The City

For spring break I went home to Huntsville, TX to spend the week with my family. We spent one day at the Downtown Aquarium in Houston, TX. It's a fairly small aquarium but it covers all the basics plus a few oddities including a parrot and a white tiger exhibit. Why are there tigers at the aquarium? I have no idea. A better question is why they offer a sleepover deal called Wild Dreams Overnight where the first program activity listed is sleep within inches of the tigers. Now granted the tigers are obviously behind glass walls but still I don't know how you could sleep comfortably with tigers pacing back and forth behind this thin wall of separation. Besides this craziness we had a good time and ended the day with a ferris wheel ride where I took the picture of the city above.

Here is a picture of my dad at the tiger exhibit:

Film: Park

Film is my new obsession. I love shooting, developing and printing it. Below are my personal pros and cons to each of these three processes.

Shooting
Pros: 1. You can purchase film to be either color or black and white.
2. You get to load and unload the film into your camera yourself.

Cons: 1. You have no way of knowing what you actually captured until the film is developed.
2. If you loaded your film incorrectly into your camera then you could shoot a whole roll and have nothing show up as a result.


Developing
Pros: 1. Going through the process. From rolling the film onto the developing
reels to pouring the various chemicals to develop the film is a very
cool experience.
2. Getting to see the developed negatives after the processing and seeing
what you captured.

Cons: 1. If you develop your film with the wrong temperature developer you can ruin your entire roll. There's nothing like shooting and developing a whole roll only to see a blank stream of negatives.
2. Light. If your film is exposed to any light all of your images will be
ruined.

Printing
Pros: 1. You can determine the size of the image you want to print to take up the entire sheet of paper or to be smaller and leave a border in order to frame it.
2. Once you find the right settings on the enlarging machine to produce a
good print from your negative you can make as many copies as you want and
they will come out identical.

Cons: 1. Finding the right settings, how much light and how long that amount of light should be exposed to the light sensitive paper, is a pain. I always have to cut test strips of paper to find the right balance before I print
a full size image.
2. Again with the light, if you're paper is exposed to light it is ruined.

You can see more of my film prints on my flickr :)

Mad

I titled this photo Mad because of the look on my cat Daisy's face. It is priceless. You can tell she does not want to be wearing that hat but is too lazy to resist the charade. The little girl is my sister Jamie. She found the hat Daisy is wearing while we were shopping at Old Navy and just had to buy it as a birthday present for our cat. Sounds like a great gift right? What cat wouldn't want a hat made for dogs for their birthday? Anyway Daisy let my sister dress her up and although she was lethargic about it she was cooperative. My favorite part of this photo is the look on Daisy's face.

One of Five

I took this photo the other day while sitting at the pool! This momma duck and her 5 baby ducks were swimming in the pool! I was glad to see them here because I had actually seen them a couple weeks before crossing the road by the phase 8 apartments on campus. Two of my friends and I had just come back from a crazy day of shopping when we stopped at the stop sign about to turn into our apartments and this duck and her eight baby ducks crossed the street right in front of us. They were adorable! We let them cross safely and then followed behind them in the car to see where they were headed. We figured out they were trying to get to the pond behind where we live. By this time it is raining and we have been watching the ducks try to find the entrance to the pond for about 10 minutes. We got out of the car and tried to lead the ducks in the right direction. We finally did but it took 30 minutes! Needless to say we were excited to see the ducks again the other day safe and sound. My favorite part about this photo is that the baby duck is glaring straight at the camera.

Upside Down

Down the street from my house there used to be an apartment complex in the shape of a square enclosing an average size pool in the middle. These burned down a few years ago and they were completely torn down living just the bare concrete foundation and the pool in the middle. Since this area has been left abandoned since, my brother has turned the space into his own little skate park. It works well because there are multiple levels of foundation and most of the concrete is smooth and flat. My brother and I were at the burned down apartments so I could take pictures of him skating. He skated for awhile and then went and sat my the edge of the "pool". I use pool lightly because it's basically just a hollowed out rectangle decorated with graffiti and the remnants of the water that used to fill it. The water is really dirty and swamp looking- awful for swimming but great for photography. Since the water was so dirty I was able to photography my brothers reflection. The photo above is the reflection of my brother. I edited the photo in Lightroom adjusting the clarity and saturation and rotating the image so that it looks like I took it from underwater. Also my brother had thrown a rock in the water right before I took this creating a cool fun house affect on his reflection. Look closely at his head and you can see it. My favorite part of this photo are the specs in the water that transformed into shooting stars when I rotated the image.

If you want to check this photo out in a larger size click here!

Americans Have Too Much Stuff

I was flipping through channels earlier and came across a show called Hoarders. It's about people who are chronic dis-organizers and have a problem throwing things away thus their homes are filled with mountainous heaps of trash and a multitude of other useless junk. These people are living in a ravenous sea of clutter. A sea whose waves are growing larger by the day with every new piece of rubbish they bring into their homes. The floors have not been seen in years and some rooms have completely been closed off because they are completely incapable of being used. How does this happen? How do people accumulate so much that they have to devote entire rooms to their garbage?

It's sad truly sad. How you live affects your lifestyle. Sound like an obvious statement but it's something most people don't understand. If you live in a messy environment then other areas of your life are going to be messy. This works the other way around too. Haven't you ever noticed that those people who keep a clean appearance physically and in their homes are also organized, punctual, and productive? It's true. How you live affects all aspects of your life. These people had let their lifestyle take over and destroy their lives.

How do they gain back control? Get rid of the trash! A simple task yet to hoarders it seems impossible. This woman on the show had to work up the courage all day before she was able to part with a disgusting looking over sized teddy bear that she couldn't even remember where she has gotten it from.

10 Reasons Why Flickr Is Awesome

Why Flickr is Awesome:

1. Outstanding Community
2. Allows you to add contacts and find your friends
3. Allows comments and notes to photos
4. You can favorite photos
5. You can tag photos and add people to photos
6. Extremely easy and user friendly sign-up
7. Allows you to add your photos to groups (up to 10 if you have a free account and 60 with a pro account.
8. Partners with Picnik for easy editing
9. Pro Account is only $24.95 for a year which includes limitless uploads
10. Ads are easy on the eyes and non-existent with a pro account

I've been using Flickr since August 2009 and upgraded to a pro account last month!