Baseball, Ray

My family has a definite soft spot for Baseball. Tonight we went to the game of a little league team that my dad's friend and him are coaching together. It was a lot of fun and they played really well, but the game was called after some lightning in the bottom of the 2nd. We were up 6-0, but the game will have to be replayed because they didn't play four innings. Bummer, but it was fun to see them play so well!

Now we're sitting at home, listening to music, and largely accomplishing nothing. Gotta love Friday nights...

Out of Commission and Photography

This week has not been the most enjoyable, nor the most exciting week of my life by any stretch of the imagination. Saturday, soon after eating dinner I began to feel sick to my stomach. That night I spent hours in the bathroom vomiting until I could make it to my bedroom, where I had to remain sitting up else I would ... well, you get the idea. No fun. I felt horrible all weekend and the beginning of this week, but I got over it!

Because I've been sick with boredom, I've been doing a lot of research into photography on YouTube and other sites. I've discovered a couple of really well shot and well informed channels that I've taken an interest to. The first is called the Art of Photography. The channel is ran by the presenter, Ted Forbes, who is a brilliant presenter and very knowledgeable of all facets of photography. His channel features photographers, past and present, as well as a series of episodes that address various photography strategies and ideas. 

The other channel I found was actually featured on the Art of Photography. The channel is called simply Ben Horne. Ben's a landscape photographer who shoots landscapes with a large format camera (those super cool wood box/billows camera thingies). His work hits close to home for me, because he photographs Zion National Park annually, as well as other places in Utah, to stunning effect. He backpacks most places, and the videos he makes of his expeditions are works of art in and of themselves. His channel only has about 5,000 subscribers, but I hope that his videos gain the recognition that they deserve.

Bowling and Art

Those two go together, right?

Wednesday night my young men's group and I went to Fat Cats to bowl. Those kids are so much fun and we had a blast.

For my Art 1010 class I'm taking through UVU, we were assigned to do an art project. I chose to do a little mosaic thingy out of paper. Not the most original idea, and it sure as heck took forever. But hey, I think it'll get a good grade, and that's what matters.

 I really like the compass rosey looking thing, but I kind of botched the background. What can you do?

I Got Nominated!

Awhile back I discovered an interesting site for photographers who are trying to get their photos out in the open and learn a little bit of extra cash. It's called Snapwire. The idea is that you submit photos to various requests and if your photo gets selected, the requester awards you anywhere from a few dollars to hundreds for your photo, depending on the request. It's a great idea, but thousands of photos are uploaded to each request, and the odds of yours being selected are pretty slim. In addition to selecting the winner, the requester can nominate people's photos as well, which awards the nominee points that can be used to access bigger and more professional requests. Snapwire basically turns selling photos into a game.

I submitted the above photo to a request that was looking for something that focused on the color blue. I got nominated! It's the first photo that I've uploaded to get recognized. Because of the nomination, more people have seen my portfolio and have started to like my pictures, sort of like liking something on Facebook. I'm pretty excited, and there's a chance I'll get selected! Probably not going to happen, but hey, I'm hoping!

So now I'm all excited and I've been trying to take more specific pictures for various requests. It would be so cool to make $75 or $100 off of a photo. The best part is, even if your photo is selected you retain all the rights to the picture, only allowing the requester limited licensing rights. I think it's a pretty cool idea!

Shootin' Stuff

One of my family's favorite activities is to drive up West Mountain and shoot stuff. We like to bring rifles of various calibers and shotguns and shoot targets and clay pigeons for a couple of hours. We've tried to invite my good friend to go with us the past three or four times, but something's always come up. This time around he was able to go along with another of our friends. It was a blast (pun intended).

I'm that teenagery kid in red

We had a lot of fun and even busted out my great-grandpa's old 30.06 to shoot about 20 rounds. That things bloody expensive to shoot at about a dollar a round, but there are few things as satisfying as hitting the target close to the center. I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture, but one of my shots hit an eighth of an inch from the center. Proud moments.

Spring break is officially over, which means school tomorrow. I've been feeling pretty bad the last couple of hours though, so there's a chance I might sluff. We'll see what tomorrow brings!

Battle Creek Falls

Today I may or may not have slept until noon. It was bliss. 

Also, we went and hiked Battle Creek Falls! It was an awesome time to hike around with my family. I took my new camera and exposed a roll of film. I hope they turn out! Because I was taking pictures on that camera I didn't take anything digital, so I stole some pictures my sister took. Thanks sis!

Tomorrow my family and I and a couple friends are going to go shooting. I'll try to remember to take some pictures this time around!

Film Adventures (Part 2)

The film camera that I mentioned a couple of posts ago arrived yesterday! So did an old Minolta for my sister! We went to our local photo shop and bought some film and had some adventures. Two nights ago we did some steel wool photography.

(I took a couple of pictures with a digital camera too)

My sister and I went to Provo today to walk center street and take pictures on our new cameras. It was pretty cool to try out our new toys and listen to some Led Zeppelin (even if she's not a fan). I'm super excited to spend some time in the darkroom developing and printing!

Adventure Day

Yesterday was quite an uneventful day, apart from playing some games with Taylor and Kelli. I pretty much slept the day away and accomplished nothing, which was actually kind of nice.

Today, my sister and I stole the parents' car and went to buy a couple of rolls of film, one for the each of us. She's super excited to shoot it, and I'm pretty excited to see how her first roll turns out!

My cousin came over a bit later so we went to the mall to dream at vinyls, watches, shoes, clothes, pretty much everything cool looking. 

We played some Texas Hold'em with our fancy poker chips. I won a whopping $2.43, probably the most I've won gambling. It was pretty exciting, almost as exciting as my cousin's and sister's "poker faces". Not impressive, but definitely hilarious.

Hey look, it's me!

We took a drive to Rock Canyon to do some climbing because my cousin's never been and we were bored. It was a pretty good time, but the wind was relentless and we pretty much froze our butts off (notice how we're NOT dressed for relentless wind in April). When we were done we practically jogged to the warmth of the car. Brrrr.

Also, I decided to have a vanity moment.

These are all the records I've purchased myself.

These are all the records I have, minus Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits, which is currently at my other cousin's place.

Sometimes I love vanity moments.

Kintsugi

If you know me, you know that I love Death Cab for Cutie. When they announced a new album earlier this year, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. So, when they sent me an email saying "buy our vinyl!", I bought their vinyl. It arrived a couple of days ago, and looks/sounds incredible. I'm a big design guy, so the design of the cover and the vinyls is a big deal to me. They definitely hit a home run on this one.

It's definitely a stylistic departure from most of their earlier work, and the last half of the album kind of disappointed me when I first heard it. As I listen to the album over again (and over, and over, and over again), those last few songs are growing on me!

Taking Pictures of "Junk"

A couple of days ago I read a blog post by Daniel Em, which you can read here. In the post he discusses why he takes pictures of "junk", or random stuff that holds no personal significance to him. The points that he makes center around practice and getting more comfortable with a camera, both points that I agree with. 

I, too, take a lot of pictures of "junk". But I don't do it for the practice or for becoming more comfortable with a camera. I do it to point out little pieces of life that we so often gloss over and take for granted.

If I'm honest with myself, I take photos for fun, not to tell a story or to accomplish a creative goal. However, as I go back through old photos that I've taken I'm inspired to take more inspiring and thoughtful images. In my work as a hobby photographer I will start trying to capture more emotion and to develop stories in my images. Hopefully my work will become more emotional and have a greater impact as a result!

Film Adventures

I mentioned my film obsession yesterday, so I thought that I'd share some of the fruits of my film adventures.

It's pretty hard to see, but that is a contact sheet of my favorite images from my first two rolls of film I've ever shot! I feel a little bit like Walter Mitty, which is exciting seeing as I love that movie so much. 

And these are my first 4 prints I made in the darkroom at Mountain View (excluding some throwaways that I, well, threw away). The bottom two were exposed wrong in camera and something weird happened with the developer on the selfie, but the top left picture turned out great!

I have a roll of film sitting on my desk waiting to be developed, but next week is spring break which means we'll have to wait awhile before I get access to the darkroom. Maybe I should go buy some film...

Neglect, Work, School, and Play

Oh boy. It's never a good thing when on a whim you decide to open up Blogger and remember about that blog you used to keep a long time ago. Even a worse thing when you open up the stats and see that a whopping 2 people viewed your blog the entire month of March. Poor, neglected little blog.

That job interview I mentioned last post? It went fantastic, and I felt completely confident that the position was mine. I felt confident right up until the moment they called to inform me that they were impressed, but couldn't hire people under 18. What a bummer, I was sure the job was mine. So now I need to find somewhere to apply. I'm a stubborn sonuva gun and I refuse to work in fast food, which limits the field quite a bit as a 17 year old punk. 

I just got the results back from the ACT I took earlier this year, and I almost cried when I opened it.

The last time I took the ACT I studied a ton and took a prep class and scored a 32. This time around, I literally didn't study anything, and this is the result. Hmm, my lazy teenage brain is drawing conclusions that probably aren't indicative of reality...

And finally, I've become obsessed with film photography lately. I stole an old Pentax ME Super from my comrade to fuel my obsession. I use my high school's darkroom quite frequently with a friend of mine, which is funny because I'm not even taking film photo until next year. Good news though, a film SLR all my own is on it's merry way to my doorstep!

Please realize that this is an image of a brand new one that I found on Google, definitely taken care of better than the one I'll be receiving. But I'm so excited for it to arrive!