Venetian sneak-peeks

I have SO MANY photos to upload from my travels to Israel and Italy this summer and I honestly have no idea when I'll have time to do it! But, I took a break this morning to do some fun black and white edits for my mom's birthday - I'm framing them for her office - and I thought I'd go ahead and put them up since there are only 3. I love them!

this is [not] how i roll

so a friend that i hadn't talked to in a while called me up a few weeks ago and asked me if i'd be willing to take some pictures of this guy friend of hers. i said sure. money's money. so we worked out a time...she said he had a friend that might be in some of the photos with him...i honestly just thought, portraits? no biggie. then i asked what the photos were for. "he's a rapper and he needs new photos for his album and publicity and stuff." ...

just in case you haven't noticed from the rest of this photo blog, i take pictures of 2 year olds with bunnies and flowers and rainbows. rappers? what the heck am i going to do with 2 rappers?!

it was a learning experience to say the very least. :) they were really nice but i don't they'll be dying to chill with me anytime soon. i was affectionately [or not so affectionately] labeled "camera girl" which i am perfectly fine with.

here are a few of the ones that i like...the artsy fartsy ones that they will probably never use. i'm sure out of the 400 some odd i took they'll have a few to choose from! there were a lot of cool ones that i did with my fish eye lens that i LOVE artistically but i'm not posting them because one of the t-shirts one of these rappers was wearing was pretty explicit. bummer. anyways to the few of you who ever look at this i hope you get a kick out of these.

sneak preview

did a shoot today that was really different for me...here's just a sneak preview! more to come. (warning: i wasn't in charge of wardrobe.)

most recent travels

my most recent travels took me back to a familiar place...Spain. however, while the location was familiar, the experience was completely unique, and I actually feel completely differently towards the country now than I do when I left. the first time I was in Spain, I was extremely inwardly focused - people generally study abroad for reasons that at their very best are still self-serving. it was all about what I could gain from the experience...how cultured I would become...the opportunities that I would have, and as a result I missed so much of the richness that had nothing to do with me. I went not with an attitude of how I could leave Spain a better place but with how Spain could leave me a better place. But you see, I am not a place, and while Spain did drastically influence my life, there is no direct discourse between a space and a person without interaction with other humans (at least in my opinion). A place can move you...a place can be burned into your mind in a way that you will never forget...but the way the place makes you feel is often connected to the memories tied to it, and most memories are created with people. During my first four months in Spain, I became close with very few Spaniards. On my return, there was a very short list of people I wanted to see. This saddened me. When I went to Uruguay last year, there were so many people that I wanted to see that I didn't even have time to see them all.

This trip to Spain was entirely different. I went with a heart to serve and to connect with people. WOWE. I am so in love with Spain. A country that I was honestly relatively indifferent towards before this trip. I feel like my life was changed more in a week than it was in four months of living there because of one factor: PEOPLE. The way that I will travel in the future is now totally different. I would rather go to a foreign country and stay in one coffee shop the entire time than to see every nook and cranny of the place if it meant relationships would be the result. It's not about me. It's about others.

The difference between these photos and previous Spain photos is faces. Enjoy.

o fart

well it looks like i went another several months without updating my blog. there's just not that much to take pictures of when everything is dead and everyone's put on their winter weight. and of course it is the heart of my winter semester and I'M DYIN' BACK HEYAH! a lot of really amazing things have been going on in my life lately. God has done some amazing things in my heart and provided some awesome opportunities to share my love for Him. I'm going on a mission trip back to Spain in 2 1/2 weeks. I got hired to be part of the Orientation team at JMU for 2011 and have almost 50 new friends because of it. So crazy busy, but so excited to be a participant in LIFE right now. but, for my whole 12 followers, i thought i could post a few of the random shots i've taken over the past few months! the first two were from a weekend at a cabin in MD, and the rest are pretty much just random...enjoy!