Photo Adventuring!

It's September.

The time of PSLs, sweatshirts, turning leaves, and crisp air.

So please explain to me why I'm sitting in a tank and cotton pants with my air conditioner going sweating balls...

Now I know that summer doesn't "officially" end until the 21st or whatever, but this sudden heat wave with added humidity is disgusting.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. Not too hot. Not too cold. Nice breeze. Perfection! I don't think I could have asked for a better day for my photo adventure.

Oh let me tell you about my adventure! 

Early last week I decided I wanted to go out and take pictures, but I wanted a partner. I called up my good friend Amanda and we made plans to take an adventure on Sunday. We started off with one place I wanted to go, a church in a field. That's pretty much all I knew about it, I had been there earlier this year for a service and I just thought it looked so amazing inside and through the windows into the farm and fields next door.

On the way to said church we ended up lost more than once because even though I thought I knew where I was going, I was clearly wrong. (Worst navigator ever.) But we finally made it and the church was closed... worst news ever. But we were still able to take a few really great pictures of the farms and fields and even a few through the giant windows on the side of the church... why yes, yes we were being creepers.

Our next stop ended up being GUERRILLA PHOTOGRAPHY! What is "guerrilla photography" you ask? Well I don't actually know if it's a real thing or something I made up in my head... to me "guerrilla photography" is driving along, seeing something amazing, pulling over, and then BAM! Photos! We ended up in a weird parking lot with some pretty sweet typography on a building. There were also some trees so I took some creeper photos of Amanda. (Yes I'm a weirdo.) It was a good time.

We tried a couple other places, got lost again (Worst navigator ever.) and finally ended up at Palmer Park on one of their nature trails. If you've ever been there you know there are many, many, many nature trails in Palmer, we ended up on the boardwalk through the woods and by the creek. There were so many amazing photo opportunities throughout nature walk we ended up on. I also found my love of dead trees. Is that weird?

Let me try to explain. I'm not sure WHY I think this dynamic is amazing, but I love when everything around is green and alive and wonderful and in the midst is the forgotten tree, the dead tree, the broken tree. The amount of photos I took of random dead, broken, fallen trees was insane. It's just beautiful to me.

Me and my favorite dead tree by the path (Taken with iPhone):

We decided to head out to another park to get some sunset pictures and on the way I made Amanda pull over to watch this and we ended up in another church parking lot and there were SO MANY DEAD TREES!

My dead tree forest (Taken with iPhone):

After I took a ridiculous amount of pictures of this wooded area we ended up at Millennium Park for the sunset. It was gorgeous and amazing and I think I got some great photos for sure!

Sunset (taken with iPhone):

I can't explain how excited I am about photography. It's such a creative outlet and with digital photography "film" is unlimited. How can you go wrong?

The ride home was another adventure because I got us lost another 2 or 3 times (Worst navigator ever.) but Amanda was a great sport about it.

This is why I like hanging out with Amanda. She's so easy going and she just goes with the flow. It's good stuff and with so many people in my life having schedules and making plans it's refreshing to have a day where you just go where you end up.

Thank you 100 times over for adventuring with me Amanda!

I can't wait for Thursday night dinner and photo review with friends. (I love getting feedback on my photos and Kendra's husband Chris is kind enough to give it!)

Much love

E

Nostalgia... Or Something Like It

Again with the best of intentions I fall flat.

My plan had been to write like a mad woman last year. Write until my fingers fell off. Write until all of my thoughts were outside my brain so I could think of new thoughts and keep writing.

Alas.

It's now been over a year and while I have written quite a bit in the last 13 months, I did not write anything here.

So what did I write you ask?

I don't so much know what to call it. I participated in NaNoWriMo last year and wrote 16,250 words which I believe is the highest number of words I have written on my own in 30 days. And truly I only wrote for 20 days because then I got distracted and I ended up just letting the whole project fall to the wayside.

I'm not so much happy with the writing I did, I think looking back on it, it was sloppy and jumbled and not very well put together. However! I am VERY proud that I even attempted the project AND I'm pretty excited to try again this year. (With a week of vacation scheduled during the month of November I should have plenty of time to write!)

So while reflecting on the past year of non-writing I started thinking about the writing I used to do. Remember Myspace? Yea... me neither... Ok just kidding. But really I hadn't logged onto Myspace in AGES and I wondered if all my blogs had disappeared into the great abyss that is the interwebs. There's a good two years of my life documented there for all the world to see!

So I started looking... it took me awhile to find them but I'm happy (and slightly embarrassed by the content) to say I've found them! And I'm posting a link to them which seems like a good thing to do, just in case anyone has feelings of nostalgia like I did and just wants to remember a simpler time...

We've come to the part of the blog were I share with you my new commitments. (Although I'm tempted not to share them in hopes that keeping them secret will make me follow through with them more.)

• Starting now I am committed to updating this blog once a month with new content. 

• In August my plan is to participate in BEDA, however I'm not completely committed to this one... I'm about 94.3% sure it's happening.

• This April I will be participating in VEDA, and will be posting a new video each day to my YouTube Channel. I'm pretty excited about it because I've missed vlogging in my 3 month hiatus since my last video on January 31st.

• November as I've already said will mark my 2nd attempt at NaNoWriMo.

• June I will be traveling to Portland, OR for LeakyCon for the 2nd year in a row and vlogging the trip.

There's a few other things I'm pretty excited about this year, but they will have to wait until another day because I've got places to go and promises to keep.

Much love to you,**MUAH**

Oh yea... Here's the link to my Myspace Blog in case you truly do want to relive my life from 2006-2008.

Good Intentions... No Follow Through

Man do I stink at follow through when it comes to this here blog...

I feel like I was going to do more.  More what you ask?  Well that I'm not so sure.  Just more.

Well here's some ramblings.....

I have to say that while I'm not following through on the written aspect of my new years resolutions however my YouTube Channel has been going spectacularly well.  I have 11 subscribers... like really?  11 people care enough about my channel to subscribe.  It's a little daunting and very humbling.

So I became a vegetarian this year and I never realized how much meat is in everything... also I didn't think my dietary choices would effect others, but apparently it's weirding people out... who would have thought?  HA!

I've still only read 1 book..... yikes.... Only 24 more to go!

I honestly am not sure of the point of this blog is... probably just to blow off some steam.

TAX SEASON!
So it's tax season and I always do my own taxes through turbotax... apparently I'm not very good at following directions and I screwed up my taxes in 2010.  BOO!  I met with a tax consultant this week and it's a simple fix, but dang!  That was pretty silly of me!  At least I caught it and didn't screw up this years :)

Alright... I think I'm gonna stop the ramblings for now... next time, more substance...

DFTBA!

2012 Year of the Nerd

Oh man... so I apparently am not very good at keeping up with my blog.  I had such high hopes as well!  HAHA

Anywho, I have decided that 2012 will be my "Year of the Nerd" which I mean really is just phenomenal if you think about it.

So why have I made this declaration?  Great question!
Too often I shy away from things because I'm afraid I will look like a nerd.  Well this year, I don't care!  HAHA

I'm going to Leaky Con 2012 in August.  I started a YouTube Channel.  I stopped apologizing for the music I like and the hobbies I enjoy.  I guess that last one doesn't make me a nerd, except it was always the nerdy things I was apologizing about!  HAHA

This year I made some resolutions and so far I've stuck to a fair few of them!
One - Create a YouTube channel and post videos regularly. (So far, so good!) My Channel
Two - Use my blog. (Not so successful, but this is an improvement.)
Three - Read 25 books.  (Yes this may seem like a low number to those of you that know me, but it's the end of January and I've only read one book... so I'm already playing catch up.)
Four - Be healthier. I've made the choice to become a vegetarian, and I've joined a gym. (So far, so good.)

I guess that's all I've got for now.

DFTBA!