windowplay

experimentation

some sooc stuff

Final of that batch. Just a gradient map thrown on.

And some others from that session. Just testing out different edits and doing ridiculous poses. God knows my arms are long enough to pull that off. I haven't done selfies in ages.

catalina + ilya

On Friday, I got to shoot with a very good friend of mine, Catalina, and her boyfriend, Ilya. I was looking forward to this one for a while because both of them are so beautiful and they are the cutest. Also, add on that Catalina has the best clothes ever and I've got myself such potential in a shoot. There's a lot of pictures in this post because I'm an indecisive little thing.

I went over around five, since her and Sky have art class all summer until then. Because of this hardcore art camp nonsense they've been doing and their trips to China and the UK, respectively, I haven't seen either of them in a month and I've missed them like crazy. I absolutely love these two.

Entertaining ourselves with watermelon rinds whilst Catalina finds an outfit.

Oh yeah, and Cat's a phenomenal artist.

She has this little lair off to the side where she puts all her old work and the ground is littered with oil paint bottles and old palettes. I love photographing art supplies. =]

The artist at work.

silhouettes and tights.

The most awkward drawing position I've ever seen, lmao.

idk which one. someone pick for me.

Don't be fooled, it was really hot and sticky that day. Ilya practically gave up when he put on the button down shirt. That's him attempting to cool off on the grount.

Catalina insisted on matching. So freaking cute.

This one's a rather simple manip, taking his face and arms from another picture and slapping it into this one. I'm not cut out to be a photomanipulator. In the end, all the layers end up confusing me.

This pile of rocks took us forever to get up. I was wearing sandals too. D:

Cat took us to this amazing location literally just across the street from her house where you could see down the valley.

"Um, what are we supposed to do now?"

"Uh....just look badass."

From this shoot, I learned that I am absolutely terrible being bossy and giving directions to model. That is a skill I will definitely need to work on. Or is that a job for another person in a shoot? I don't know. I seem to recall that Sarah's cousin, the one that thinks we're weird, was surprisingly good at it. I'll have him do it for us on the cruise.

But Cat and Ilya did really really well considering how much of a fail I was at giving directions.

They're so cute, I couldn't possibly just pick one.

One of my faves from this shoot.

Julia edited this one.

CUTEEE

One of my favorite things about them is the way they look at each other when the other one isn't looking.

I love this one a lot. After we finished we just hung out in her kitchen and they just disappeared into their own world for a moment.

busted televisions and starry nights

Over the summer, I like to volunteer at the library to rack up hours for NHS or whatever thing in my future needs volunteer hours. Last year, my supervisor, Christina, didn't know what to do with me half the time so she just stuck me in circulation for most of the summer and left me to the ladies in circ. It turned out to be one of the best parts about that summer. They would give me a cart full of books that people from across town had put on hold and I would organize them onto the hold shelves alphabetically. It's tedious but strangely rewarding. I just disappear into my alphabatizing zone and everything else goes away. It's really relaxing.

Overtime I started to recognize the names of people that regularly put books on hold and you start to get to know them a little. And even if they don't regularly put books on hold, you can get this little glimpse into what they like to do or what they're like. This person loves to knit, he's just starting to figure out programming, that person has a penchant for Stephen King thillers, she's hosting a fourth of July party soon. It's funny when I see names of people I know in real life. It's really fascinating. And it feels satisfying to know that I'm accomplishing something useful. It was really awesome to meet all the ladies that worked there too. And they loved me too and gave me food and free books. :D

But this year, I walked into Christina's office the beginning of summer and she takes me to the front table and tells me to sign people up for the summer reading program at the library. Basically I just sit at the front table and log people into this program.

I'm really really bad at dealing with people I haven't met before ( and honestly just people in general) so I really hate calling people over when they walk in to ask them if they would like to sign up for the summer reading program. Confrontation is not my forte, especially when I have a stuttering problem that tends to arise when I get nervous. So instead, I just smile sweetly at whoever passes in front of me and hope that they're so charmed by me that they come over and ask to be registered...needless to say, that doesn't happen. Instead, they just kinda look around to make sure I'm smiling at them and then, if I'm lucky, they smile back.

And my work ethic while I'm in the library is too good for my own sanity. I feel guilty using the computer for anything other than what I'm supposed to be using it for, so I just end up reading my summer reading book and signing up all my friends (and fictional characters) without their permission. What a life.

The worst part is that from where I sit, I can see the circulation office where I used to work, so I just stare wistfully at the bustle back there and wave at Loretta, Jenny, and Irena and the rest of the ladies as I just sit there being useless.

It's not so terrible when people come to keep me company though, like usually my friend Udbhav comes before his shift starts and we hang out. Or like yesterday, when Julia and her family came to the library and she ended up coming over to my house afterwards for dinner and a Life marathon.

We went outside for a little bit before dinner to take pictures.

My television broke recently (FINALLY) and julia wanted us to sit on it.

Messing around with dried up leaves on my lawn.

This concept looked a lot nicer in my head. Bah.

I don't know if you can see the stars, but they're there, and there's a lot. One second exposure if you can believe it. I'm so doing this again some other day.