new life goal

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/surreal-places-to-visit-before-you-die

Throwback Thursday: Road Trip edition

So as many of you know this summer I checked a cross-country road trip of the classic college allybucketlist.
Molly and I drove from Seattle to NY in 22 days and saw some of the hidden gems this country has to offer. (I attempted to blog the trip, but forgetting my computer at home in combination with seeing everything possible in the short amount of time in each city left me little time to share my quirky thoughts with you peeps.)
For my next photo project we have to use the infamous Sophie Calle's approach to photography to create a series of our own. Essentially we need to create a set of rules to follow through photography. For example, take a picture of every breakfast you eat, or everything you see that makes you laugh over a set period of time. I actually seemed to have subconsciously completed this project on the road trip. I would keep my camera on the dashboard in the same place on most driving days and shoot the open road. Here are some of the best shots.

I-10 Louisiana- NoLa bound

Mississippi/ Alabama scenic route- Nashville bound

Pigeon Forge, TN- the weirdest town in America potentially

I-40 Arizona- Grand Canyon bound (yes that is rain through a magical sunset, absolutely unreal)

The classic 2 hour backup at the Lincoln Tunnel...just in case we didn't get enough time on the road.

I-10 Texas (actually 4 hours on any side from any sort of town/city, speed limit 85
but the clouds were purple so it was okay)

Back and Better than ever

New semester. New major. New me? Nah. Same ol' Brenskidoodle.

Anywho I am happy to announce that I have switched majors and finally decided to give in to my obsession with arts and crafts and be an art major. And a good one at that.
I am majoring with a concentration in photography and am currently in Advanced Photo.
Here is the first project! Many more yummy treats to come throughout the semester so stay tuned MuthaFuckaZ

Becks and her new franddd

In her element

Gluten free and loving life

Taking no prisoners

Who runs the world? That's what I thought!

goodbye b11- the messiest all girls house in the history of the world.
to the infections we will suffer for years to come because of the filth we lived in.
proof that you can survive on 600 boxes of Annie's, never taking out the trash and without a can opener.

J the perfect schoolgirl!

Guess who?

 Yesterday we made the best decision of our lives and went to the river. Heaven, just absolute heaven.

we'll start with me. yea i know i know, moving on.

love in its purest form

epitome of Grace, caught being beautiful with water surrounding her. in her element.

or is this the epitome of her?

Look for our next sorority event coming soon!

NY state, you ain't too bad.

Rosie "hot mom" Dienhart

There single drops next month. Ladies of the Lake.

the sparkles of the water, I just cant. and Lauren is black officially!

its not always smiles

but sometimes you just can't help being THE CUTEST GIRL IN THE WORLD!

yea she went in, yea she's adorable.

til next time river fun. stay classy.

The Collages of Cape Town

For my final photo project we had complete control and freedom over what we wanted to turn in.
But as we all know, with so much freedom comes so much responsibility....
I decided I must use some of my hundreds of gorgeous and meaningful Cape Town photos in some way- but how?
There are some funny ones, some just straight up gorgeous ones and some powerful ones.
I decided to combine them in a series of collages.
Here they are!

This one you have seen before. I made it when I first learned how to overlap photos and was just playing around, but it turned out so well that I had to use it somehow.
The bottom and background photos used in this one are all from a trip me, Tori, Grace and Lizaby took along the famous Garden route, which goes along the coast the Indian Ocean.  The top photo is of Tori's hands during a rusk and tea break during our third homestay with an Afrikaaner family in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Rusks and roobios tea define the Afrikaan people and is a simple and beautiful way to represent our time with them.

The teal house was my homestay home in Tsabo, the rural village we stayed in in the Eastern Cape. This is meaningful in that this was the home I stayed in and slept in for 6 nights, but mostly this is just a fun, playful image. I had a little bit of a moral dilemma with this one because this homestay was the most challenging for me being that is the most drastically different from anywhere I had ever been before and to display it in such a fun/funny way gave me some guilt, but it is beautiful and the rolling hills of lush, green grass with this bright, teal, round house make a captivating image.
The animals collages all over are from different parts of my trip. The chickens are from the village, but the ostrich, giraffe and elephant are from our safari trip and elephant interaction we went to following this homestay.

The original, background, image in this is from the village homestay as well, and one of my favorite days of the entire trip. Our days in Tsabo were not planned so we all organized a soccer game in one of the many fields and all the students and their homestay siblings came out to play. It was one of the only days it wasn't raining and was a beautiful example of no matter where you come from or what language you speak sports are a universal language that can bond anyone. I of course did not participate, due to my allergy to athleticism, but loved watching and photographing. The boy in the center was an incredible soccer player who I loved photographing and decided he deserved the front and center of this collage.
The cross is from a monument in the village of Soweto, outside of Joberg, where the famous riots took place during apartheid that Mandela was apart of. The monument is a cylinder shaped stone structure with a x or + taken out of the ceiling that allows for this shadow of a cross to be created against the wall when the sun shines in. I distorted the image and cutout the building structure.
You can read into this photo however you want. I like to simplicity, and yes there is some connection the christianity and the strong presence of it I noticed continuously throughout my trip.

This image I made today and is the one I am most proud of.
The background image is of the famous Table Mountain, the backdrop to my entire abroad experience in Cape Town.
The image on the bottom is me and my best friend Tristan holding hands and one of my favorite images of my trip.
The design at the top and "I am an African" quote is a drawing by a student from Rhodes High School in Cape Town. Our program sent us on high school visits and during mine I met this incredible art teacher. She was doing a project on identity and had each student draw their profile and arms and gave them freedom to fill in the rest as they please. This students piece was exceptional and I snapped a quick pic of it that has made my project. If you look closely on the sides you can see the hands and profile in the center-left. 

The Debut

Welcome to THE Portrait Blog.
Alright fine, I'll fill you in if you insist. A few weeks ago I had a mini-breakdown/ freakout about the lack of creative outlets and passion in my life and a darling friend of mine talked me through it and convinced me to start a series of portrait style photos of the amazing friends I have made here at Skidmore. This group of kids bring endless smiles to my face every day and if this blog can give them 10% of those smiles back I'll call myself a winner. Molly said it best tonight when she described this series to attempt to represent the massive amounts of love we have for each other. I couldn't have ever dreamed of having friends this great, but I am more than glad to try and capture the greatness of them on some 400mm film.
So I decided to bust out Greg's old pentax film camera and play around. This is what has come of it.
Thanks for the memories all y'all. To years more

my inspiration to find inspiration- Grace Ellen Hammerstein

James on a chic day- Jamie Thomson

crossword crowding

sunshine of my life- Rosie Dienhart

free cone day

my chaffeaur- Mackenzie Lacy

the cuddliest of muffins- Lauren Riva Rappaport

the overflowing love I was referring to

Mr.Skidmore- Benjamin Zane Greer

just trying to fit in- Vicky Janczyk

catches eyes from this Library Queen- Katherine Cavanaugh

my muse. "chill" Sophie Don

ray charles look alike 

oh hot damn- the greatest wall sharer there ever was Molly Sinsheimer 

thank god you exist gabagirl- Gaby Gignoux-Wolfsohn

The Infamous Bars of Saratoga

Photo Project #4:

For this project we had to do portraits of local Saratogians with no relationship to Skidmore as a way to bridge the town and school- a concept I am obsessed with. I decided to do the bar scene, cause it is something that is pretty integral is both "townies" and skid students lives a commonality between us all.

The dark lighting and crowdiness that bars have was definitely a challenge, but it only forced me to learn how to do all kinds of crazy shit on photoshop I would have otherwise not known.

Enjoy!

The Alley

the bartenders of DA's- the skid favorite

the bottles of DA's

The owner of the Tin n' Lint- not gonna lie, very nice man.