summer.

the boy and the fish

I know I've already posted a photo from the same series of moments, but I actually have some sort of point to be made here. This morning I was listening to the "judging screencasts" from last year's CPOY, and one judge made a comment about how important the right crop of a photo is. He said something along the lines of how details in photos can easily be overlooked, though cropping can illuminate them momentarily if done effectively. 

So, because I have an international relations final tomorrow, I figured it'd be a good idea to look through all of my photos since January and see if I, yes, overlooked any details. Over a large cup of coffee and vanilla-almond goji energy chunks (they don't really give you energy I don't think), I realized that I did! 

This was originally a vertical. In the foreground were two dead fish, similar to the one about to get his head sliced off. Identical, in fact. This photo never really stood out to me because of that-- there was no reaction/emotion/mood/whatever.

Just a nice little surprise and great distractor from reading a few chapters in a textbook. 

Am I supposed to make you think I took this deliberately? Oops.

baseball

Life's a struggle if you can't juggle!

Pardon the stolen (and way too sugary) post title.

I was invited to photograph the last meeting of UF's juggling club Wednesday night. By far the best club meeting I've ever been to. Right when you think it can't get any more surreal someone is walking down the hall on what look like amputated robot legs. In front of a guy with a levitating crystal ball. Next to a girl who can probably hula-hoop and sleep at the same time.

Someone even brought brownies.

A few more thoughts to come after the photos.

















One step closer to being the first bionic man. I think they're actually called velocity stilts, but I could be wrong. Also:

1. I am completely aware that I need to embed slideshows into my blog instead of posting each picture. Sorry you had to scroll through so much!

2. For some reason I liked most of the photos better in black and white despite how colorful the setting was. For a lot of them, color actually did seem to compete with the action. "Too loud," I guess, is the phrase here--something I've heard from about every photographer who answers the reliable "color or black and white?" question at any given seminar or presentation.

3. If you're part of the juggling club and reading this, how do you feel about the black and white? Also, I'm sending Scott tons more photos from the other night, including all the group shots. So you'll be getting the rest soon.

P.S. Thanks for the unicycle lessons

this is not a blue zebra

weird, right? i've been pretending to be a nature photographer lately. expect some real life, action-packed people shots tomorrow. not kidding about the action-packed - it's the juggling club's last meeting tonight.

How did I get here?

Ladies and gentlemen, the aftermath of the Great Undie Dash of 2009.

Library on the lawn

Today there was a protest on the Plaza of the Americas (surprise). Chispas--inhale--Coalition of Hispanics Integrating Spanish Speakers through Advocacy and Service--exhale--checked out 650 books from Library West.

Obviously, the librarians were a little confused. But they let them do it anyway after the club's president signed a few papers about keeping the books "undamaged."

Chispas then used the books to spell out "DREAM" on the plaza lawn.

The library's book preservation officer--there's an officer for everything, I guess--didn't like the idea of 650 books lying open in the grass/dirt and exposed to the sun for too long. He told the Library West chairwoman, who called herself "the rescuer of the books" when I spoke to her, and the two ended the protest immediately. They even helped Chispas put the books away.

The thing is the demonstration meant to show support for the DREAM Act, which would allow "undocumented" minors who came to the US before 16 to attend college. From the protest:

"As a society, we have a responsibility to provide all young people, regardless of immigration status, hope for the future and a chance at education."

It's a little funny they took 650 books out of the library and set them in the grass to make their point.

Smells like summer

A doppia mira tendo il voler!

So, as of tonight, I've seen an opera.

I live there

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

-Carl Sagan

It's a good day to be a butterfly

It's a Morpho Menelaus, I believe.


Since I am an Entomology major, after all.

Miss Greek 2009

When I was nine, I broke my right pinky finger playing first base in softball. After having my right hand wrapped around a camera for six hours straight, I remembered that. Guess it didn't heal completely right? Good to know.

Nonetheless, pageants are so much fun to photograph. There's such a wide range of emotions in a (relatively) short amount of time. One girl will walk offstage all fussy because she thinks she messed up her piano song while another girl accidentally burns herself on hair rollers backstage. Not to mention the 600+ screaming sorority girls from the audience. Sheesh.


























As David Rosen, the event coordinator, said, "Only 364 days until the next Miss Greek."

More photos to come, probably via flickr.