All About Pups.

This is a completely random post, but while looking through my Lightroom catalog today I noticed that I have a massive amount of dog pictures. Why? Because I LOVE dogs. I see four  pups on a regular basis, and with a camera by my side I can't resist capturing the cuteness. Can you? Anyways, here's a crap ton of photos of puppies I'm WAY too obsessed with:

Here are a few of my own pup that passed away in May at 17 years old. I just came across these as I was writing this, so I have to share them! Here she is about 5 or 6 years ago:

And here she is last year, cuddled up in my bed. Such a sweet girl, I miss her like crazy.

A few randoms.

     I just finished nannying and have parked myself on the outside of Summit Coffee's front door, which is absolutely lovely, because if you haven't been to Davidson, NC, it's an adorable town with lots of friendly people that keep main street busy and cute. Just watching the people here make me feel productive. 

    This week has been a rather chill one. Not too much happened, even on the weekend, except for laundry and cleaning, oh yeah, and a went to a biker bar. No, really. My mom found an abandoned birds nest in her fern which hangs by our front door. The reason the bird abandoned it was basically because every time we opened the door it would have a panic attack and either fly out immediately or try to attack us. While it's a little depressing, I don't blame her, and now there is this sweet nest for me to take photos of. I'd like to use it in a photo shoot if possible, I'm not sure how though. To be honest I'd like to set it on fire. While possibly holding it in my hands. No, really. Well, since I'm not positive I can do that without also needing skin grafts post-shoot, I figured I might as well document how pretty it is. 

     Ever since I went to Asheville I have wanted to continue my little portrait assignment, and try my best to do them at f /1.8. I haven't been very motivated since being back, but here is one of my awesome padre. Happy belated Father's Day padre!! He had to lean down for a good face shot due to me being so short...which may already be a clear sign that I will always have issues photographing tall people. I'll keep posting more too, I took one today of dear Gus Gus that is pretty freaking adorable.

     I still fully intend to pursue a self portrait project, it's just going to be slow without being able to afford good lighting right now. BUT, here is the one I will consider the beginning portrait. Yes, it's kind of plain, but the reason I chose to do this one was to do a recreation of the first self portrait I ever took of myself once acquiring photographic knowledge. I did it with an old film camera when I was 16 years old, and was one of the first photos I took in school that I was truly proud of. Of course, now it bothers me. It's out of focus, backwards, the highlights are blown out and you can see the Kodak print leaking in from the backside... not sure how I managed to pull off those last two mistakes but whatever. I now have a new and improved photo with my great great (great?) grandfather's portrait, which I think is very picture worthy, despite that fact that it creeps my friends out to the point that they refuse to sleep in the guest room. More updates soon!!

Back to My Mountain Home

    Friday was a day off for me, so I decided to take advantage of that and visit a place that I've been missing for quite some time: Asheville, NC. My previous home for 3 years, and a place I will always want to return to. I went up early friday so I could grab a bagel with a couple of lovely people and then headed to see my brother and his fiance, and my 2 favorite nephews, one of which is fairly new to the family. Below is sweet Dodger at only 6 months and below him is my Fela boy who thinks 5:30 am is a perfectly reasonable time to wake me up for cuddles. But look at those faces! How can you say no??

      One of my priorities of the weekend was assisting Jenn with wedding stuff, which was exciting since I'm the maid of honor and hardly ever get to see them or directly help out. Jenn is very crafty, and she had the cool idea to spray paint mason jars for vases to make simple centerpieces for the reception tables. While it didn't go perfectly according to plan, we got out some paintbrushes and fixed some rough edges, and in the end they looked pretty awesome! We painted some on the inside and some on the outside, but I love the striped ones. While I'm artsy, I do not consider myself crafty by any means, so I was quite proud about helping with these.

      And in case you haven't heard, Asheville is full of beautiful people. It's the kind of city where a dread head in a shirt made of rags can exchange smiles with a man in a business suit on a street corner, instead of ignoring each other like many other places. Because of this I decided to take my camera everywhere I went, and take pictures of every person I caught up with or a stranger I loved the minute I saw them. My favorites were an artist from Thailand, a mime, a coffee vendor from Davidson who makes awesome drinks, and a hotdog vendor, who I sadly did not get a picture of. Here are a select few, I put some on facebook as well. I took a ton downtown while catching up with my friend Simkus, who was up for having his picture taken with some of them, and since they crack me up, they are totally worth including.

My purdy friends

Simkus!

Vinnie!

Jordan and Jenn!! @The Southern

      The morning I had to leave I realized I didn't get to see everyone on my list of people sadly, but I bought these baller notecards. So while i sipped on coffee, I wrote a couple of them happy thoughts and dropped them in mailboxes. How cool are these? Who doesn't love bacon?

     I'm so sad to have left, but I'm going to try to make more of an effort to go back up whenever possible. Asheville is da best. 

The Market Kitchen Presents: JJ's Pig Pickin'

     This past Sunday, a very cool movable feast in Charlotte called The Market Kitchen decided to do something awesome, more awesome, in my opinion, than the last event I went to by them. They decided to have a pig pickin' to raise money for pancreatic cancer. Why pancreatic cancer? Because the majority  of the crew and attendees of this event lost a beautiful and strong woman they loved not long ago, who fought it for a very long time, and became a spiritual inspiration to a lot of people. 

     Not only was the food absolutely delicious, but a lot more money than expected was raised. Here are a few of my favorite photos that I took while I was there. Everything was local, even the beer, as it should be!

    Please check out the Market Kitchen @ http://themarketkitchen.weebly.com/ 

OR

    @ https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Market-Kitchen/337345446293290

Chef Chris Coleman on the left, and his handsome crew:

Self Portraits

     Ok. So I need everyone's help. I know that addressing "everyone" on blogspot is in fact like 7 people, but still. I value your opinion. And I need your opinions due to an artist block which has been keeping me from being creative since school let out. I don't know if it's the 9 to 5 workday I now must deal with or what, but I no longer have those hour and fifteen minute general ed classes to sit through and brainstorm ideas. That was where my best work came from! I was so bored in math and ethics that I basically decided that instead of sleeping or being depressed about being in a terrible class, I would make it my time of day to develop a concept for my next art project. Not only did I come up with sweet ideas, but it made time fly by.
     Oh, I'm getting a lighting kit! A cheap one, with only one light, but it's definitely a start for studio or on-location lighting, and it's making me very excited. However I don't exactly have much experience with strobes so I want to practice before actually offering it with my services to people. I think it would be cool to start a self portrait project, which is something a lot of photographers do to get inspired and practice photoshop, lighting etc. I've come up with a few self portrait ideas, but I want A LOT to choose from. And, I think it would be a challenge to take ideas that aren't mine and try to make them my own. That's where you come in.
     Basically, what I need from you is an idea. It can be a place, a fairytale, and stereotype, a character trait, verb, quote, idiom, poem, WHATEVER you feel would possibly make a cool photo. Something you want to see me try and illustrate with myself as part of the subject matter. Even commenting with a single word would be fantastic. If you do it'd make me totally happy. You will either watch me make a cool photo or fail miserably. Doesn't that sound fun? So send it my way if you have an idea!!

Art Mail

A few months ago a little girl moved in across the street from me, and she happens to be incredibly friendly with the big personality. I'd say she's about 9ish? Well, the other day, Jamie came over while I was gone to talk to my mom about something and she spotted a drawing of a dog I did in an art class when I was right about her age. Apparently she thought it was awesome, and told my mom that she wanted to learn to draw better. With that, my mom took around the house and showed her ALL of my paintings and drawings from ages 8 to 15, which, keep in mind, were very good. So good, that I can't do anything close to it now since I stopped almost every art form but photography. BUT regardless of my lack of skill right now, she got excited about my drawings so I told her I would try and give her a few lessons. If anything I can teach her to focus on the basic art elements nailed into my brain from school. 

Well, That was about 2 weeks ago and I still have not had the time to go over an show her anything. She sent me an adorable letter in the shape of a book with a little note and a few drawings she did. SO cute!! 

Cute right? So that made me feel REALLY bad about not having time yet, so I decided the least I could do was give here an art letter back. I sent her a note apologizing about taking so long. I also gave her a little book I made with sketches of flowers, bugs, food and trees that she can practice with and try to draw if she wants. That way she can start without me.

I hope she likes it, I dropped it off this morning. Maybe she'll make another one back!

Well, I've finished my coffee and bagel, time to go Nanny for the Gus-meister. Hope ya'll have a great Thursday!

Daisy!

I get to be friends with this pup for the week! She's staying with us while our neighbors are out of town. Her name is Daisy and she makes me miss having a dog around the house! More to come soon, I have to nanny right now, but I'll update again soon with more adorable pictures!