I now pronounce you FINALLY FINISHED!

I know, I know, it's 2:25 in the morning... I'm bad. But I promised myself not to sleep until these photos were finished today, so despite taking melatonin at 11:20 as I also promised, I somehow managed to finish the photos. Thanks root beer!

So, without further delay, here is the fruit of my labor. From the 427 I took, I chose 64 keepers, and from those 64 keepers I chose 13 of my own personal favorites to share. Check 'em out and let me know what you think!


























Sorry I've been flaking on the blog and photos lately... not going to make excuses, because I honestly don't know where all my time went. I can't think of anything to hold responsible for my lack of motivation. This week I got to use the macro lens and take some fun pictures of the world that is invisible to the naked eye. Hopefully I'll have those ones up some time soon, but until then, feel free to take a look and show some love... or un-love, whichever it is you feel necessary, any feedback at this point would be great. Thanks!

~sw23

James bond has LEFT the building =(

Gonna keep this short, as I just took melatonin about a half hour ago and don't wanna start sleep talking... or sleep typing.

So here's the latest upload




Went to day 3 of my class today. It was fairly interesting. Teacher was going over stuff about how to import and use camera raw, which I already had it down and spent pretty much all class time editing this amazing picture I got from the weekend. Turns out I actually DID catch the shooting star in my shot. I thought it was too far from my frame, but after looking at it on the computer screen in full resolution that light white line streaking across the picture is no doubt the falling star I saw. And the irony of it all is that the photo I took just before seeing the shooting star was a themed conceptual self portrait in which I "caught a falling star" in my hands. So all in all it was very fitting and no way a coincidence that I went to that beach at that time with that sequence of events. Thank you God for allowing me to have such an experience despite my camera giving me slight frustrations. So yeah, I am a little excited about sharing it with you... as soon as I get to class on thursday and get the pic off the school computer haha. I saved it to computer, edited it, and then forgot to put it on my flash drive to take home, so its still sitting in my assignment file, which luckily will not be touched by anyone but me and teacher until the end of the semester.

So other than that, my weekend was pretty fantastic altogether. Not only did I get amazing photos saturday night, I also got to do projection on sunday and then spent the afternoon and the rest of the night with momo and her family. We watched momma mia... yeah, I'm not gay, but I survived it nonetheless. Then her dad thought to save my huMANity and had us watch two Clint Eastwood movies. "any which way you can" and "every which way but loose." I think those were the films. All I know is that they were very much needed after watching the former 007 in a retro skin tight jump suit singing abba hits and duets in a chick flick musical.... Sorry Brosnan, You have officially been excommunicated from the male species.

=

Not that the movie was all that bad, just that.. I mean come on, its James Bond singing mushy I-miss-you songs along with Abba(Sorry abba fans, nothing against you, I just can't stand it. S-club 7 is where I draw the line)... It hurt to see a hero fall so far. =P

But I have got to ask my dad about the Eastwood movies, as I'm sure he's seen them. The second one was almost offensive considering how poorly they tried to portray a marine boxing. Even with the globe-anchor-eagle tattood on his arm, they managed to make him walk all lanky and fish-like with his arms flailing around and taking punches wide and way outside... and then Clint naturally doused him with a flurry of punches. Given, it's an older movie, so even seeing a very clear distance of 2-3 feet between fist and face despite the 'marine's' attempt to sell the punch falling to the ground in agony, didn't stop me from having a great laugh at almost every turning point of the movie. Except the whole sleeping with your girlfriend with an orangutang in the bed... yeah, I laughed, but still disturbing haha.

So this week's assignment will be 40 pictures of anything within 50 ft of where I sleep... and at first she asked for a narrative, but like half of the students didn't understand what a narrative is, so she said forget it just take pictures. So naturally, I have to come up with a narrative and then some, because I'm not going to take this class lightly. If it's a project that I already know all the criteria for and it's an easy A, then I plan to make it a hard earned A by overdoing it to the point of almost offending the other students still learning the material, because I have no intention of paying money out of my pocket to take a class and not learn anything or try anything new. So I'm gonna ask if I'm allowed to edit the photos or are they due in raw unedited format. If yes to editing, then I'm gonna have a blast turning my house into a haunted mantion or something, since my roomies can easily pass as zombies (the dude hardly sleeps so he looks half dead at best, no offense bro, haha) Ok, the pills finally kickin in an hour and a half later. Time to head out before I knock my head out... on the desk. TTFN!

~sw23

Operation is a GO

Photo from last night's flickr post:





So last night was my first class for photography. I met the teacher, and we talked about the stuff we'll be going over. Basically it's stuff I'm already trying to learn, but at least this way I will be taught by an official brooks masters degree holder, and I will be able to use the latest software... In fact, I'll actually be able to use my student discount and get Photoshop CS5 AND Lightroom 3 for a total of $275... thats a $900 value without the pirated versions! SWEET!

And seeing the criteria we are going over, I can't wait to get into the homework! I mean... I will be graded on creativity and technique... I'm seriously not worried about the grade at this point, all I want is a challenge. I'm thinking about asking the teacher to give me extra technical challenges to each assignment to help push myself to  achieve what I need: motivation to do what I already love to do! Our first assignment, ironic as it is to me, is actually the only assignment I've been doing on a near daily basis for almost 2 years... Self Portraits! Oh boy, this is going to be interesting. Especially since the first part of the assignment is shooting, the second is learning editing software, or at least for me, learning new techniques. So I plan to go all out with every assignment and use this advantage to its fullest and most likely freak some of my collegues out with my whacky self portraits.

Anyways... I'm just really excited as you can tell, and I have no intention of hiding or denying it. The second I stepped into that room and asked if I was in the right place, I had already decided that whether she said i had the wrong classroom or not, this was where I belonged. =D

And since that's really all that's happened in the last 24 hours since my last post... or however long it's been, less than a day and a half I'm sure, I'll go ahead and cut it off here, but not before I share with you one last thing!

This just makes me want to go find an old SNES and have at it again. Oh 90's nostalgia, what would I do without you. =P