Oban

So we made it out of Oban, Scotland alive. Several members of the group got really sick and they were afraid that they had swine flu and called the national health service and everything but people are mostly better and we made it to Edinburgh for the last leg of the trip.
Our assignment for Oban was landscapes and it was really cold and rainy and we went to an island and hiked (in the rain) for like 6 hours. (that might have had something to do with everyone getting sick). Anyway I hated all of my photos except for one but here they are anyway. Hopefully Edinburgh will be better, it is warmer at least.

I like trains.




I also like sheep.



um... and cows.


Down by the Bay.


Seaweed doesn't have to be gross.


Nothing beats a Scottish sunset.

My Love Affair with Prague

This post is mostly for Nick (Baker) because he commented on my lack of updates.
I love Prague. Some are from my wandering and some are from my project. Turns out I love to look at architecture photos but I'm not so good at taking them.

Charles Bridge which has construction and people in front of my walk really slow when I'm already running late for class.


I think that they pay someone to paint on the sky every morning cause it is too pretty.


The beautiful gardens in front of the castle. I didn't go in them because I am cheap but they're pretty anyway.


View from the castle.


Prague is kinda creepy sometimes.


This shot is deceiving because the rest of the time I was trying not to get hit by zooming Czech driver. It's the dancing house.


We should have rented a boat. Oh well, I'll just have to come back.


Prague Castle at night.


Favorite photos from my project.
This is part of my lesson in patience.


Sometimes nuns make your day by walking into your frame.


Cool shadow.


Who wants to come back with me some time?

Paris

Paris is dirty, expensive and smells like stale urine in most places. How did I not notice this the last time I was there. Happy to be in Prague. This time I did my project on walkways. These are the only two photos that i liked from my project. Bossen and I have come the the conclusion that I can't help but photograph people... I blame the state news. Oh well hopefully more from Prague later.





Also, I strangely used to never take vertical photos and now I can't seem to stop. Life is strange.

Paris

Paris is amazing although it is dirty and exhausting. Language barriers alone are exhausting.

Last night we got bottles of wine, bread and cheese and went to the Eiffel Tower to sit in the park. However 1/2 a bottle of wine later this started to happen:





Followed by a massive rainstorm with hurricane speed winds that knocked lots of us over and almost killed us all. Its ok the wine made it pretty hilarious:



Today we were at an art gallery and I couldn't resist this even though I had to be really sneaky cause you weren't allowed to take photos in there. You probably can't tell but they are playing uno.

Benches

So for our first assignment we had to find a theme to shoot in our neighborhood. I chose benches which sounds really strange but there are parks and benches all over the place and watching the way that people interact on them is really fun. It was essentially like feature hunting for like a week. Ha ha, State Newsers should laugh at the fact that I went all the way across the pond to feature hunt. Here are the highlights.

To me it looks like this bench is watching over the park.



The girls were from Switzerland and were in London on holiday and were leaving that day and were exhausted. They didn't know the guy next to him who didn't look up from his newspaper for anything. It was awesome.


This girl is actually from MSU on the theatre study abroad and Paul totally was in a show with her. Small world. Did I mention that I ran into Julie Baker at the Atlanta airport also. Ha ha crazy.


This bench was dedicated to someone that died in the London bombings. I never thought of a bench as a gravestone before.


The guy on the bench all of the way to the right was from Paris and when I told him I was going he offered me somewhere to stay in his apartment in Paris. Ha ha. The Irish, the French and the Polish all love me here. The British however...
The couple was having the most intense conversation. They may have been breaking up, or she was pregnent. Either way I had the guts to get their names anyway cause I rock.


I just can't escape the lesbians. I saw them from across the park and needed to take this picture.


Benches. Who would have thought.

Stonehenge

So because we are awesome we got to shoot Stonehenge at sunrise and we were the only ones there and could walk in the rocks and everything. It was sweet except that we left at 2:30am and I slept through my alarm and no one woke me up until they were on the bus which totally blew but we made it.
I decided last night that I hated all of my photos but they are growing on me. I think they are perhaps worthy of putting on my wall cause I am lame like that. What do you think?

I layed in the grass for this one and got really wet.



Inside the stones. I know your jealous.


Oh and we also saw aliens lights in the sky (although they said that it was military testing) and the bus(or the coach if you're British) almost broke down. I suspect aliens.

London Baby!

Sorry for the epically long rest between blog posts, I have no excuses. In London now, new camera, having an amazing time. We leave for Paris in the morning so I figured that I should blog before I got too far behind. I also hope that I sized them right cause I kinda forgot how.

Here is me being a tourist and loving every minute of it:

Big Ben of course even though Shelly thought that Kings Cross/St. Pancras was Big Ben.


"Wait theres a river around here?"
"Yeah its a bar"


The London Eye sees all. We didn't ride it but we looked at it.


Apparently this bridge gets blown up in Harry Potter.


This is Tower Bridge NOT London Bridge (you know the one that is falling down)


I really wanted to touch their hats. An interesting point was raised: if the royal family doesn't live in the palace, what are they guarding?

Living Room

So sometimes we build living rooms in the studio and then Jason and I listen to Robert's "Thong Song" vinyl. I wish that we could keep it but i want my record player back and i'm pretty sure that Marty would not have been happy if I kept the chairs from the front. It reminds me of Juno when she says that her big accomplishment for the night is moving an entire living room set from one yard to another. Mine was way harder because i had to steal the living room from various places mostly around The State News.

Photo Withdrawl

Sitting at work I had an overwhelming desire to blog. What I really need to do is sleep. This was my first photo shoot after the giant Mono/Living City fiasco week. I never thought that I would be so excited to be at a driving range.
This man was by far the cutest old man that I have ever met. I really wanna show this photo to my Dad but I never see him and he doesn't own a computer but he does really like to golf.
Dick Belding is 82 and married his high school sweetheart and they just celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary... all of that is not relevant to the article but it is cute none-the-less.



Dick Belding of Lansing, who has been playing golf for 68 years, hits a ball during his golf Lansing at the new heated driving range at Forest Akers East Golf Course on Harrison Road on Wednesday. The facility is still doing some construction but opened on Tuesday and will be open seven days a week.

Back to Work, thank goodness

So remember how i promised to update about last semester, well apparently I am a big liar because as of today school has started for Spring semester 2009 and I am already 2 assignments into the semester and thank goodness, i missed shooting so much that I think that I almost forgot how. My shoot this weekend was at ELFCO and I had never been so i feel educated.

There are just too many cute kids in the world. I call this one, "take a picture of my organic cucumber". Darling.



Her name is Rosella Bills and she is 4. She was helping her dad shop. It made me want to grow up and make babies and photograph the hell out of them. Oh no, what is happening to me.