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