Life in Development Photography

The past two weeks, I’ve been home for the Holidays, and by Holidays, I mean Thanksgiving, Chanukah, AND Christmas, or what we call in my family, the Holiday Trifecta.

Celebrating all holidays requires eating delicious food (pasta not included, I just like this particular photo)

Giving

And receiving awesome gifts.

(Above photo courtesy of my lovely father)

And visiting my grandmother’s house for Christmas dinner

After the holiday celebration was over and done with, I rested and spent the day on my aunt and uncle’s farm with my willing model of a cousin

Her favorite donkey

Her horse (who is supposedly not so friendly….)

And her chickens.

As you can see, I’ve had a wonderfully amazing winter break. So wonderful, in fact that I in no way want to go back to LA and working and a life in which I don’t have time to take out my camera.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time surfing the [b] school, thinking about how I could spend my summer assisting and learning about professional photography, instead of killing myself at a stressful, summer TFA related job. The more I read and the more I willingly spend my vacation time editing pictures and blogging about them, the more that seems like a wise decision. So if you know anyone who’s willing to let me be a photo slave to them this summer, definitely let me know!

While out to Thanksgiving “dinner” in Beverly Hills with my fabulous California family, I snapped some shots of my cousins, who are turning into handsome young men. They were, happily, willing to deal with my obnoxious picture taking:

The lovely Kerri and I recently took a trek down Santa Monica Pier for a day of photo fun, which I was in desperate need of. Here are a few of my favorites. (Many more, obviously, on my flickr page.)

This is my good friend Grace:

Grace and I lived together during my semester “abroad” in LA. She still lives there, and whenever I visit, I stay with her. (And by whenever, I mean the two times I’ve visited…) Grace is awesome. She loves TV as much, if not more, than I do. She actually works in TV. She’s a freakishly talented writer, and she also used to work at a camera store. Thus, she allowed me to have an impromptu photo shoot with her in her neighborhood, because she understands the need to play with cameras.

We started in Grace’s living room, since I was jealously staring out her back window, hoping I get a backyard when I move to LA.

We then found one of the most disturbing jungle gyms I’ve ever seen at the nearby playground. Are they trying to get all LA children to turn into strippers? I think it looked much better from above.

Grace and I then became convinced she should try out for Top Model -

Since she was such a good model, I had to let Grace take a few pictures of me. I attempted to be photogenic. It’s a constant struggle.

I think Grace did well. I even made this last one my facebook picture, the ultimate compliment.

I’m pretty excited for when I get to live by Grace again. Hopefully, between our ridiculous schedules next fall, we’ll find time to take some more random pictures.

Along with my new pretty Nikon D90, I figured I needed a new pretty blog to show off all my new pretty Nikon D90 supplied photos. Not that I think all my photos are the best photos since sliced bread, who we all know did some renowned portrait work…BUT I do have some shots I want to show off, and sadly they don’t look so nice in my small-columned main blog, so TA DA! A pretty new one column photo-blog.

To kick things off, I present to you one of the best things I’ve seen while my camera has been hanging around my neck. 

The location: Chesapeake City, Maryland

The scene: While walking to dinner with my parents in quaint, beautiful Chesapeake City, we came across the best piece of graffiti, possibly of all time. 

Two questions…well, really one question, posed two ways: 

1) What Harry Potter fans are into graffiti?

2) What graffiti artists are into Harry Potter?

Answer to both: graffiti artists I would like to befriend.