New York

Wow. It's been forever since I last posted on this (well, except for yesterday). My life has been so crazy lately, but now that I have a moment, I'd like to share my adventures (or pictures of them, rather) :)

I spent 7 days in NYC. A beautiful and crazy city. There are all kinds of people there, it was great! I LOVE diversity--I miss it a lot! I don't think I could live there, though, because I don't really like subways and it's way too hectic for me to try to get around on foot. I like chill atmospheres. AND not to mention the weather...every time I walked outside, my hands instantly got damp from the humidity. Don't get me wrong, though. It's an awesome place :)

I love walking everywhere, I wish we could do that more on the west coast. There was SO much to see. NYC (just like a lot of places in New England) has a lot of history and cool buildings. It was amazing to see all of the architecture and culture.

I went with 2 other girls. It was kind of a girls week, I guess. We did a LOT of exploring! Here's part of our list, and we did about 98%, if not ALL (plus some) of these things... (One of the girls did an internship there a few summers ago, so she made this list up, not me, I'm not patient enough haha):

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Yeah, it was a looong week! I was so tired by the end of it, I think I slept for about a day.

People always ask me what my favorite part of the trip was, and I can honestly say that I don't have one. It was all really fun and I loved just taking a break from real life.

Anyway, enough talking! Here are some photos (they're sporadically placed):
P.S. None of these are composited; just color-correction. It was really a beautiful time of year to visit.

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On top of the Empire State Building

View from the Empire State Building

I LOVE the architecture!

Are we in China?

Central Park

Now I feel like I'm in England...I'm confused.

"Tangled" tower?

Yeah, that's not grass... gross.

For all you Beatles fans

John Lennon's Apartment

The piano from Big!!

St Patrick's Cathedral

St Patrick's Cathedral

Since there are a shortage of trees on the street, this is kinda cool

Thought this was funny :)

Yup, I'm a tourist, and I don't know how to use a magnifier thingy!! ;)

The skyline

Don't remember what this was for, but it looked rustic and cool on this cloudy day.

The pier

Gotta have a pic of Lady Liberty

One of the Freedom Towers (under construction, obviously)

9/11 monument, really cool and peaceful

Lone leaf

Seen enough? Good, cause that's all!! (for now)

Time for new skills...

I'm a college graduate. I can't even express how excited I was to finally graduate! No more homework and I would get paid, not the school.

Well, little did I know, it's not that simple. I couldn't find a job. Not because I'm not qualified--simply because there is a huge lack of a job market for photography. 

Yes, I have almost completed one semester's
worth of work in 1 1/2 weeks. I'm a little addicted...

But, almost all (5 ouf of 7) of the siblings (and most of their spouses) are programmers. They are all ridiculously smart and (yes) nerdy. I say that with all of the love in the world. They are really going places: they all have great-paying jobs and are successful.

So, I thought I'd give it a shot. Now, I'm kind of addicted. I'm re-learning HTML and CSS and now I'm digging deeper into JavaScript and I actually find it FUN!! Crazy, right? But it's true. Something about typing in a code and getting the computer to display what I want it to gives me a huge satisfaction. My biggest motivator, though, is that there is a job market for it.

I'm learning WEB DESIGN and it's awesome!!
Here's where I'm learning it. 

And here's what I'm also learning... if you mess one little thing up (i.e. forget one little semicolon or parenthesis) your code goes  BOOM  and everything gets screwed up. Talk about frustrating... so you could spend hours like this and not know what's going on:

(In fact, I have seen my little sister Christina do this many times, it's kinda funny to watch, but not fun from the other end)

I'm obviously not a pro at it yet, and frequently feel like the little cartoon shown above, but I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere in this dead economy. I'm still--and always will be-- a photographer who loves to Photoshop, but I also love designing and programming now.

I guess I'm a nerd. It's in my blood-- you can't escape genetics ;)

Another One Bites the Dust

"Another One Bites the Dust"- That's the song Echo and I sang every time one of our friends got married. So I sang it to her too :)

As you may have noticed, it's been a while since my last post. I can't say exactly how long, but I know I can't remember the last thing I wrote about...whoops :P

But early this month, I had the opportunity of seeing one of my best friends Echo get married, and she was glowing! I also got to photograph it and they are an adorable couple. It was really fun seeing her and how happy she was :)  (PS She's a country girl at heart, as you will see from the photos, and she picked her own flowers for the wedding from her backyard because they're so expensive. She's hilarious, and that's why I love her haha)

Plus, Colorado is a beautiful place. The whole time I was there (well, the 2 days I was there...) the skies were so pretty, with blue skies and clouds. It was really hot, but at least the view was amazing.

Aaaand, Echo got a beagle puppy Shiloh and he reminded me so much of my dog Norman that I had growing up! He was so cute!

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And after the wedding I packed up to move back to Utah, where everything closes at 10 (my sister and I were looking for somewhere to eat and nowhere was open. grrrr....) . It's weird being back. I actually have to keep a close eye on my speed now and deal with stupid drivers yet again. Though I love San Diego, the job market sucks down there for my field (or doesn't pay very well at all), and school and housing there is waaaay expensive, so I'm planning on going to U of U to get a certificate in Web Design. Or go to University of Washington to get a double degree in Web Design and Photography. We'll see how that works out! In the meantime, unemployment sucks, so I hope I can find a better job with the extra schooling.

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Anyway, here are some wedding pictures and some other pictures that I took while I was visiting. (for the record, the web screws up the colors, so some are a lot darker than planned...)

We finally got somewhat of a smile out of Wes

I was blessed with cloudy skies for the pictures at the temple :)

Cowboy boots! Such a cute family (Echo, Holton, Wes)

She insisted on doing this in her wedding dress. Crazy girl (that's Echo for you) but it turned out beautifully!

My bestie :)

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PUPPY!!!! I seriously thought of Norman every time I saw this adorable puppy. Should have kidnapped him while I had the chance...

Beautiful Colorado. (love the trailer...haha)

View of Colorado from the plane. I thought it was a river at first. So pretty

Happy 4th!! (and other ramblings)

First of all...HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!! I love this holiday because it reminds me of how great America really is. Sure, politics suck and we have our disagreements, but we can't deny this this is a great country. We have freedom. What more can we ask for?? I don't get into political debates very often, or at all really, but I had a debate with someone about how great America is compared to other less-fortunate countries. We fought and still fight for our freedom and are really a powerful nation. Sure, no country is perfect, but I would rather be here than anywhere else :)

Can't wait to see some fireworks!! My favorite part of this holiday!

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See? I'm terrible at blogging! I guess I just don't like the idea of putting parts of my boring life on the internet for everyone to see, but people told me to keep it up, so here I am! I took the end of my internship as a break from it :P But I've gotta keep it up, I'll do my best!

My internship is officially over (and has been for a week) and now I have to start looking for a real job. Fun, huh?? Not so much... I've been looking/applying all over the place, from Los Angeles, San Diego,  the Bay Area, Seattle, and even Salt Lake City. But no luck. I am currently living in San Diego in hopes of finding a job, but we'll see how long this lasts. Thought it'd be easer to find a job than it's been. Stupid economy. I might have to move back to cheaper Provo. An my mom is trying to get me to move back home. Ha, no... but nothing is set in stone; in fact, it's more like water right now. We'll see!

But, on a different note, my little sister Christina got married last week and she looked beautiful! (p.s. I did her hair :) ) My whole family came down to San Diego for the event and we went to Disneyland and the Safari Park that week. It was a long week, but so much fun! I love hanging with my family and all its craziness :)

Since I was the photographer at my sister's wedding, here are some pictures of the lovely bride and groom (the pictures took forever to upload, so this is all I currently have time/patience to show haha)

Perfume Shot and Movie Sets

This week was much more successful. Jerry was there to help me through the whole shooting process this time and gave me much-needed tips! I am much happier with my result this time.

I love the shape of this bottle! It was really tricky but fun to shoot. When Jerry said that it was going to be interesting (aka hard) to shoot, I thought, "Aw crap..." But it was actually a really cool experience. And it felt good that he said "This is your shot, not the ad? It's very nice! Great job!" :)

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Some other cool stuff that happened

For one shoot, we went to a studio to photograph a city-- built ENTIRELY out of computer parts. It was sooo cool! I couldn't get very good pictures on my camera phone, but here's basically what it looked like:

It even had little street lights!! So cute! 

This studio was also the place where many big/famous films were shot. When we were there, they were shooting a Vizio commercial and there wasn't much for me to do, so I went exploring for a bit. Here are some pictures I found on the wall of the sets...

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INCEPTION

THE DARK KNIGHT

THE AVIATOR ( I love this one. He looks massive!)

CHRONICLES OF NARNIA (I thought this was pretty cool)

RESIDENT EVIL

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And, here's a hybrid car charger in a mall parking structure. I've never seen spots dedicated to them in a mall before...

First Personal Shoot

So, I know a lot of you were wondering what the heck was in that box with all the lights pointing into it...

After about 3 hours of hard work (by myself), I still didn't get the lighting right... lame, huh? Well, turns out, I have a lot to learn. But I did get some good-ish shots. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it, but I'll save this product for a more advanced day; I need to start with something that's not see-through or reflective (baby steps). And next time, Jerry will be there to help me with the lighting. It's amazing what you don't learn in school! :P

But, here's the final product (so far), my first official personal piece during the internship:

MetroMint LemonMint Water (sounds yummy, huh?...)

Pretty good, considering I did it all by myself, huh? ;)

As for the rest of my time here in L.A...

I'm really enjoying it. Sure there's days when I get sick of all the traffic and the ridiculous gas prices, but all in all, it's a great place. The people here are friendlier than the stereotype they have. I went to a church activity and met a bunch of really fun, cool, down-to-earth people (took me a while, but I finally found a group that I get along with!). I'm trying to decide where I'm going to go from here (stay here, San Diego, Orange County, the bay area...) My internship ends at the end of June, then from there, I'm free to have a REAL job!! Crazy! But it's great. I've applied to many places and have already had interviews, so we'll see how I did!

And I'm due for another shoot sometime this week, so watch for that! It should be a lot better! :)