyway, i've been thinking about taking it for a while now, and today ms. harriman printed me some more details about it. i've spent the greater portion of the evening going over all of the objectives and topic outlines; it looks pretty comprehensive and i may even have to study! haha, one more thing to add to the list.
i'm also going to be doing a few different holiday shoots in the next coming weeks, the most upcoming being a portrait session with andrew and his older brother. he thought the prints would make a great christmas present for his mom, and if his parents are anything like mine, i'm sure he's right. mom's love pictures (:
speaking of them, my picture for today is my mug of russian tea from this morning. i think i may be completely torn between my love for good coffee and good tea.

sunday, 11/16/08

2008-11-16T00:47:00.000-05:00

starbucks
Originally uploaded by let love in

a cold front came in last night and made today absolutely perfect sweater weather. i didn't spend as much time outside as i'd have liked to, but sunday's always a homework day for me. (although arguably every day is)
i also continued work on the redesign for my website, and drank way too many bottled starbucks frappachinos, which get their name from "cappuccino", which is an italian coffee-based breakfast drink that i wish my mom made more often. "cappuccino" in turn, gets its name from "cappuccio", which means "hood". apparently the idea came about because franciscan friars were nicknamed "cappuccini" (plural of cappuccio) because of the traditional hoods that they wore with their habits, and the milk/foam on top of a cappuccino kind of looks like & acts as a hood to insulate the rest of the drink and keep it warm.
so there's your history lesson for the day (:
i'm off to bed and to begin yet another school week. 38 days 'till christmas!

saturday, 11/15/08

2008-11-15T04:01:00.000-05:00

self portrait, november
Originally uploaded by let love in

it's late, i'm tired, this post is going to be even less interesting than the ones where i ramble about my day.

and i'm done doing secrets because i'm sick of them, haha.
picture for today is a self portrait.

i promise i'll upload yesterday's picture tomorrow. sorry i'm such an awful blogger lately!

good news: i spent virtually the entire day working on my website, and it's definitely making progress. i'm excited to show you guys the end result (:
goodnight/morning!

friday, 11/14/08

2008-11-14T00:50:00.000-05:00

nibbled
Originally uploaded by let love in

eep. today was a very strange combination of long, fun, ridiculous, and above all else .. exhausting. although that's not suprising in the least.
i spent most of the day running around with lexi and amy to get all of our papers signed for the CAS check on monday, which subsequently got us out of 30 minutes of history and certainly kept things interesting! but when are things not interesting, honestly? (;
amy and i volunteered after school at a nearby middle school and the woman working in the front office that registered me and did all the necessary paperwork so i could tutor ended up asking about my photography, because she's been looking for someone to shoot her kids at the beach. so i'll be in touch with her later next week hopefully to set a date so i can get the session done & have her prints ordered before the holidays. the latter half of this month and almost all of the weeks leading up to christmas are going to be so hectic this year, because everyone likes to book things at the last minute! i can't complain though, not even a little bit. because i would not have things any other way! a little chaos is healthy sometimes.
(although arguably ib = slightly more than "a little" chaos, but it's all in the way you look at things (: )
enjoy your weekend, guys!

i'll post pictures tomorrow. i'm really, really tired and have to wake up early to volunteer at the humane society tomorrow.

thursday, 11/13/08

2008-11-13T21:17:00.001-05:00

secret {day 4}
Originally uploaded by let love in

is today seriously november 13th? time never fails to catch me by suprise. i guess in a sense, i'm living the whole cliche of time flying when you're having fun, because i've been a pretty happy camper lately. (:
that isn't to say i haven't had my share fair of ups and downs, but i think that as a whole, i'm more than satisfied with how things have been going so far this year. i don't know what prompted this reflection, but if you know me at all, you know i'm prone to break out in moments of intense sentimental retrospect at any given time. that should've been a secret! oh well.

in other news, i'm working on a redesign for my website (twodaysinfebruary.com), and this time i'm hoping to actually find the time to follow through and finish the revamp process before the end of this month. i realized how outdated everything is; i haven't updated it since june!
in portfolio today i talked more specifically with ms harriman about the shoots i'll be doing over the next month or so, and i'm really excited to get started! i'm hoping to set up a mini-studio and get some good shots of the work that the pottery students will be submitting for a scholarship, and i'll also be heading to the farmers market to cover the day when they sell the bowls they're making for charity. pottery looks like such a fun class!
i'll also be shooting at the carnival my school is planning, and i don't have much more info on it than that just yet. but more will come in time (:
our CAS books are due this coming monday, so i've been trying to get all of my hours documented and logged, with the appropriate signatures and evaluation sheets for everything i've been doing. i always forget if i've explained about CAS or not for my readers that are unfamilar with the tyranny of the ib program, but we have to complete 150 community service hours in three different categories: creativity, action, and service. (hence the acronym CAS). i found out today that this project will count, so now i've got to get to work logging all of the hours i've put toward it so far. it's going to be quite a few!

today is day four of my secret series, and also the second annual "to write love on her arms" day. if you've been following this blog for a while, you might remember the week-long celebration series i did with the different languages and marker colors. it's one of my favorite causes because it sends such a strong message of hope to anyone and everyone that has ever felt alone and self-destructive. we could all use a little more hope sometimes, and TWLOHA is such an inspirational organization. check out the site at:
http://www.twloha.com/

wednesday, 11/12/08

2008-11-12T22:09:00.001-05:00

secret {day 3}
Originally uploaded by let love in

like i predicted yesterday, today was a very strange day. starting the school week on a wednesday is awfully hard to grasp.
however, that isn't to say that today was bad. in fact, it was pretty great!
normally i'm more or less in a sleepy fog from 1st through 4th periods, only to awaken in time for portfolio and then return to my sleepy state for history and spanish that follow, but today was a little different. catching up on my sleep this weekend definitely paid off, because i was awake for the entire day and didn't even catch myself dozing off in precalculus. now that's a miracle (;
i found out today that i'll be working on a few different photoshoots over the course of the next month, and i'll write more about them as the time draws closer, because i don't have all the details just yet. i absolutely love that i've been shooting so much at school lately, though, it really keeps me focused and gives me something to look forward to!
i had to stay after until around 3 today with lindsey and erica to make up a biology lab that i missed last thursday when i was absent, and amy stayed too. suprisingly it wasn't too difficult, and we finished a little early. i actually don't mind that class, i just wish i didn't have it 2nd period when i'm so sleepy!
note to self - get more sleep. i wish that were a more realistic endeavor.

picture for today is day three of the secret series i started on monday. i talked to sammie about it today, and she thinks i should do the "30 secrets in 30 days" project that circulates around flickr sometimes, but i'm not sure that i want to do 30 of them! i'd prefer quality over quantity, but i'll give it some more thought.

ps - today is also happy bokeh wednesday! (i uploaded a picture to my flickr stream for it, but it's not today's picture.)

tuesday, 11/11/08

2008-11-11T01:04:00.002-05:00

secret {day 2}
Originally uploaded by let love in

today's date is eleven eleven. i never remember to wish at 11:11 like you're supposed to, so kerianne and i have resorted to celebrating 2:19. i'm really not sure why, so don't ask (;
i wish i had been able to really appreciate today, or this long weekend in general, but as usual i was buried up to my ears in homework. currently it's 1 am and i have school in four hours .. but i'm a dedicated blogger, and have over 300 days of posts and pictures to show for it! yay for determination.
i worked today from 3-6, and it felt weird going in but not coming from school. it's going to be wicked strange starting my week on a wednesday tomorrow. not that i'm complaining, though! (:
when i arrived home from work and checked my flickr mail, i saw that i had a message from a magazine called 'the guardian', the same magazine that started the "a message for obama" group that i submitted that picture to a few days ago. well, it turns out out of the thousands of pictures to end up in the group's photo pool .. they're picking 140 of them to be published in a book titled (appropriately so) "a message to obama". and my picture is going to be one of them! ahhhhhh, i am so excited. i had trouble concentrating all night after reading that, just thinking that maybe, just maybe, he'll receive a copy of the book and read the message that i wrote to him. maybe.
that would be so incredible.
anyway, i suppose i should explain the nature of yesterday and today's pictures! i decided this weekend that i wanted to do a homage to postsecret, of sorts, except my secrets won't be at all anonymous. yesterday's was a pretty obvious one, but i'm going to make a point to include some things that you may not have known. i'm chosing to shoot them with my little canon point and shoot instead of my nikon, and not to edit them much in photoshop because i want them to retain something a little more raw and personal about them, just like the secrets themselves are. i'll probably do a series of them over the course of seven days like i did with polaroid week, because i think that any longer than that would be a little overkill. but we'll see how things progress.
hope everyone enjoyed their veterans day, and i hope that you all took the time to remember the veteran(s) in your life or in your community. they deserve an enormous amount of gratitude for what they've done for you, for me, and for our country.

monday, 11/10/08

2008-11-10T00:54:00.001-05:00

secret {day 1}
Originally uploaded by let love in

i have done nothing but homework all day today and i may just be able to finish in time for school on wednesday. i think i'm living one of those "you know you're in ib when ..." jokes because i was actually excited to have today and tomorrow off just for the sole purpose of getting all this work done. oi vey.
picture & funny story tomorrow that i forgot to talk about yesterday. (:

edit - added the picture. i'll explain in tomorrow's post!

goodnight!

sunday, 11/9/08

2008-11-09T01:54:00.000-05:00

amphitheater glow
Originally uploaded by let love in

i am so glad i do not have to wake up at 5 am and go to school tomorrow! currently it's 1:45, and i just returned home from seeing coldplay in fort lauderdale (:
best. show. ever.
well, not quite. but i'm always inclined to say so after seeing a band that performs particularly amazingly. and coldplay most certainly did.
sammie and i drove down to the city of sunrise in her awesome convertable around four to do some shopping and grab dinner before the show, which we bought these incredible seats for way back in june. unfortunately the big, indoor venue they played at had a really strict camera policy, so i had to leave both my nikon and my little canon in the car. honestly, i think that's the first time i've ever gone anywhere without one of them in months and months. i felt so strange!
but i was almost glad that i had left them behind, because i got to really enjoy the music and see the show as a fan, and not a photographer. that's definitely not something i do often.
so i've been home for about ten minutes now, and i'm absoluletely exhausted, but i'm scared to end this post and turn off my computer because i'm home alone and more than slightly parinoid.
my mom's been in alabama all weekend and my dad's been sleeping in the guest room for the past few nights to keep me company (my parents are divorced and i live with my mom, just for clarification), but tonight i told him i'd be fine by myself, because i usually am. however, i'm about to call him and make him come back (he lives 12 houses down the street from us, how convenient) because having this big empty house all to myself is less than comforting. i'm such a baby!

picture for today is of sammie, with her face all lit up by the lights in the parking lot. night photography is something i've never really had much of an aptitude or interest for, but maybe i've changed my mind.
hope everyone enjoyed their weekends!

saturday, 11/8/08

2008-11-08T20:34:00.001-05:00

post-halloween glare
Originally uploaded by let love in

ooh it's 8:24 and i'm beginning this post. what a miracle, i don't think i've posted this early in weeks (;
today's going to be awfully short in comparison to the enormous posts i've been writing for the past few days.
i spent today working mostly in photoshop and lightroom, processing all the images i shot from friday and ordering prints / getting them prepared to go online to be proofed and selected.
i also made new friends on flickr! ever since my obama picture made explore, i've had lots of contact requests and messages from people from all over the world. i've always loved the community aspect of flickr, because it brings together so many different people of different cultures, languages, and style all for a common passion: photography. it's a very cool experience to talk to someone my age, with the same camera, that lives in the middle of germany or egypt, and to see how they capture their worlds. it's interesting to see how different our lives are from each other, but it's more interesting to see how much we're alike. i think that's something everyone should come to understand: maybe we are separated by distance, language barriers, cultural disagreements, race, governments, and a million other obstacles. but at the end of the day, we're all people. we all live and breathe and love and laugh the same air, watch clouds in the same sky, gaze at the same moon, walk the same earth. differences, i think, despite sometimes seeming to make things difficult, exist to highlight and show us what we have in common with each other. and that's such a great thing (:

friday, 11/7/08

2008-11-07T01:06:00.000-05:00

march of the sky
Originally uploaded by let love in

friday's are always great days. i think that should be like a scientific law or something, because i don't know of anyone that dislikes the end of the school/work-week. especially when they have a four day weekend ahead!
i have monday and tuesday of the coming week off from school for whatever reason, and although i'll be spending the entire time doing the positively enormous amount of homework i've been assigned .. i'm excited nonetheless (:
i did two shoots during school today - one for raquel and juan, who are running for homecoming prince & princess for our junior class, and a second for the officers of the freshman class of 2012.
both were a lot of fun, especially since lexi tagged along to carry my stuff and keep me company. even though i didn't have much time to work and some of the freshmen were mildly immature, it was a great break in the middle of my day.
lexi and i ended up skipping lunch and eating cookies in ms harriman's room from 6th period through the end of lunch/reading, because three of the freshmen showed up late and cafiteria food is always less than appetizing, anyway.
backtracking a little bit, i took an awful test in precalc that i'm sure earned me an equally as awful grade, but i'm over it. math isn't my thing, and i'm not going to allow it to ruin my good mood. and that's that (:
in portfolio, i found out that i'll be doing a lot of shooting next week for mrs. ditullio, the pottery teacher, who has kids that are entering a lot of their work into a pottery scholarship compeition. i'm hoping i can lug in a softbox and ringlight to set up a mini-studio, and really make the photos of their pieces stand out among the other entries in the contest.
i'll also be helping my friend jessica out with her movie, as well as preparing some prints to enter in a few contests myself! busy busy busy. i'm really excited for the one on december 5th, though. it's a student-teacher competition, and ms harriman and i are both required to submit a portfolio of 5-10 images of our best work. so i'm really excited to start choosing what to make prints of. i might need a few different opinions, so over the next few days i'll probably post a few thumbnails of possible stuff i'm considering, and get input from you guys. i know many of you prefer to read and not comment, but i'm asking you to come out of the woodwork (so to speak) and help me out this week. i'll keep you posted.

enjoy your weekend everyone!

edit (less than 12 seconds after posting) - oh my gosh, i completely forgot to mention this! yesterday's picture, the one of my message to barack obama on the post-it note, made the front page of flickr this morning! flickr chooses around 50 images a day to display and they end up in a tab called "explore", as well as on the front page and in various other places around the website. but when i logged into yahoo in portfolio, i found that the picture itself had 614 views, 7 favorites, 6 comments, and had been displayed on the homepage! it's almost like a flickr right-of-passage to get a picture up there, so it made my day entirely. so cool!

okay, goodbye, really this time. (:

thursday, 11/6/08

2008-11-06T00:47:00.001-05:00

dear barack obama,
Originally uploaded by let love in

today i took a mental health day from school (:
this constituted me staying home, eating ice cream, watching ellen degeneres reruns, taking lots of pictures, and not changing out of my pajamas until 2 pm. definitely a good day!
i know this is my third post in a row dealing with something related to the election, but i found this great group on flickr called "a message for obama", where you take a picture of your message and submit it to the group. it's growing really quickly and already has quite a few submissions, so my picture for today is my message that i added.
like i said before, i took lots of other pictures today, but it's 1 am and i'll edit them in portfolio tomorrow. goodnight!

wednesday, 11/5/08

2008-11-05T09:38:00.003-05:00

downtown
Originally uploaded by let love in

sorry i missed this post yesterday, i fell asleep as soon as i came home and no one woke me up until this morning! so, needless to say, i'm not at school right now (thursday) and i'm taking the time to catch up on a few things.
wednesday was a decent day. i'm definitely feeling the pressure of a bunch of impending assignments and deadlines, but i've been trying not to worry about things too much. it certainly doesn't solve anything.
in portfolio, the school tech guy is working on all of the machines to make them run better, and unblock certain applications so that we can use them, like the opera web browser that i love and definitely reccomend, as well as the book-making software that i used to publish my first portfolio in january of last year. i also found out that i've got two shoots to do on friday - one for our school's freshman class student government officers, and one for raquel and my friend juan, who are running for our junior class for homecoming prince and princess. i'll be working with lexi on some posters for them over the next few weeks, as well as a tshirt design for beta club, and all of the other ongoing projects that i really don't feel like listing. so there's a lot to do!
after school, amy and i went to a middle school near by to do some volunteer work, but decided that we'd rather spend the afternoon at the animal shelter. we filled out an application there, and after almost driving down a one way street and meeting a not so friendly person, we ended up at the library to do some research for our extended essays, and so i could pick up some books on darkroom design. the library is downtown by st. andrews, so we drove by there and i turned into my usual nostalgic self. i miss it, but lately i've been thinking about how much i've changed since graduating, and where i would be if i hadn't ended up at LPA for high school. change doesn't scare me much anymore, which is why i'm so excited that last night barack obama was elected the 44th president of our country. i stayed up to watch him sweep the election with 349 electoral college votes, compared to john mccain's 163. i couldn't believe that florida ended up being blue, as well as my county! normally almost everywhere in south florida (and florida in general) is very heavily populated with republicans and conservative, right-wing thinking. but i think that this election was less about political parties, and more about the canidates themsevles. obama was such an obvious choice for so many of us because of the change he'll bring to our country, which so desperately needs someone capable of doing so. i'm excited for the next four years. i know quite a few people that are convinced that his victory will only bring america further into the depths of the corruption and problems we are facing right now. but i'm convinced that they're wrong. this quote is from the video i posted yesterday, which comes from a past speech.

"We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will
only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We've been
asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against
offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been
anything false about hope."

now, to conclude this monster of a post (sorry, i'm not sure how it ended up being so long!), today is the big day that i talked about a few posts back. i was planning on revealing a suprise that i've been planning for a while now, but i've made an executive decision (i like those, if you haven't discovered) that it would be best to wait another 65 days. why 65? because that's how many days are left in this project. today is post number 300.
this is the last 100-mark post that i will be making, and i think it's right that it falls today, barack obama's first day as the president-elect. a new beginning, and an almost-end. (:

tuesday, 11/4/08

2008-11-04T21:25:00.002-05:00

oi vey.
Originally uploaded by let love in

as i type this, the fate of our country is being decided. it's all in the hands of the electoral college, now. polls closed at 7 (well, eastern time, anyway) and now begins the longest night ever! no matter who wins, history will be made.
i've done, as best i could, to keep this blog as neutral as possible because i really feel that politics complicate things in a way that i'm not interested in being a part of .. usually. i've come to realize that it's not even worth my time to try and have a discussion with kids my age, because i've found that hardly anyone is capable of thinking for themselves. they speak the words of their parents, and are entirely unable to form an opinion of their own, or even justify why they "think" the way they do. and it's so sad! i wish more than anything that i could have been a part of this election, but i'm less than two years away from being eighteen. so i'll definitely be voting in the next one!

i have hope for our country. for a new beginning, for an innovative, thought-provoking, eloquent leader. hope for the nation's finances, hope for a greener society, hope for the educational system that i so strongly want to grow up to take part in. i have hope for barack obama (:

today's been a good day. i feel strangely empowered, which could possibly be resulting from the espresso i downed earlier, but i'd like to think it's the inspiration i've been looking for. i hope that it's found me, or that i've found it. and i hope the same for the next leader of our country.

picture for today has nothing to do with the election, but i'm embedding this video below for you guys to watch. living in south florida, i have a lot of republican friends and blog readers. but i'm asking you to watch this without bias, without prejudice, without a political affiliation. just as an american.

monday, 11/3/08

2008-11-03T01:11:00.000-05:00

disfigure
Originally uploaded by let love in

so today was supposed to be a huge milestone as far as this project goes, but my count was off by 3 days ):
so no celebration just yet.
it's probably just as well that i miscounted anyway, because i've been in a weird creative funk (for lack of a more attractive word) lately. it's a mental thing, and kind of like a vicious cycle. i'm not sure how exactly to go about overcoming it, because i recognize that it's mostly myself being overly-critical of everything i'm creating. that's the weird thing about having designer's block, because i actually find myself producing a larger volume of work than i normally would on any given day or week, but the difference is that i'm not happy with anything that comes out of it.
i guess this is a pretty dissapointing post, especially since i lead you all to believe that today would be exciting! sorry about that. three more days (:

sunday, 11/2/08

2008-11-02T00:16:00.003-04:00

hobbes-'roid
Originally uploaded by let love in

i am such a slacker!

tomorrow's a big day, though. i have something exciting planned for you guys (and no it's not just catching up on the past two posts, although that'll be included too!)
(:

saturday, 11/1/08

2008-11-01T20:40:00.001-04:00

happy bokeh .. monday?
Originally uploaded by let love in

happy november, faithful mysterious blog reader (:
i'm calling you faithful because you're still reading this after i've abandoned you for almost an entire weekend. sorry about that!
today's going to be another disappointing post, because i don't have a picture up yet. my scanner makes too much noise and it's quite late, so i don't think i want to wake up my mother right now. tomorrow is another day.
as far as my first day of november was concerned, it was great! i worked from 1-4, and met giulia at the mall afterwards to do some much needed winter clothes shopping, and to pick up a birthday present for my dear friend vinny. he turned sixteen today!
happy birthday vinny!
he already knows what i got him, so i'm not concerned with giving it away when i describe my hunt for the perfect sweater. see, vinny has not owned that "perfect sweater" that everyone should have at least one of, and i'm aiming to change that. i have a serious bonafied love for good sweaters, and it's actually my philosophy that everyone should understand the value of finding the perfect sweater. (it's late, bare with me right now) so today began and ended the quest for such a sweater, as giulia and i found it around 7 pm in american eagle.
okay, it's currently 2:33 and i have quite a bit of artbook to do tomorrow (read: the entire entry). so sleep sounds like a good plan.
goodnight!

friday, 10/31/08

2008-10-31T02:28:00.001-04:00

dashboard bokeh
Originally uploaded by let love in

happy halloween! i realize that this post is also a day late, but i'm catching up after having a really fun night (:
giulia and i dressed up as black cats. first we went to a fall festival at st andrews for a few hours, and ended up walking downtown and meeting carmine and matt, who neither of us had seen in forever. we ended up having a pretty big group of people with us, because tyler and aiden came along too, and then we met up with tyler's friends whose names i can't remember. we grabbed some gelato at this great little place by the library, and had coffee afterwards at java charlie's. later we decided to head back to giulia's neighborhood to trick-or-treat (my first time since 2006!) and we rode from house to house with everyone piled into the golf cart. it was a little squished, but wicked funny (:
afterwards we dumped out all of the candy and sorted it by type (at my request because i swear i'm inheriting my mother's ocd-like organizational qualities) and watched this really awful movie that giulia's brother found on pay-per-view. i don't like scary movies, so i was content to eat my reeses peanut butter cups and do everything in my power to ignore the screaming woman on the television. (;
aiden and tyler left around 1 and giulia and i stayed up talking and eating nothing but chocolate for the remainder of the night/morning.
i had so much fun for the first time in so long this halloween, because for the past two years it's fallen on a school night and i've been plagued with an awful essay or assignment, thanks to ib. but this year was perfect, with it falling on a friday of a weekend at the end of the marking period. i couldn't have asked for anything better (:

thursday, 10/30/08

2008-10-30T01:22:00.001-04:00

brad
Originally uploaded by let love in

sorry for neglecting to post this three days ago! it's been a busy weekend.
thursday was a great way for me to end the week, with it being a half day and the end of the marking period. i'm almost positive that i'll have a's in all my classes except pre calculus, and i'm okay with that. i'm proud of myself for making it through my first quarter of real IB!
i've been feeling a lack of design inspiration lately, but quite the opposite in terms of my photography. i wish i could kind of even things out, but i'll give it time. this weekend should be a good chance to catch up with my sleep and just overall sense of normalcy.
i had a meeting with the principal about the darkroom plans today, and i'm not really sure what to say about the outcome. i'm a little confused, but i want to say it was positive? not entirely sure. more about this later when i can sort out my thoughts and attempt to understand his.
after school amy and i hung out with brad for a little while at his house, and then i worked from 3-6. i met giulia at the movies after work to see the secret life of bees (which was fantastic and definitely reccomended to anyone and everyone, both the book and the movie) and we went for ice cream at friendlys afterwards.
that's really all i remember, since i'm posting this almost four days behind schedule, but my picture for today is of brad. happy polaroid week, day four!

wednesday, 10/29/08

2008-10-29T03:58:00.000-04:00

fall feet
Originally uploaded by let love in

my sleeping patterns should really be studied or something. i came home from school around 3, napped until four, took pictures until five (lots are up on my flickr: www.flickr.com/letlovein), and then promptly slept from five until waking up at 2 am about an hour ago.
normal, right? (;
today wasn't a particularly exhausting day of any sort, but i was lucky to have a relative break from homework for the second night in a row, so i suppose that it was good to catch up on all this sleep on a day like today.
this morning was the coldest yet, even though it warmed up to the low 70's by the afternoon. i find it so funny how, with this tiny drop in temperature, everyone at school comes in with these enormous parkas and fur-lined winter coats. it always takes me a day or so to get used to it, but this is the kind of weather i know i belong in. it reminds me so much of home and how much i can't wait to go to college at risd. this is my second-to-last winter in florida! holy cow.

picture for today is of my moccasins and the little tiny 50 cent pumpkin that i bought with amy this afternoon! she was driving me home and we passed a pumpkin patch, and she remarked that she had never been to one before. i was so shocked and made her turn the car around and drive back so that i could get us pumpkins and take pictures of her picking them out. haha, it's the little things in life, huh? (:

tuesday, 10/28/08

2008-10-28T00:37:00.001-04:00

bageled
Originally uploaded by let love in

the weather continues to be beautiful and crisp, and although it makes me terribly homesick, i have to say that this is one of the only times of year that i'm thankful to live in this dreadful state. it's all the beauty of new england weather, minus the impending snow, slush, and rain. now if only the leaves would change colors!
for a tuesday, today was pretty great. we had presentations in my english class, and i'm the first to admit that public speaking certainly isn't at the top of my list of favorites. but thankfully we had a very short time frame and my shaky knees were able to carry me back to my seat in under five minutes. honestly, i look back on giving my valedictorian speech in 8th grade and have no earthly idea how i managed to do that in front of 200+ people. oi vey.
anyway (that rhymes!), the rest of my day passed remotely uneventfully, but was not altogether boring. as i've mentioned before, i love sweater-weather, and i just felt so at peace today.
after getting on my bus, deciding at the last minute that i'd rather ride home with amy, and making use of last year's apparently un-tapped track skills (remember when they wanted me to try out for that? ha.), i sprinted to her car, drove home, and then to work, where i had trouble concentrating because i couldn't help but feel like i was missing valuable time out in the remaining hours of the cold weather. but it turns out tomorrow's going to be even colder, and the front should last through friday or saturday! i'm so excited (:

i had no homework tonight whatsoever because i finished it all last night / in class today, and was able to come home, take a nap, eat dinner, actually hold a phone conversation with giulia and a few other people, shoot a few pictures in between, and find that lydia had given me and a handful of other very special people a blog award! i'm going to have to go back and check out the other recipients' blogs, especially after reading the excerpts. thanks, lydia!

so all in all, today was not a bad tuesday in the least. (:
happy polaroid week, day 2!

monday, 10/27/08

2008-10-27T23:45:00.002-04:00

polaroid week, day 1
Originally uploaded by let love in

happy polaroid week! for the next 6 days, every day's picture will be a polaroid in celebration of this. (:
today was so beautiful, it was the first "cold" day of the season (read: 70 degrees and non-humid) and i was able to wear my favorite sweater! we didn't have a nexus meeting after school because ms harriman had a doctor's appointment, but amy and i stayed after to talk to mrs spooner about CAS and some other stuff.
i was home by around 3, and worked all afternoon/evening to get most of my homework for the week finished. i'm so excited! maybe i'll even find time to watch a movie or paint something because i actually want to paint it, and not because i have a due date looming over my shoulder. (:

sunday, 10/26/08

2008-10-26T22:08:00.001-04:00

morning glory
Originally uploaded by let love in

it's 10:03, so i'm posting this pretty early for a sunday night. i'd like to start off this week on a somewhat normal note by getting my sleep schedule back in order (ha! what a novel idea) and maybe even being able to come home one afternoon without collapsing on my bed until dinner. we'll see (;
today was another homework-filled day, to conclude yet another homework-filled weekend. next weekend is going to be very busy, so i'm excited to actually make it out of the house to do something not ib-related.
hope everyone enjoyed their weekends a little more than i did. 9 more days until obama hopefully rescues the country! (:

saturday, 10/25/08

2008-10-25T21:27:00.005-04:00

seventh day
Originally uploaded by let love in

i'm stressed! i should not be stressed on a saturday. saturdays are for sleeping late, finding new music, not wearing shoes, eating waffles with extra butter, and folding my legs indian-style to sit in my beloved chair and begin a design.
i think the only thing of the above that i was able to accomplish involved the waffles, but i burned them ):
however, i am excited to announce that i've finished painting my four artbook pages for the weekend, and will now spend the rest of the evening completing the entry with a mostly bs-ed analysis of line, shape, and color. shhh (:
i'm posting this early, because i have a lot i'd like to finish before heading off to sleep. tomorrow, i need to remember to call my boss and apologize for not getting her voicemail in time yesterday. she had called and asked me to help her at a shoot in vero today, but i didn't check my phone until it was much too late to call her back. i hope she found someone else to help her out! i know from experience that it's definitely not easy to do a big shoot without someone to tag along and keep you organized.
hope everyone had a more relaxing saturday than myself!

ps - you may have noticed that some of my pictures from this past week were posted at a larger size than normal, and it's because i've made an executive decision. from now on, when the day's picture is one i particularly like, or one that i think looks best when viewed larger, i'll post it at that size. okay, peace out for real this time (:

friday, 10/24/08

2008-10-24T00:54:00.002-04:00

i think i have a love/hate relationship with the rain. sometimes it's calming, and gives me a good excuse to wear my hair curly .. and other times (which seem to be the most often), i wholeheartedly condemn the rain for making me feel sad and turning my ponytail into an afro.
today was a rainy day.
it started off all wrong, because i didn't get much sleep last night at all. although that's nothing out of the ordinary, i didn't have time to grab my coffee before leaving, and was subsequently exhausted for the remainder of the day. i was able to take a nap in artbook, though, because we had a substitute (:
i had a test in biology 2nd period, which wasn't entirely awful. today was a progress report day, and i found out that i have a 98%! so that was certainly exciting to hear.
as far as my other classes: i have a precarious A in english, so i'll have to do well on the rest of next week's assignments to make sure that it doesn't drop to a B. i have a's in all of my other classes, except math.
math has always been a hopeless cause for me, and i think it's because everything is so factual and indisputable. i like possibilities, differences of opinion, expressive and creative things. but math is the opposite and thus, it seems, something i'm forever incapable of understanding.
for the most part, though, i've come to terms with the fact that things can't always turn out the way i'd like them to, and i can't expect myself to be perfect. mostly (;
it would be nice if we could somehow distribute points between classes. i have a 315% in portfolio right now .. why can't i just apply like ten of those points to my math average? i don't think that's an entirely preposterous idea. it would certainly make things much easier!
after school, i went with lexi to grab our biology binders, get signatures on our national honor society applications, and finally to meet up with amy, who drove me home. i forgot to mention that i rode home with her yesterday, too, and we got slightly lost. did i mention that in addition to being completely awful at math, i'm also the worst directions-giver ever?
today was a little better, though, and we were able to make it home without anything too terrible occurring.
currently it's 1:12 am, and i just woke up from a very long nap that spanned the entire evening and caused me to miss dinner! so i'm eating pasta and typing this with awfully blurry vision. i think i need more sleep.

picture for today is of the map that i drew amy so she wouldn't get lost trying to leave my neighborhood. apparently we can add being a cartographer to my list of incapabilities, too! (;

thursday, 10/23/08

2008-10-23T23:40:00.006-04:00

six o'clock
Originally uploaded by let love in

ah, another thursday. despite seeming to drag at a snail's pace yesterday, today actually snuck up on me. tomorrow's friday already!
i was supposed to have a meeting with my principal today to present my darkroom plan, but he wasn't available after 6th period when we went to his office. so i passed the time before lunch at the computer, writing him an email that outlined what i had planned to present to him today and requesting another meeting with him for tomorrow. hopefully we'll get to talk in person, because i'm really excited to get underway with this!
after work, i talked to sammie who lives in vero beach and has a darkroom at her school, and i think i'm going to try and take a trip down there on thursday or friday of next week, when we have no school and their district does. i want to talk to her photo teacher and see how their darkroom is laid out, especially as far as ventilation and safety-related stuff. i might even drag ms harriman along with me for this, too, because i think i remember her saying something about knowing teachers at the school.

in other, non-darkroom/photography related news ...
i can't think of anything! i'm sure these posts have been unbearable to read lately because i'm so absorbed in all of this. sorry about that, guys. i need to take up a second hobby, like boxcar racing or something. (;

wednesday, 10/22/08

2008-10-22T00:25:00.001-04:00

magenta
Originally uploaded by let love in

today was a very busy day, but it seemed to last forever!
lexi and i went to mrs spranza's room (the french teacher) because she had requested that i do a headshot of her and some candids of her class, but she wasn't ready when we came, and wanted me to come back tomorrow during my 6th period class .. but i can't miss class. so i'm not sure how this is going to work out.

backtracking a little .. in artbook, i sketched & drew a mini-blueprint of how i want the darkroom to look! last night after i posted, i was poking around on craigslist and found so many posts with cheap darkroom equipment available! i printed the ones that looked like they have what we'll need, along with the forms i have to fill out for the kodak grant (did i talk about that yet? i can't even remember), and tomorrow i have a meeting with our principal to sit down and present my plan! i'm dragging ms harriman with me because i'm a big baby and am too afraid to go by myself, so i feel a little less nervous now. i'm so excited to see what he thinks, though! everyone else i've talked to seems to be completely on-board with it, so hopefully he will be too.
i stayed after school with amy for about twenty minutes to talk to mrs. spooner (remember her? she taught me to skip last year!) about how all of this will qualify for CAS hours, and she told me that even the time i spend emailing kodak about the grant will count for hours! so that's certainly good news.

picture for today is in celebration of bokeh wednesdays, which is a weekly thing done by lots of people on flickr. bokeh is the unofficial term for the little blurry circles and shapes that are seen in the background of pictures with a really shallow depth of field (blurry backgrounds). this picture isn't the best example, but i shot it in the courtyard at school on my way to mr. wyder's class, which i'm always late to because it takes forever to save my photoshop documents, and it's always less than appealing to leave portfolio and trudge up the stairs to learn about thomas jefferson (;

tuesday, 10/21/08

2008-10-21T00:12:00.001-04:00

ms. harriman
Originally uploaded by let love in

to be entirely honest, i did not end up going to bed last night until much later than my 11:49 posting time. of course i came to regret this decision upon waking up this morning and throughout the course of my day, but regardless i did end up having a pretty great day!
in artbook, iris came on the radio, so that immediately made everything better.
in english, i received a 100 in return for my hours of toil last night/this morning, and i'm so glad to be rid of frankenstein (for the time being, anyway).
portfolio was actually the worst part of my day, because we don't have enough server space for all of the kids saving work from the design classes, and it crashed this morning ): so lots of kids lost everything on their accounts, and by noon, it was predicted that anyone that hadn't lost theirs yet would by the end of the school day. i spent most of the afternoon collecting flash drives from various people to try and back up my work, but i ran out of space and had to leave a lot of it behind. i'm just preparing myself for the worst tomorrow in thinking that when i log in to my account 5th period, all of my work will be gone. i guess all i can do is wait, though.
on a lighter note, however, i really enjoyed work today and ate breakfast for dinner at cracker barrel afterwards. currently it's 12:04 and i've been printing out craigslist listings for darkroom equipment, and tomorrow i'm going to sit down with ms harriman and try to figure out more of the specifics of this enormous project. like i promised before, more details will come in time. (:

edit - picture for today is ms. harriman's re-done headshot. click to see it larger, i'm so happy with how it came out!

monday, 10/20/08

2008-10-20T23:48:00.012-04:00

lexi shooting andrew

today [read: not tonight!] was a fantastic day (:
but that seems to be nothing out of the ordinary, as mondays have come to be my official favorite day of the week. there's no picture for today just yet, because it's 11:49 and i just finished spending my entire evening doing 150 close-reading entries for frankenstein, and frankly (no pun intended) i would like to sleep tonight. and i know that plugging in my camera and importing things into lightroom will not speed that process along whatsoever (;
but speaking of light/darkrooms, i have big news! well, sort of. it's still in it's infancy, but i have big plans in the works involving building a darkroom at my school! i've been in contact with kodak, fujifilm, and now ilford for the past day or so and i'm finding out what exactly they'll be willing to fund and donate. so definitely more details on that soon, along with the space i'm hoping the school will let me use. i need to schedule a meeting with our principal.
i told a few people about it today, but i'm not sure if it would be wise to really explain everything until i know what's going on. but trust me, it's going to be awesome (:
on another photography-related note, i had a lot of fun this afternoon teaching lexi her second portrait shooting lesson and her first in post-processing. i really think she has a lot of potential to persue a creative career, because her pictures turned out fantastic and she catches on so fast!
i really can't describe how it makes me feel to know that i can inspire people like this, and that she's learning to get creative and explore a medium that i love so much. there's an immense amount gratification involved in taking the perfect picture, or designing graphics that turn out great, but i'm finding every week that i honestly enjoy the teaching/learning aspect of it even more, if that's even imaginable!

sunday, 10/19/08

2008-10-19T22:39:00.002-04:00

what's on my desk?
Originally uploaded by let love in

short post today, as it's nearing time for me to go to sleep and i still have lots of close-reading left to do ):
i love english class, but having to pick apart and analyze every page in a book really ruins the story for me, and gives me no time to even read for pleasure anymore. oh how i miss summer.
but the good news is that i just finished a very good peanut butter and [strawberry] jelly sandwich! i'm not sure why that's good news, but this post could use a little cheerfulness amidst the misery that seems to plague me when i have to finish 200 literary devices.

saturday, 10/18/08

2008-10-18T02:12:00.000-04:00

possibly a tiger lily,
Originally uploaded by let love in

i am so tired. i think i need to patent that phrase or something, because it seems to be the only thing to leave my mouth lately. well, that's an understatement. but you get what i mean.
today was exhausting and felt just like a school day, because i worked for 7 (yes, seven!) hours as opposed to my usual four. i had to make up for missing thursday. don't get me wrong, i love my job and would not trade it for anything (well, almost anything) but it's very draining! and just to kind of add to the chaos that is my life, i have a bunch of really big homework assignments due on monday and tuesday of this coming week. oi vey.
on the bright side, however, i was contacted today by the editor of our yearbook at school, and she wants to use my pictures from group IV on thursday for a spread about the IB life. so i'll be burning her a disc with quite a few images to choose from, to say the least, haha. but i'm excited to actually know this time that my stuff is going to be included! i entered a photography contest through the yearbook last year, and never knew that i had won anything until i actually got my copy, and saw that bridget and her horse silohette had won "best overall". i'm sure i posted about it back in may or june when it happened.
that was such a long time ago!
time really does fly, huh?

picture for today was not taken today. i'm sorry, really i am. i'm more apologizing to myself because i can't stand when i use a picture from another day, but it's 2:12 am and i just finished my math homework. so it's off to bed and another early morning to follow.

friday, 10/17/08

2008-10-17T02:45:00.000-04:00

best thing since sliced bread
Originally uploaded by let love in

i did not attend school today! i always feel kind of guilty when i miss school, even if it's for a legitimate reason. i'd like to think that today was legitimate - lack of sleep / utter exhaustion - but part of me knows i should've dragged myself out of bed and just gone to school. it was only a half day, and on early dismissal days, 5th period is twice it's regular length. meaning i could've been in portfolio for over an hour ):
but instead i chose to roll back under the covers and continue sleeping until roughly 9 am, when i woke up slightly confused and thinking it was saturday. not quite.
i'm swamped with big homework assignments this weekend, so i couldn't go out to celebrate jamie's birthday tonight with nicole and lexi. but i was able to finish editing & uploading all the pictures from the group IV trip yesterday! they're in two big albums on facebook and everyone is tagged now, so you should go check them out if you think you might be in them (:

picture for today is of this great cranberry bread we have lying around in the kitchen.

thursday, 10/16/08

2008-10-16T01:21:00.000-04:00

never too old
Originally uploaded by let love in

today was such a fun day!
every year, the ib biology II and III juniors and seniors are required to go on an all-day field trip and collect field data for a write up lab that gets shipped off to be graded by ib people in switzerland. but it ended up being a lot more fun than i thought it would be!
we left school at around 7:30 and didn't return until 1:45-ish, so we missed all of our classes, and got to spend the day at jaycee park on the inlet side of the indian river, doing water quality tests, sea grass transects, and lots of other stuff. i'm not really interested in science, but it was cool to go seining (sp?) and learn about all the tiny little things that we picked up in our net. it broke my heart that we were even bringing the baby fish out of the water, though. they're so helpless and albeit slimy and wiggly, it was awful to watch them just flop around in the net while we studied and counted them. i guess it just seemed like it took longer than it really did, though, because we returned them to the water before they suffocated and they swam back to wherever it is that fish go. so that was good (:
i took so many pictures today! you're probably rolling your eyes, mysterious blog reader, but even i surprised myself today. i wish i had time to delete the pictures of vai before bringing my camera this morning, because i would've had more room on my memory card. but i guess it was a blessing in disguise, because as it is i have over 250 that i need to catalogue and edit. so for everyone reading this that asked me about prints or digital copies .. it'll be about a week. maybe more, maybe less, depending on how this weekend goes.

picture for today is of amy and chris riding in the ladybug car on the playground after lunch. we all kind of felt like we were five again, but it was fun (:

wednesday, 10/15/08

2008-10-15T00:30:00.000-04:00

breezy
Originally uploaded by let love in

its october 15th its october 15th its october 15th!
the new versions of all the adobe products shipped today :D
i won't be getting my legal copy of photoshop for a few weeks because i haven't had a chance to work out with ms harriman how she's going to transfer her license and stuff, but i can't wait to actually have cs4 box with my name on it!
today we took the PSATs, which conveniently got me out of artbook, biology, english, and math. i finished the sections early, so i had time to nap after each one, and was able to wake up well rested from my sleep and head straight to portfolio. definitely a good day right from the start (:
i'm slowly making progress on the nexus headshots, but i realized today that i want to re-do some of them next monday, specifically andrew and ms harriman's. because he was so tall, a lot of the pictures ended up only being in focus on one of his eyes.
i want to re-do hers for a different reason, though. i've always loved shooting people, and not because i like memories and keepsakes. people as humans are so complex; we're all different in so many ways and have distinct aspects of our personality that are reflected in the way that we act and speak to other people. a portrait should be completely in-tune with that, completely aware of the person and a more than accurate representation of who they are. it's hard to explain, but i guess the best example i can think of is those shots you see from national geographic, of the people from all over the world, usually shot during wartime, with the huge, sad eyes, where you can see so much emotion just pouring from the expression on their faces. you feel what they felt, right in that moment, and instantly connect with them just by looking at the photograph. that's what a portrait should be, and that's why i work so hard when shooting them to make people feel at ease. granted, anxiety is an emotion that no one is exempt from, but no one enjoys being uncomfortable. and i really believe that a portrait session should be enjoyable, not something that you dread.
that being said, her pictures came out great. they're exposed properly, are mostly all in focus, and at first glance, are seemingly in no need of being re-shot. but the second part of shooting some one's portrait is knowing who they are. you can't successfully capture someone if you yourself are not even acquainted with them. a portrait is a visual, time-elusive representation of a soul, of a life. maybe i'm getting too new-age here. the point is that out of the 9 or so headshots i have of her, none of them say anything but generic to me. they don't say anything about her, and don't look any different from the posed yearbook photos that i've always been so quick to condemn.
and that's not what i want at all. i talked to her about it after class today, and she told me that she just doesn't like to have her picture taken, and i understand that. but i don't think that's any excuse for me to not create a portrait that really shows who she, or anyone else in this situation, is as a person. there's no excuse for generic photography. every picture should tell a story, convey meaning, illustrate a thought or emotion, and it should do it in a way that simultaneously conveys the passion and thoughtful work of the person behind the lens. if it doesn't, then it isn't truly photography. it's not art, as far as i'm concerned. this is something that i love so much, and i'm not about to settle for satisfactory. i know i can do better.

tuesday, 10/14/08

2008-10-14T23:18:00.002-04:00

paint with all the colors of the wind
Originally uploaded by let love in

on my way to work after school today, i vowed to myself that i would come home, take a shower, eat dinner, watch a movie, and be in bed by nine. no homework, no computer, no camera, nothing.

obviously that plan was very successfully thwarted by my dedication to this project and my obsessive homework tendencies. someone should do a psych study on IB kids. it can't be normal to skip sleeping opportunities to work on stuff that isn't even due for another week.
but i like being on top of things. stress sucks!

anyway, mini-rant aside, today wasn't nearly as exciting as yesterday, but was not altogether awful, either. i worked on more of the nexus headshots in ms harrimans class, and am slowly creating this geometric paisley-print, 70's-inspired wallpaper in illustrator.
i'm exhausted, so i really don't even feel like detailing the various other non-important aspects of today.
picture was taken in artbook with the help of daneile.

ps - cs4 tomorrow!? ahhh! (:

monday, 10/13/08

2008-10-13T00:38:00.000-04:00

vinny!
Originally uploaded by let love in

you know, i'm really starting to think that mondays are my new favorite day of the week. not even kidding! i have yet to experience a bad one since the beginning of this school year (as far as i can remember ..) and today was no different. or perhaps it was, because this particular monday may have even surpassed all the others in it's awesome-icity. is that even a word? well, now it is. (:
school usually makes me pretty miserable because it takes away from the time i can spend doing creative things like shooting and designing, but today just seemed to be a very creative day.
in artbook i got a letter from my school's chapter of the national honor society, because i guess i meet the requirements to be eligible to apply for membership. so i have to fill out an application, and hopefully i'll get in! i was in the national junior honor society all through middle school, i wonder if that counts for anything?
anyway, in biology i started doodling these leaves and it turned into an entire page of what looks almost like a wallpaper-type print, and i'm excited to scan it and work with it in photoshop! granted, i probably could've benefited from listening to mrs. hosie speak about the big field experiment we're doing this week off campus .. but that's okay.
in math, to my dismay i received a quiz back with a not-so-great grade on it, but the fact that mrs arthur had printed out some information about polaroid emulsion-peeling and gave me the copies along with my bad test grade kind of made up for the fact that i think that class is going to ruin my 4.0 this quarter. that was a run-on sentence, sorry.
so i'm definitely excited to try out the different polaroid-peeling techniques! i never knew my math teacher was into photography at all, but she must know something about polaroids to have thought to look that up for me. pretty cool!
the rest of my day passed in normalcy (is that a word? i hope so), and when the dismissal bell rang i grabbed my artbook and headed to the nexus meeting, where i proceeded to shoot headshots for the afternoon! i had brought my camera bag to school thinking that today was the day i'd be doing teacher portraits, but i guess that'll be later this month.
lexi stayed after to get CAS hours from my teaching like rachel did on sunday, and i had so much fun showing her how to shoot. she caught on really fast and was able to be a great assistant while i shot portraits all of the nexus members and ms harriman in the courtyard.
everbody's shots came out so great, i can't wait to do a proof session next monday and let everyone pick their pictures. next to actually doing the shoot, i think the most gratifying part is watching the reactions afterwards, when people realize that all the awkward posing and squinting and cheese-ing was worth it (:
i can't wait to start booking more shoots and finding clients for the week days after school; shooting just completely de-stresses me and leaves me feeling like my life has more purpose than just finishing endless homework assignments.

picture for today is one of vinny's shots! i didn't have time tonight to really get into any post-processing with too many of the others, but they'll be up on my flickr within the next few days, so keep an eye out!

sunday, 10/12/08

2008-10-12T21:48:00.004-04:00

roar?
Originally uploaded by let love in

well aren't i just a rebellious blogger lately. no picture two days in a row! sorry, guys. it's not that i haven't been shooting any, quite the contrary. i just haven't had a chance to import/catalogue everything from this weekend into lightroom, never mind process anything or upload to flickr. but hopefully i can get a jump on that tomorrow!
today was such a fun day, despite having to wake up fairly early. rachel picked me up around 11 and we drove to fort pierce, where we spent about a half hour going through a quick run-down of how an SLR works, how to set up a tripod, etc. she's looking for CAS hours for creativity, and i love to teach, so things definitely work out. once she got the hang of things and i felt like she had a pretty good understanding of what i taught, i let her take some pictures downtown by the water and practice a little before we headed off to vero.
a few weeks ago i think i posted about how ms harriman had asked me to shoot her cat & her house for a christmas card, so today we headed over out to hutchinson island to do that. we almost got lost, but thankfully sammie lives in vero and was able to direct us a little better than mapquest.
we spent about four hours there, first shooting the exterior & interior architecture, and then this really cool, enormous tree in her backyard. after eating cheesecake and talking with her mom for a little while, i spent about 45 minutes chasing around her cat, vai, trying to get a decent portrait of him. i didn't have a whole lot of time tonight to review the shots but from what i remember as i was taking them, they came out pretty good! hopefully this week won't be too stressful and i'll have time to sit down and get started on the christmas card itself, but we'll see how it goes.
right now i have to finish reading frankenstein for english class tomorrow, ugh. i definitely enjoyed my long weekend, though. hope everyone else did as well!

edit -
12:35 am:
i would like to victoriously add that i just read 167 pages in under two hours, and have now finished the book of frankenstein. that's all, goodnight (:

edit #2 -
picture for today that i've finally found time to post is of vai! she's actually a very nice cat, but i caught her mid-yawn and it makes her look rather beastly.

saturday, 10/11/08

2008-10-11T01:39:00.002-04:00

a day in the park
Originally uploaded by let love in

it's 1:39 am, i have to wake up at 8 tomorrow, i woke up at seven this morning, you do the math. time for bed & i'll post today's picture in the morning sometime (:

24 hours summarized into the world's shortest list:

1. worked today, hopefully getting paid on tuesday!
2. ate really good cream cheese from panera for breakfast with my bagel
3. why are pre-sliced bagels packaged not being fully sliced all the way around?
4. finished the nexus website! (:
5. found the first assignment we had at socapa, a photo scavenger hunt paper that they gave us on the first day. i was cleaning out my camera bag and it was buried at the bottom. i miss vermont so much!
6. i'm beyond exhausted now, goodnight!

edit - picture for today is finally up, and it's an old one from burlington this summer that i recently got around to processing. i hate to post old pictures because this is supposed to be 365 days of my life, as it's occuring .. but i didn't like any of my pictures from today. (;

friday, 10/10/08

2008-10-10T23:32:00.002-04:00

sometimes he's not so bad
Originally uploaded by let love in

today is october tenth. do you know what this means, mysterious blog reader? i'll tell you. this means that currently, only five days are separating today from october 15th. do you know what october 15th is? i'll tell you. october fifteenth is the release date of the adobe cs4 line!
ahhhhh, i am SO excited. wednesday is going to be a very exciting day!

but i'm getting ahead of myself, not unlike usual. today was also exciting, because i went with jamie to purchase a new lens! it's a 50mm, f/1.4, which in photographer-speak means its really great for portraits (:
the AF-S (auto focus) doesn't work with my particular nikon brand, so it's definitely been a challenge to get used to not being able to rely on autofocus for the tricky stuff. i think it'll be a good learning experience, though!
having purchased this new lens, i've found yet another reason why i need a new camera. i don't know if i've posted about this before, but i've been thinking about it for a while now and i've come to the conclusion that my little d40 is just not what i need anymore. ):
i feel so nostalgic about it, since it was my first digital slr and i essentially "grew up" in terms of my photography with it .. but i've been thinking more and more that it's time for us to part ways. at least on a professional basis. i'll still keep it around like all my other past cameras, and probably continue to use it for day-to-day informal shots, but i believe that it's time to venture elsewhere and purchase a new camera body. i know i talked with some of you guys about switching to canon, but i think that was just a momentary lapse in judgement. my heart belongs to nikon (and so does my wallet! i have way too many nikkor lenses that wouldn't work with a canon camera.)

so, that being said, i am very happy with my new lens and excited about my shoot on sunday! notice how the plurality has been removed from the word "shoot", because i had to reschedule my other beach portrait session for sometime next week. the forecast says it's going to be rainy on sunday morning! yuck.

enjoy your weekend, everyone (:

thursday, 10/9/08

2008-10-09T21:18:00.002-04:00

all my love
Originally uploaded by let love in

today just seems to be everyone's birthday!
myspace and facebook always give me birthday reminders, and when i logged in today, the list was so long! so, happy birthday to the following: daneile (sweet 16!), nneeka (17, i think? not sure. i don't really know her that well), tamir (17 as well .. i think?) erica (16!), ms harriman (not sure how old, that'd be kind of rude to ask), & john lennon (would have been 68, rip john, i wish i could've lived to see you perform with ringo, paul, and george!).
phew, that's quite a list.

aside from today being one giant birthday, it was also cause for celebration because i did not have school. happy yom kippur, for all my jewish readers (i only know of one) (:
i woke up early around seven, and spent the day relaxing and working/playing in photoshop, both at home and at the studio.

today's picture is from a little shoot i decided to conduct with a slice of watermelon, because the senior portrait session i had planned with a girl named erin had to be canceled due to the yucky weather. it's been kind of overcast lately, and hopefully it'll clear up before the weekend begins and my other shoot on sunday takes place!

wednesday, 10/8/08

2008-10-08T20:56:00.002-04:00

okay, so even though i missed this post yesterday, it was with good reason. not that that's much of an excuse, but trust me, sometimes sleep is a little more valuable than this blog. but only sometimes (;
today was the most awesome day, and not just because it was the end of my school week. (jewish holiday and teacher work day tomorrow and friday!)
i'm really excited about some of the design projects that i'm working on, and i know i've mentioned this before. i'm trying to stay away from posting them as blog pictures because at the end of the year, i'd really like to have a collection of photographs. but i might start posting them at the bottom of the entries or something. we'll see.
after school i stayed after for the first beta club meeting, and i can't wait to start actively doing stuff. we have a pretty cool list of community service projects, including working on a habitat for humanity house, which i've always wanted to do! i'm so excited to get started, but the club only meets once a month. so i'll have to postpone my excitement until then, haha.
after school i came home and attempted to work on my extended essay, but fell asleep around seven after dinner. i'm telling you, i'm such a party animal it's not even funny (;

picture for today is of the funny little smiley face that vinny drew on my hand at beta club. i was worried that i wouldn't know hardly anyone, but it turns out that it's mostly IB kids from my class that joined, and i ended up meeting some really cool seniors. okay, now i'm off to actually write today's post (thursday)!

tuedsay, 10/7/08

2008-10-07T20:54:00.000-04:00

prowl
Originally uploaded by let love in

argh i hate missing posts because i always have trouble remembering what happened that day!
i know i worked today after school, and then had to run home and work all night on my artbook assignment that was due the next day .. but that's all i can remember ):
oh, and i got some feedback from ms harriman on my extended essay. hopefully when we have our formal meeting with the ib coordinator, he'll like what i've done so far and i won't have to change my topic after doing all this work. that would really be awful.
anyway, i'm off to catch up on the other two posts that i missed.
you didn't think i'd forget for too long, did you mysterious blog reader? (;

monday, 10/6/08

2008-10-06T23:37:00.002-04:00

stemming
Originally uploaded by let love in

oi vey, i am not a fan of mondays.
i didn't get more than two hours of sleep last night, so i was kind of grumpy all day ):
i also forgot to pack a snack, so on top of being sleep deprived .. i was also starving. not a good combination!
on the bright side, i recieved a letter in history today. our school has this community service club called beta club for the juniors & seniors, and you have to maintain a 3.8 cumulative gpa to be eligible to join. so they sent letters to all the juniors that met the requirements. the first meeting is this wednesday, so hopefully i'll be able to go! every one's saying it'll look wicked good on my college application, so i'm all for that.
continuing on with my list of positive things about today .. i was able to take a nice nap in english class. she gave us the whole period to read, so i curled up with my sweater and fell asleep. i always have the strangest dreams when i sleep at school, haha.
in portfolio i processed some older prints from socapa this summer in photoshop. it made me so sad to go back through those folders!
i seem to be on a black & white kick lately, so i apologize if things are looking a little dark around this blog lately.
picture for today is this strange pumpkin/squash-like thing that i found in my fruit bowl yesterday.

at the nexus meeting after school today, i made a lot of progress on the website and we're hoping it'll be able to go live by next monday. so i'll keep you guys updated and post a link as soon as it's up!
i talked to ms harriman about shooting portraits for all the teachers/administrators that are going to have blurbs on the site, and she notified all the staff that i'll be doing them after school next monday. i'm so excited! i want to shoot them all in their classrooms, at their desks. kind of in their environments, so to speak, as opposed to the generic ones with the ugly blue backdrop that are taken for the yearbook every year.
i'm also excited because i should finally have a legal copy of the adobe creative suite! since cs4 is coming out in less than two weeks, ms harriman is going to give me her license for the cs3 collection, so that i'll only have to pay the upgrade price of around $199 (instead of like $3,000 if i wasn't upgrading) to get cs4. and then i'll finally have a real, licensed copy of all the adobe products! who would've thought (;
looks like today wasn't so bad after all!