merry christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! I apologize for my epic failure to post pictures regularly -- the past few weeks (okay, months) have been rather hectic. My computer continues to give me massive problems, so I'm not even storing photos on it at the moment, just working off an external harddrive. Eventually this thing will get replaced with a MAC! But mostly my time and energy has been taken up with applications for graduate school. I'd forgotten how much I hated applications. I still have some paperwork left, and then am crossing my fingers about auditions and hearing back from the various schools. I applied to a wide variety, and am still shocked that my teacher convinced me to apply to a few of them. I told her that if by some miracle I get in, we'll have to go celebrate.

I have my camera charged and ready to take pictures tomorrow...

cookie cutter

My iTunes: Santa Claus is Comin' to Town by Bing Crosby and the Andrews' Sisters

Quick post before I head into a week of finals. We had our second annual Bible study Christmas cookie baking. Things got a little crazy with the flour -- I'll include a few pictures below to give you an idea. My friend's daughter, XiXi, really got into it! I think there was more flour spread on us and around the kitchen than was in the batches of sugar cookies we made!

But for now, I'm off to bed. I have an ill-timed sinus infection, and have been trying all my usual stand-bys -- drinking water and tea like it's my job, steaming my head like a lobster, humidifying my room until the windows fog, using nose spray, and taking vitamin C/guaifenesin/ibuprofen. Let's hope I can get through my voice juries tomorrow evening, then off to my new job...

'tis the season

My iTunes: Quelque part on m'attend by Chiara Mastroianni & Benjamin Boilay

'Tis the season, and I spent a good part of last week baking, a luxury that I don't have as often as I'd like. Silly me, I forgot to take pictures, but I wanted to share a dessert-related shot anyway.

I know I said I was hoping to post some wedding pictures, and I promise I will, but I'm having a bit of computer difficulty (surprise, surprise). Because I don't trust my computer as far as I can throw it -- it has a history of crashing and taking with it everything on my harddrive -- I bought a new external harddrive on Black Friday and started moving all my files onto it. Wouldn't you know it, my computer decided to once again antagonize me and vindictively deleted all my music. "Aha!" I thought, "I thought you might pull a fast one on me, so I made BACK UP discs!" But, alas, I was thwarted again. The computer had made the discs unreadable. I have one more thing up my sleeve, a secret weapon I call a harddrive image, which I make as yet another form of backup each time I visit my parents. We will do battle again with that this weekend, and I hope to come out victorious. If not, I don't even want to think about the hundreds of dollars spent on iTunes music that went to the digital form of Davey Jones' Locker. Perhaps I shall make an effigy of my computer in retaliation...

black friday sales

Happy Thanksgiving!

No pictures to share today -- soon I'll be posting a set from the wedding. I'm taking the evening off to watch A Miracle on 34th Street. With all the work I've done in the past few weeks, I need the break. My huge paper is handed in -- all 203 pages! Now I have to play catch up on everything that was put on the back-burner while I worked on the paper.

But I wanted to share some good news about Black Friday sales: two of my favorite companies are having sales -- Totally Rad Actions and Shootsac! A shootsac has been on my wish list for ages, and I use Totally Rad Actions for all my editing. Check these links:

Totally Rad Actions



Shootsac

pour house collection

I thought I would break with tradition and include a whole slew of pictures in a single post, especially since posting daily seems to be a difficult task these days. I was up FAR too late last night editing these, but I kept saying to myself, "I'm almost done, I'm almost done. I'll go to bed when I finish." 2:36 finally rolled around and I made the executive decision to be done. Thank goodness I don't have work today until 12:30. From now on, no matter how awake I feel at 11:00, I shouldn't let myself get sucked into editing pictures, because I know I'll be up too late for my own good.

Today is our dark day, and Norma opens tomorrow night. Now that we're to the actual shows and not rehearsals, I can enjoy it a bit more, for reasons that I won't say here for professional discretion (though I have had a few good venting sessions with friends). The singers are wonderful, and I look forward to hearing them on opening night.

In other news, I finished the final draft of my massive paper. At this point, it's being proof-read by about eight different people and when I get their comments back, I'll just fix it up a bit before handing it in on the 24th. I also just finished the replacement Latin paper, for those of you who are regular readers, which means I am done with Latin classes for life (hallelujah!).

But now, I need to run errands. If I don't, I'll have nothing to eat for the next week. Hopefully I'll have something to post soon (and time to post)!

the pour house

The Pour House
November 2008

My iTunes: Spirate, pur Spirate by Donaudy

Yesterday was a sad, sad day -- the Pour House, the best coffee shop I have ever been to (and I've been to many coffee shops on multiple continents), closed its doors. I have so many memories there from the past 3 1/2 years, and it still hasn't quite hit me that they're closed. They were the first place I got to display my photography, and the owners are truly wonderful. I spent the last three days there. Yesterday, two of my three classes were canceled, and the third class was just me and my voice teacher, so we had class there. I was glad we could do that -- having coffee at the Pour House with her was one of the random things on my "Bucket List." I bought 3 lbs of coffee and espresso to continue my addiction.

I did an impromptu photoshoot there on Tuesday morning, and this is one of the shots. I'll probably be posting more as they're edited. But until then, farewell Pour House.

bridal bouquet

Bridal Bouquet
November 2008

My iTunes: Erlkonig by Bryn Terfel

I apologize for the continued lapses in posting! Life has just been a bit too full for the past week. The good news is my paper is nearly done -- I have to pull together a conclusion and edit a few appendices, but the end is in sight!

Since my time has been so consumed with paper writing, I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to work on editing the wedding shots. I was finally able to spend a good part of today editing, though. This is one of the shots I edited -- I like the unusual angle.

Hopefully I'll get back to more regular posting soon, but no promises yet... I do hope to set up some senior portrait sessions soon, so we'll see what happens!

the bride

The Bride
November 2008

My iTunes: Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma

I'm currently sitting in rehearsal listening to the chorus rehearse. It's good to be back in rehearsals. Since I'm not currently being staged, I'm trying to get some more work done on my huge paper, but I wanted to take a quick break and post this picture from the wedding on Saturday.

It went really well, and the bride was absolutely calm and radiant. They were both so excited to be getting married to each other. The weather was really beautiful, so we were able to do some shots outside as well. I can't wait to edit those! But for the meantime, I'll edit a few here and there when I need a break from paper writing...

And now back to the grind!

morning mist

Morning Mist
October 2008

My iTunes: Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma

With the exception of last weekend when I was away on a conference, every spare second of my time for the past two weeks almost has been spent working on my seminar paper on nineteenth century grand opera in Philadelphia. This is the one that I spent a portion of the summer researching in Philadelphia. The first (and only) draft was due this past week, and I thought I'd be able to get it into a polished state, but I had some unexpected glitches with some performance data that resulted in me putting about 22 extra hours into one of the appendices. Currently, the three appendices that are finished add up to a total of nearly 100 pages. So for about two weeks, I've been up until 2:00 a.m. and up at 7:00 a.m. to work on it, which meant no time to blog.

In addition to that, rehearsals for Norma started this week, so I'm driving back and forth from Baltimore quite a bit. Rehearsal tonight was canceled (thank goodness!), so I'll have some extra time to work on this paper.

Last weekend I took a break for a conference and managed to grab a few shots. This was taken at the lake in the morning when the mist was rising.

I'll be doing a bit of shooting tomorrow with Melody & Jake's wedding! I hope to get back to regular posting soon, but between paper, rehearsal, and photo editing, I might be lucky to find time to sleep...

new shots coming soon

I'm sorry it's been a while since my last post -- I promise, though, new shots are coming soon. I just edited a few and was about to post them, but for some reason blogger won't upload images at the moment, so I guess the pictures will have to wait a bit longer.

For the past two weeks or so, my life has been almost entirely consumed by my capstone paper and everything that goes with it. Tonight I worked on polishing a few of the appendices (yes, there is not only an appendix, but more than one). I will be so glad when the whole paper is done and handed in. I think my brain has reached full capacity and won't absorb another thing.

After this weekend, I'll have even more photos to share -- I'm shooting a wedding on Saturday and I'm very excited! But in order to be well-rested, I should get to bed now...