Concrete Jungle

They say if you want to act like a real New Yorker, don't look up at the buildings and marvel-- only the tourists are amazed by all the skyscrapers. A "real" city dweller is so unimpressed with the concrete jungle, they walk around staring at the ground.

I'm not a city girl, so whenever I can (and if it doesn't embarrass my city bf) I take a peek up up up and sometimes, you can catch the full moon resting right next to the Empire State Building.

Road Trip 2012

On Mardi Gras, I got up, tossed a few bags in my car and drove 600 miles to Ohio. I spent some time with my older brother and his wild dog, shot a few guns and "won" my first ever game of credit card roulette. (Winning credit card roulette means you get to pay for everyone!) I played poker, ate Brussels sprouts and had an Irish car bomb. Or two.

On the 10 hour drive back home, I was fortunate to spend a few hours with my Grandpa, tour his new house and eat a GIANT fish sandwich. I passed through four tunnels, saw one Amish buggy driving along and cows, sheep and goats. I only spent about $90 on 25 gallons of gas (way to go, Corolla!) and got very familiar with cruise control and the song "Houdini" by Foster the People.

I learned about the history of flight at the Air Force Museum and that my ideal road trip length is 5 hours. I also learned to double check that a cd you burn with a couple of hours of music on it actually burns correctly. Unless you don't mind listening to only one song, and then 20 seconds of every song after that (I do mind. Luckily, I had tons of back up music.)

The good thing about having a flexible work schedule (um, no job) is that it's easy to pick up and drive anywhere in the country you want to go. By the way, if you want to drive through Pennsylvania be prepared-- it's is a huge state.

Tunnel Vision

C'mon, you knew with that title, it was going to be a picture of a tunnel!

Video Series - Foster the People

"Houdini" live on SNL



I listened to this song on repeat on my road trip. Foster the People is great band live.

Double Exposure - St. Paul's

Another photo of a photo I took while studying abroad. The photo is of my favorite building in London, St. Paul's Cathedral. It's been framed and hung in a stairwell of our house, which is reflected in the glass.

Reflections - Window

When I traveled in Italy, I took this photo of the poppy field and landscape. When I got home, it was printed, framed and hung up on the wall. Recently, I noticed the reflection in the glass of this photo and thought it might be a cool, layered picture. Things would start to get weird if I ever printed out the above photo, framed it and then took yet another picture of that. The Inception of photos... within a photo, within a photo....!!

Water Marble

I can't stop looking at this manicure blog! This lady loves to do her nails and she takes pictures and videos of all her manicures. A lot of what she does is water marbling (which is what I attempted on my nails in the picture) and it involves dropping nail polish into a cup of water, making a cool design then dipping your fingernail into the design. You will be amazed at what some people who have practiced this art can come up with!

I've been longing to try this out on my nails, so one day, I painted my nails white, combined some pink, red and (what ended up looking like) clear polishes, swirled it around in the water, and when my fingers came out of the water, this mess was the result! I thought my pointer finger came out pretty neat, but my mom just thought my hand was bleeding!

I decided I didn't like my first try but before I took off the polish (I didn't even bother to clean up the edges of my nails) I decided to document my experiment. I will try this again at some point.

♥machine

Happy Valentine's day!

I ate a Hershey's kiss and bunched up the wrapper and I thought, "hey, that looks like a heart!" And that is how this photo came about.

Mr. Pete

Why do dogs have wet noses? Petey's been to the vet a lot lately (for him) in the past year, but he seems to be back to his mean, squirrel-chasing self. Did you know that some dogs have lived until they were in their mid-20s? I can see that being our dog.

Technique

I had my camera with me on a day of errands and I took a bunch of random pictures as I drove around. This is a photo of nothing in particular, but I do like the light... it's probably around the Golden Hour, which makes everything look wonderful. It's also got some strong leading lines and if there had been something interesting to look at at the intersection, that would have been good.