I love picnics!

This looks oh so yummy! This is my food concept picture... doesn't it make you wanna lay outside on a warm day and be at ease?

Brassai. His pictures of Paris makes me miss my short visit there. It really is a city for lovers it seems like. Even though his pictures are from the early 1900's I feel like when I went this past fall that the scene seemed to be very similar but only with different people of course. A place that will always have that lingering feel of Paris.

Ramen noodles!

As my sister calls them... gluttony pbj!

Happy New Years!

Tis now the year of the dog! So happy new years for those who are associated with the Lunar calendar!

What a better way to start off the new year than with the traditional dragon dance!

Tis Kirk with a holga!

Slight walk down memory lane.

In no particular order... heres a random series of pictures from London...

John Gutmann. He was an artist turned into a photographer after Hitler took over. Maybe what I've learned most from him is that he took pictures of just what was there, the first drive in theatre and just everyday life. So maybe sometimes we should remember to take a step back and just photograph everyday life.

Of course I never seem to have enough pictures of Simon!

Champagne for the last day of photojournalism class in London.

Yay for British phone booth.

The two Alexia kids! :)

This is one of the many dogs that I saw while in Europe... I'm going to be dog lady when I grow old one of these days.

Our window washer was dangling outside without a harness... 4 floors above ground.

My professor gave me this for my birthday and I took a picture of it as a thank you for him. He gave the girls flowers and boys beer.

me!

Shooting, it's my favorite!

Nothing too much today, I procrastinated a bit more than I really should have... but then again I way too distracted to work in the lab... So while everyone was printing their picture for class I went and shot the MLK candle vigil outside of hendricks chapel.

Just one of the pics that I had shot but didn't think it was good enough for the blog, but have recently decided to add it... one of my 5 I'm turning in.

Director of public relations for RHA, Bradley Curthoys, a junior political science major stands outside of hendricks chapel on a cold night to listen to a guest speaker on about Martin Luther King Jr. during the candle light vigil.

How do you avoid the green light flares from the candle?

Pencils, pencils?

So my first assignment for my photo illustration class is to shoot pencil(s) in natural lighting... well lucky for me that today was the first day that the sun came out!

heres a few... they are suppose to be conceptual... yeah I don't know the concepts of my pictures either! I have some figured out but if they aren't obvious to you then that means I didn't do too well huh?

Ready to go

Thanks for my last feedback comment, a little push that I needed from a reader (which I didn't realize that I had very many). In the last few days I have been struggling to decide if encouraging/forcing (depends on the day) myself to shoot something every day was going to be bad if I started posting things that were mediocre... but since then I've learned and reinforced in myself the belief and the goal that who ever reads my blog will know me inside and out as a photographer. My mind through my words and my vision through my photographs, whether they be weak images or strong ones.

When I get home I will post the image from wednesday night that was suppose to go up. And perhaps I'll work on my image for my photo illustration class... pencils in natural lighting with a concept... i'll get back to you when I figure out the concept!

Judy Walgrin. I had made a comment yesterday that I figure I would be one of those photographers that never marry. Why? Because I a little too much in love with photoj, then it was brought to my attention that Walgrin got married, so I figured she would be my photog of the day. The very first thing that ? I noticed about her photography is that you feel like you are there as an observer, not sure if this makes sense but her photographs make me think that she really is a fly on the wall. Close and intimate but yet very natural. YAY in one of her photo stories under "tales" it has a food portrait/photo story combination to it. Makes me wanna further my story with Simon. She was able to pull off doing a story on a restaurant preparing food as well as show many images of food portraits from the restaurant.

Tessa's Wednesday night lemon chicken dinner.

Time to think

So i've taken some time out to think about how I should run my blog. I'm not sure how anymore and as of right now I won't be able to take either classes, darn. I guess I'm over it now, I'll just be doing an independent photo story on my own with guidance but no credit.

Posting when I have something worth posting. Hopefully photo shoots will occur more often when I have my schedule figured out.

Yesterday's Post... a day later

This was suppose to be posted yesterday and I flaked and didn't quite do it, but I did shot a picture for my blog and I also had the intention of posting it.

Yesterday when I went to print out my schedule I noticed that I am no longer enrolled in the PHO 505 class... the photojournalism class... my major... they ended up cutting the class so currently I am trying to remedy the problem because otherwise I would have to wait until my senior year to take that class and that would push my photo editing class back another semester. Which of course would not make me a happy camper... I don't want to go through 3 years of school and yet not take the photoj class... I just need time while I still have it to work on photoj before I graduate.

I have a small range of opportunities... I could find a teacher that is willing to allow me to do independent study, I could try externing at the Post Standard, and if worst comes to worst... well then this blog will be my teacher that I turn in pictures and photo story progress to... why? because i've never gone a semester without doing anything photoj, and so far I've been doing photo stories every season so it would seem strange to take a break now.

Jessa might possibly have a car that I can borrow for the semester, so my transportation looks good. All in all this could turn out well.

Oh I gotta learn to drive a standard by this weekend, I think.

Victor Strelkovsky. This summer I was told that I had thing for seeing quiet moments and I entirely agree with that. Just like my picture of the lawn chair guy in the park in London, I was told that that was just a boring park shot, but somehow I saw it as hey look what I found in the park. Kind of this is your normal everyday life, but to me its a bit fascination and the quiet peacefulness of those types of pictures puts me at ease.

Reflection through glass of my photo illustration class taking portraits for the roster.

Mi amor photoj!

Been a while since I've updated but I've done a few photo things since I last updated. I ended up visiting the DMN on Tuesday and spending some time there and then I went out to Addison to talk to an old DMN photog who is now doing wedding photojournalism, Huy Nguyen. Twas a fun day... aside from getting lost in Dallas and the surrounding communities for 2 hours! Thank you Louis DeLuca! (Who introduced me to photo editor Michael Hamtil and photographer Michael Ainsworth, who are both wonderful people and hopefully I'll see em soon!)

Since yesterday was my last day waitressing, today was my free day for fun. I called up The Star-Telegram and they let me follow, Rodger Mallison for the morning at the 2006 Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Twas a fun day... I unfortunately didn't start off on the right foot when I ended up at the wrong place for the stock show that morning and had to be picked up (after getting a lil bit more lost), but after that things were smooth sailing. Thank you Rodger for finding me! I shot again today! YAY! Thats exciting since I haven't really done anything photoj like in quite some time. I think I did alright, I had lots of fun too! Yay for getting to meet and talk to people and learning about them. (Who introduced me to many people, of whom I only remember 2 of the photogs... Ron Jenkins and Ralph Lauer. Who as well as the fellas mentioned above were great to talk to!) Photo peeps are fun, I really really love photojournalism and every little aspect of it... even the sometimes painful task of putting in captions, because then guess what, that means that you had some small part of recording a bit of their life, of making it a memory and a bit of lil ole daily history.

Joseph Victor Stefanchik. In the spirit of local photogs I decided to do JVS since Huy showed me his work. He used to work at the DMN too. Great work from what I last saw (dial up is no bueno for looking at pictures...) I really enjoy his moments and his images are of course really nice.

Yay for good light! Thank you Rodger for being my mentor!

For the past three years Jon Kingdon, 24 has been working for a rancher in Canada. Kingdon's jobs include spreading straw and shavings in the stalls as well as milking, washing and feeding the cattle before they go off to show at the 2006 Fort Worth Stock Yard and Rodeo at the Will Rogers Memorial Center on Friday, January 13, 2006.


Tugging on the harness of Flying S. bittersweet and Flying S. Sam, Patty Kluge from North, English, Iowa leads the cattle into the wash area to bathe the animals before they are shown. The Kluge family were some of the first to arrive at the 2006 Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo at the Will Rogers Memorial Center.


Gage Moorhouse, 15 says he has been a part of the Stock Show for as long as he can remember. Moorhouse traveled to the Fort Worth stockyards from his family's cattle ranch in Benjamin, Texas.

*update* they published the horse pic... tehehe my first pic in the Star-Telegram but def not my last! :)

Weeee! Almost Syracuse!

Well it seems like its about a week until I return to syracuse... kinda excited... photo will be fun times! You know how you always hear stories about a photographer who was running late to a shoot but saw something and couldn't pass it up so they shot it and it ended up being like the best picture in their portfolio? Well I felt like I passed up one of those yesterday. I was running late to work and as I was driving on the highway I saw about 15 soldiers all in green carrying their rucksack on their shoulders crossing the overpath ahead of me, sadly I didn't have my camera on me and couldn't shoot it. It was about 10:30 in the morning and the light woulda been nice. My sis' bf said that they do that often... and I was gonna call and see if I could follow them... but I only have a week left... and half of that week is booked with family and work... so I guess maybe one day I'll hafta go shoot that.

So I'm getting my hair cut by my friend tomorrow, she went to school for hair, but I decided that for once in my life I'm gonna add a lil bit of a blue streak. Why? Well my hair is pretty much virgin hair, nothing has touched it except for some hair spray and gel in middle school, other than that I don't blow dry it, curl it very often and have never colored it. But this lil streak of blue will be something that I have always wanted to do but never could because of my parents and that well pretty soon that I will never be able to do because well, who could take a blue haired photographer that seriously?.... only minor setback is that I go to the DMN on Tues.

Any comments on my hair idea? major mistake or ehh whatever floats your boat?

Deanne Fitzmaurice. Operation Lion Heart was an amazing photostory that she did on a 9 year old Iraqi boy who picked up a bomb that he thought was a toy, it exploded and she basically follows his recovery.

Purple and round #3... the original #3 planned shoot died... twas a fish.

Undesirable conditions

Unfortunately for me when I am home it's Dial up internet and slow moving photoshop on a slightly dark monitor. So the updates are not so daily and the pictures not so well toned... but I promise it will be when I return to the 'Cuse.

This afternoon I suddenly learned how to use a flash on manual... not sure what I was thinking of before but it's self explanatory... before I used to shoot and monitor it by the back of my camera to see if it was over or underexposed. Now I realized that I shoulda paid more attention to my flash. Oy. But I learned something today, Yay!

Stuff to slightly regret... When driving to drop off prints at my fire school I passed by a truck on the access road that had a cow strapped onto the back of the bed of the truck. It was one of those chick-fil-a billboard cows and the front door of the truck was open with no driver in sight. The access road was deserted and just plain Texas dry grass. I drove by thinking to myself, that could be a great picture... and kept driving. When I returned after dropping off the prints, as expected truck was gone. And another irrelevant thing, after going into the Star-Telegram on Thursday I learned that I coulda been freelancing for them this whole time. So instead of waitressing I coulda been shooting.... damn, I'll learn from my mistakes this time. Next large plastic cow I see, you're mine!

Horst Faas. I actually just picked up a book that he and Richard Pyle composed. It's a look into the tragedy that killed 4 photojournalist and 7 vietnamese soldiers over Laos. The book Lost Over Laos looks into the helicopter crash that killed Larry Burrows (Life magazine), Henri Huet (AP), Kent Potter (UPI), and Keisauro Shimamoto (Newsweek). Faas is yet another photographer that I admire for his work in Vietnam... aside from it being my cultural background I have some strong connection and want to learn more and more about Vietnam. Being not as fluent as most and never having visited Vietnam it will be a challenge for me to make it there someday, but someday I will be there.

Yay for knowing how to use my flash... the wooden floor looked spectacular so I couldn't pass it up. Any ideas for doing self portraits? This was done with extended arms and flash laying on the floor. Whenever I tried setting the camera on timer and using the sync cord to play with the flash I always end up in awkward positions trying to stretch the cord and not drag my camera with it. (maybe its just the simple solution of a longer cord...)

Another purplely round thing

Still awake at an insane hour... half being a bum and half shooting my purple round thing #2. Thursday will be a relief because it will be my one day off from work... finally. (and it's Dallas time)

Damon Winter. Wonderful photographer, I loved seeing his photo stories. (although my dial up hates me right now) My brother right now is trying to help me flash up my website and I asked a friend for a good photoj website and his is pretty nice... wish he had captions to some of em but the images are amazing.

Hmm... somehow I envisioned something wonderful and unique when I brought the 6 pack of grape Crush at the store... perhaps a more awaken mind tomorrow will do the trick... I also have another purple thing I bought that will be posted tomorrow.

update... finally!

Happy late New Years! So I have a very productive New Years wish... to learn my directions, to pay attention to my roads and highways... no more being lost! So if I train myself to pay attention to where I am going, hopefully I won't get so lost! :) Same story this week, more work that photo... oh and working at a resturant named Black Eyed Peas means that it will be crazy on Jan 1st!

For my break I was given an assignment from Kirk of shooting something round and purple. Those were my only guidelines and the rest was up to me! My first try is of an eggplant... poor thing isn't as purple as I would have imagined it would be.

Larry C. Price. Random searching and I came across a website with photographers who covered Africa on Olympus' website. He went to UT, worked at newspapers and won 2 pulitzers in his lifetime so far and is now at The Denver Post as the assistant managing editor. I love photo! What a life, I'd love to be able to work at a newspaper and still be able to shoot in another country on my own projects. Projects that mean something to me and that I want to be able to tell the story of... but in reality I would probably hafta freelance if I wanted to shoot Vietnam.

Sis and her bf at the stockyards... I was going for xmas card feel... I started playing with rear-curtain sync on my flash... what a fun feature... heres slight example... I'll keep working on making a better one soon!

This is purple and round #1... it's missing something... can't quite put my finger on it... trying again tomorrow nite after work.

UPDATE! Before I left London, I sent out prints to Simon, and my two fishermen; one in Palermo, Italy and my one in Aegina, Greece. My fishermen from Italy had his daughter send me an email thanking me for the prints. This opens up doors... especially in learning about him as a person, because when I was in Palermo, I couldn't speak Italian so all I got was his name and he wrote down his address for me.