around the hills

wooh pictures! i was able to steal ellen away for a little over an hour yesterday for some portraits before she had to go back to school. we wandered around the woods and the track where she spent (basically) the entirety of high school. i recently divided my portrait section of my portfolio by person, and i very much love taking photos of people in their places as they grow up. the most fleshed out section of my portraits would be victoria because the archive extends from 2009 to present day from parsippany to paris. you can peek around my site, it's no where near done yet but it's in the works! (finally)

also i would like to wish ellen happy birthday again! thank you for your stories, i love your company. <3


oh yes, "the hills" the nickname for the other side of my hometown. playing around with lightroom, i'm starting to favor grainier edits. and i've been using my 28mm lens for everything now, i love it.

july in new jersey

i go through "phases" let's say, where i feel the passion of blogging burn though my veins and i dedicate an entire day to changing the layout and organizing my tags and feeling determined that i will blog all the photos from last semester and everything i missed. today is one of those days. i've asked my little sister to draw me up a cute header that will hopefully be up soon, but for now i've been playing around with the header and sorting through photos.

i would make this an iphone diary post, but alas it was stolen by a gypsy child in paris much to my sadness so you'll have to contend with my words.

adjusting back from abroad was hard. suddenly i was just home, almost as if it didn't happen and taken from the unknown and adventurous right back to the familiar and old. but this past month i've slowly acclimated myself back to the US and life - and everything is familiar but it does feel different because i have ~matured~ and *~*~*changed*~*~*~ * - throws glitter around-  home has been good, it might be because i've been in and out of the city the few last week - ripping my hair from it's roots trying to find an apartment with tess. (it's so stressful i can't even tangibly put it to words). and when i'm not apartment hunting i'm just wandering around and spending time with friends. the balance between hectic city and quiet home has actually made it quite good to be back. i love waking up in the morning to have coffee with my mom from her new french press and sitting out in the backyard under the shade with kira. (i've also found myself a fun sleep/night dress to swish around in so i'm never wearing pants it's glorious).

i'm reorganizing my portfolio as of now, making a new section of portraiture dedicated to the people i have developed close photographic relationships to. basically i want to get across that these photos aren't just aesthetic, random shots - but photos of people i care deeply about and almost an exploration of their relationship with me and with passing time. and now, after five years i actually have a body of work to work with. more on that later, though.

and i have been watching buffy and adventure time, and increasing have become the earl of lemongrab when i am frustrated to everyone's delight. so yes, i'm making lists and getting my life together and gearing up for the coming school year - i'm excited and happy and i feel FRESH AND NEW.

my grandma has been visiting from taiwan the last month, so these photos are from a family bbq a few days ago.

my cousin, my grandma, and me

tyler in the bamboo forest

so yes. i've been almost home for a month now - meticulously sorting through europe photos, feeling post-abroad sadness, binge watching buffy, and reorganizing my portfolio (since i now actually have photos, unlike my high school days). i've decided my portrait section of my portfolio is going to follow the people whom i photograph the most (victoria and tyler since day 1, and ashley and tess as of college) so it's a lil timeline of the last five years. (also, going through every photo i have taken since 2009 is such a flashback -and a task.- how the hell have i been doing this for five years??? also i took lots of self portraits back in the day)

these photos are a throwback and return to one of the first places i stuffed tyler in for photos - the rapidly growing bamboo forest in my backyard.

anyway, let's mark this as the fastest i've ever gone through photos in my mortal life.

monet in giverny

[ june 19, 2014 ]

what's up? i'm finally home after a whirlwind of adventures and have a desperately large amount of photos to publish (and i find myself watching an entire season of orphan black within 24 hours, ok julia ok). so everything will probably be out of order, whatever. we'll talk about my feelings and thoughts and lack of organization later - here are the photos from my day trip out of paris to monet's gardens in giverny with my lovely ladies kaya and cibel. (oh yah, i lived in paris for a month and a half) june 19th was quite a dramatic day in retrospect (things that happened include: my stolen phone and pretty flowers and discussing how we would let monet tattoo our asses and waiting for all forms of public transportation), and perhaps the only way to tell it is with a list~

1. woke up and made my way to gare de st. lazare from victoria's place (16th arr) to meet kaya and cibel (who were in town from their month long europe adventure) to go to monet's gardens in giverny, a little bit outside of paris
2. due to the train strike the next train leaving to "vernon" (the elusive destination the website told us to go) wasn't due for another hour and a half so i decided to take us to the nearby galeries lafayette for an a+ rooftop view (i am now a pretty qualified parisian tour guide, wooh).
3. got to roof and took cute selfie (hey kaya where is that selfie?) and then realized that my phone was not in my bag!?!? (wallet and mark ii were fine and untouched thank god)
4. remained calm due to disbelief (don't worry i felt the trauma later) and retraced steps back to train station and called my french number. phone went straight to voicemail - so reaffirming that my phone was indeed stolen and not mistakenly thrown into the trash.
5. boarded the train to vernon, there was no point in wallowing and missing out on giverny too.
6. kaya and i, being seasoned travellers, assumed that since giverny is a touristy destination and since paris is one of (if not) the most visited places in the world - figuring out how to get to monet's gardens should be easy? well. on the contrary things got slightly awry...
7. arrived at vernon and looked for way to get to monet's garden. ah! there is a bus! good! that does not come for another hour! ah! no longer good?
8. decided to walk the 5km because it was a nice day out, and found a very badly drawn map (which we then photographed with kaya's phone) as a guide
9. grabbed food at carrefour and then proceeded to get lost because we have (apparently) an impaired sense of direction
10. realized we walked a circle after a decent amount of time and finally found the seine and walked the right path to giverny
11. arrived at giverny and fawned over how god damn picturesque the whole damn place is.
12. consumed ice cream at the nearest truck because it was hot as balls.
13. proceeded to have our minds and eyes blown at the wonderful beauty of the original water lily pond.
14. kaya and i then suddenly realized ("seasoned travellers") that we did not look at any of the transportation times back to paris. ah. and since there was a train strike (thanks sncf :*) it would've probably been wise to do so.
15. scrambled out of monet's garden and waited at the bus stop that did not look like a bus stop while eating the rest of our cheese and hummus.
16. made it to vernon only to have the next train arrive in....two hours.
17. passed the time telling wild stories and acting them out (in which is just stood there and laughed at kaya and cibel because i can't act because i'm not fun) as the sun set in the background (paris is literally sunny until 9PM, it really fucks up with one's mental clock)
18. finally made it back to paris and victoria's room and then ate a large stick of butter jana procured earlier that day.

rue de la pompe

i am such a mess when it comes to updating photos (there are still an alarming large amount of blog posts i have to do about london / spring break / europe travels let alone the 20 i forgot about last year. alas / c'est pas grave). so long/dramatic story short, my five days in paris extended to two weeks and then extended to a month frolicking around with the french. more on that and all my emotions later.
i like taking pictures of people in their spaces, so here is victoria in her host mother's home in the 16 arrondissement in paris. it's this wonderful, old, twisting, wooden, vintage/lavish looking place (i can't do adjectives at the moment) that perfectly fits all preconceived notions of what paris apartments should look like.
she recently she moved out of this room that she had been living in for the past academic year to a cozy apartment on the top floor of the adjacent building. (which means we labor up six flights of ~seemingly benign~ wooden spiral staircases to the top, wheezing like elderly women) pix taken the day she had to move out ~*~*~*~ repetitive, so pick a favorite plz.
#INTENSE #SYMBOLISM #ART

england in film

kids peering over the edge at the filming of a documentary (?) at the old naval college, greenwich.

so i brought a bunch of color film to london, but for some strange reason it was left forgotten in the bottom of my suitcase until i fished it out a couple weeks ago. (also on that note i am tragically behind on blog posts about my semester/spring break extravaganza/and day trips woooops). the following photos were extracted from three rolls taken on an afternoon in greenwich village (in london), a spontaneous day trip to new forest national park in southampton, and a day trip to brighton.

baths in bath

nyu took us out on a day trip to bath, england - a beautiful and adorable city built upon limestone. it was pouring during most of the walking tour, to our dismay - but the sun came out as we stepped onto the 2,000 year old floors of the roman baths (so it all worked out in the end).

bath basically was the party town of the 1800s and built for the hip and happenin' people of england to spend their vacations and days - and before that it was a roman settlement named aquae sulis.

kew gardens

about an hour tube ride away from the center of london is royal botanic gardens: aka kew gardens, da world's largest collection of living plants. to put it eloquently: i think plants are the coolest damn things - they're all grassy, planty, etc but the amount of diversity, color, and shapes they can take on are infinite. the gardens are absolutely stunning - full of various greenhouses and fields of flowers i want to frolic in, eat, and rub my face on.

we didn't get to explore the entire garden, we mainly stuck to the south side and visited the main greenhouses and the treetop walkway. click below to scroll the a large amount of tumblr photos of flowers, my guilty pleasure.

amsterdam: canals on canals II

day ones photos here. 

the next two days in amsterdam consisted of mint tea along the canals, biking in the bos along the tall trees and winding paths, drinking beer named "my precious," the ridiculously charming buildings sitting crookedly against one another, having pannekoeken once again -because we love it-, staring at the blue and yellow buildings shimmer in the canals for hours on an end, wandering around the city and trying to decipher dutch, seeing the absolute beauty of van gogh's paintings in person: the splashes of color and messy strokes that comprise a masterpiece of joy and emotion from a mad man's mind, the vanilla caramel cream cookie ice cream that we devoured alarmingly fast, watching all the bikers weave in and out of the narrow streets and across the bridges, sitting along the canals with our legs dangling above the water feeling like nothing is better than good company, food, and having my camera around my neck.

amsterdam: the pannekoeken life

hey ho, finally updating my blog with my travel photos. i uploaded them on flickr, so god bless the quality compared to the decreasing quality of photobucket.

i love getting to a city and spending the first day mapping it out in my mind and learning the streets. coming from manhattan, we're all equipped with the knowledge of city-exploring and i love seeing how each city compares to the next.

i've sorted this out into two blog posts, see day two and day three's photos here. thursday night we boarded an overnight bus to amsterdam (which included a ferry and stopping at calais, france for a little bit) and arrived at the crack of dawn. we stayed in a hostel outside of the city center: a camping hostel in the amsterdamse bos (forest) with their cute cabins and chalets.

in the end, we didn't have time to go to the anne frank house/heineken factory/rijksmuseum - but one can always save that for the next time.

white cliffs of dover

i want to first preface saying that i am grateful for everything i have in life: i am already luckier than millions of people. i'm healthy, i have a family, and i can afford to go to school. but seeing as this is my blog, i have a few things to say (even if they ooze major first world problems,  it's still relevant).

sometimes i hear my peers express their jealousy about how lucky i am to be here, in a way that sounded like this was just handed to me on a serving platter. my sister too (who is going through the same wanderlust and anxiety about the future that plagued me during high school), and i wanted to tell her that me being where i am isn't just a roll of the dice, but rather hard work and patience. again, i'm not saying i haven't had a lucky life (because i have) but my point is that i didn't rely on luck to get me where i am.

i didn't do much in high school, my parents were pretty strict on one hand and we couldn't afford to travel - so i spent most of my time in my room doing homework and perusing the internet, biding my time until i could see the world. seeing photographs from around the world made me burn inside, i loved my sweet suburban town but it was too dry for me and there was just so much color and life to see. some kids get to travel the world with the parents, and i wasn't one of them but that didn't mean that i could do it too.

it was junior year of high school when we read the poem "dover beach" and i don't remember getting much from the poem (after reading 5 million poems about old english guys ranting about the tragic beauty of the world it all kind of blends together.) rather it was when my teacher pulled up a google image search of the cliffs that the white cliffs of dover stamped an impression on me. sitting there in those weird high school desks conjoined with plastic blue chairs, i decided that i was going to go to the cliffs. i didn't know when or how in my life i'd do it...but i was going to do it. and i did.

i was always taught that if i wanted something in life, i would have to work for it. it's not worth it if it's just given to you, life is not that easy. all those kids having their parents buy them shiny new cars for their sixteenth birthday wouldn't ever really understand the ~virtues~ of sweat and work. so i worked my ass off in high school to get into a good college, and from there i spent all my time working to save up enough money to afford travel. i didn't pick up my bags and ask my parents to send me off to another country for an adventure - rather this abroad experience has been years in the making. i am forever grateful for everything in my life, but i worked for it.

the bus rolled up and ashley, gaby, g, and i walked out and just like the photos - there it was. the incredible cliffs snaking into the distance with grassy plains and hills. to finally be there: standing at the edge with the wind blowing the air out of my lungs and seeing the waves crash against the chalky white cliffs i felt so small but *cue dramatic instrumental music and voiceover that signals an important change in character development* that i could do it. i fucking just accomplished something i set out to do and once thought was improbable. it's not a picture, it's real life. my dreams are not impossible and everything in life will work itself out. in one way or another, i was going to be okay.

cardiff // caerdydd

the five of us sat around the round black table in my common room perusing the internet for potential weekend trips that weren't too far away from london. cardiff, wales: 6 round trip for the weekend of february 7th? why not? we booked the tickets/hostel and set off with no concrete agenda besides vague notions of castles, beaches, and pubs.

cardiff was the perfect weekend getaway, retaining the british charm and history of london but on a much smaller/manageable scale. cardiff was the most adorable hostel i will ever stay at, with it's charming owners and array of juices/breakfast noms when we woke up. cardiff was walking along the rocky coasts and ridiculously green grass as we tried to decipher welsh (it does not look like a language). cardiff was staying in our warm hostel laughing at preposterous american jackets in the olympics and playing various card games. cardiff was the large medieval stone castle with dangerously steep staircases - americans love castles and cathedrals because the oldest thing we have is a mere 300 years old (if at all). cardiff was walking to the bay and having tapas with the most delicious spiced sangria i've had, followed by coffee ice cream. cardiff was unpredictable weather but having the rain and the sun work out perfectly to our needs. cardiff was encountering an older group of irish men at a bachelor's party and then meeting a group of much younger (and cuter) irish boys at the hostel. cardiff was falling asleep wrapped in soft blankets listening to the sound of wind and rain howl and splatter onto my bedsheets, warm from the orange glow of the night sky. cardiff (penarth, actually. 10 minutes away) was beautiful cliffs and sandy beaches that stretched as far as the eye could see. oh, and we had some english/welsh tea time which made me feel like a princess.

mecklenburgh square

my favorite nook in our flat is this cozy window spot where i can curl up with a book, some tea, and watch the light and weather change as the day goes on. daylight is a luxury we didn't have in our dorm last year because it was a courtyard room so i've forgotten how nice it is to not be a vampire.



just a quick update to say that photos are coming! i am torn on how to organize them - whether i should create specific posts for my phone photos, do them by month, do them by event, post only the best photos, or just pile them all together. in addition, i have a lot of photos from my architecture class that ventures around london once a week in the sun/rain/wind that i have no idea what to do with.  (i concern myself with the big issues in modern society).