Jamaican Me CrAzY!!!

This summer my family took a vacation to Jamaica with the Kerns and Workman families. We were there this past June and it was absolutely amazing. It was like no other place I had ever seen before. Growing up in southern Ohio, I have been exposed to many hills and beautiful scenery, well the hills here can't compare to the ones I saw in Jamaica. Once you were at the top of one, all you could do is look and see the tops of thousands of other hills. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I didn't get to spend much time at the beach because each day we did something different to experience all we could while we were there. We swam with the dolphins, snorkeled with sting rays, went to Bob Marley's house, zip lining through the rainforest, and touring through the beautiful country side. We stayed at a hotel called the RIU. We stayed in a Riu in the Bahamas when I was 15 and we were supposed to go back when I was 18. My dad told me that he would take me and Chris Kerns back when we were 18 so we could go to the casinos and things. Well since my dad had passed, my mom took it upon herself to be the one to fulfill the promise my dad had made. She felt it would be too hard for her to go back to the Bahamas so we decided to go to Jamaica. When we asked Chris Kerns to go, his parents felt the need for them to go because they wanted to help keep my mom company. Soon we invited the Workman family to go with us and just make it a big friendly trip. My sister has a very good friend Jana, she has had some family problems in her life and she feels very comfortable with our family, we have accepted her as one of us. She is a real sweet girl who we love very much. We took her along with us too. So we ended up taking 11 people to Jamaica with us. We of course only paid for ourselves, but we all went at the same time and stayed in the same hotel. It was a blast and I hope someday I will be able to go back, whether that be with my current family, or the one I look forward to starting someday.

Lost photos

I was recently in need of a flash drive for college(yes I did just say college) and I found one from high school. Well when I put it into my computer and saw what was on it, I knew I had to start up my blog again. I found two photos that I liked a lot and wanted to share them with you.

I got a very nice camera for my graduation present so I would look for me having new posts on a regular basis again. Thanks!

$Cash Money$

This in a picture that was inspired by the works of Sandy Skoglund. Caitlin Campbell and myself took a cardboard box and cut off two of the sides and the top of the box to simulate a little room. We then covered the inside of the box with aluminum foil and made our foil bubbles and counter top to have it blend in with the background. There are a lot of coins all over the box, some on the walls and some on our bubbles and some on the floor. To mix things up a bit and go crazy we threw in some green, by that I mean bills ranging from $20 all the way down to $1. The coins also ranged from whole dollars, to half dollars, and all the way down the line up of our regular coin system we use now.

Just Like the Moon

I figured since I had a picture of the sun on here already, that I would need a picture of the moon... Pulling up my driveway last night I noticed how big the moon was so I felt it deserved a spot on my blog. It also made me remember one of the better songs I have heard. It is called "Just Like the Moon" by Brett Dennen

I believe that you were born during an eclipse. And the stars named you moon child. Then you come you rise into my sky. You stepped in front of my sun and it makes the whole world dark.And you light up the night. Just like the moon. Just like the moon you light up the night. And sometimes,Sometimes I only get a sliver of ya. But I'm hoping. I'm hoping for a full moon tonight.

When the Sun Goes Down

This picture is one that I took right after one of the Cross Country Meets here at Paint Valley. This was originally just in the background of the main picture, but when I noticed it I felt that if I cropped it down it would be a much better photograph.

The future of Bainbridge

This is just a little Photoshop project that I worked on for a while. It took me a pretty long time to get the idea in my mind of what I was going to create, but after I had my mental picture it went by rather quickly.

This is how I picture the great village of Bainbridge to look close to 30 years down the road.

Boredom

I was bored and thought I would do something that I hadn't tried out before... color extraction.

An EXPOsition

Yesterday I was sitting in front of probably 500 people on a stage with a bunch of lights shining on me. It only took 10 minutes to pass before I got a headache from the lights. I sat on that stage with three other kids with those lights shinning on us from 11:20 til about 2:00. It was almost torture. The reason I was there was because I had done pretty well in the Ohio Governor's Art Exhibition. In fact I got placed into the top 25 out of almost 12,000 people. I had entered 5 different pictures at the very start of the show. Once the first selection was done, I had two pictures picked to move on to the next level. From there only one had moved on further. At this time my picture had been selected as one of the top 300. The next thing that happened was that it got awarded the Governor's Award of Excellence. That moved it to the top 25.

Here is three of the pictures that I had entered. I took these while I was outside the day after the surprise blizzard we had.

This picture is the one that placed in the top 25 in the competition.

These are a couple of the pictures that I took my freshman year. I think I have come a long way since then.

What I have been through..

I am in an advanced photography class at Paint Valley High School. I have been in a photography class all four years of high school. My freshman year when I took my first photography class, we took pictures with completely manual cameras. We rolled and developed our own film. We also used our darkroom that we have in the classroom. We printed all of our pictures in black and white. By the end of the first nine weeks of school, I realized that photography is something that I could see myself doing all the time.
My second year in photography we were still doing all of the same developing and printing techniques. This year was very different though. In the first year we had strict projects that we had to shoot. This time, we were able to use our minds and do a couple of free projects. This let us take pictures of the things we found interesting. It was then that I found my weird and creative mind.
The third year of photography I started doing color photographs. This was very different and started getting me to take pictures of nature. I see nature being beautiful when it is in color. There are colors in nature that are so vibrant that they just shouldn't be hidden in black and white photographs. We also started to scan some of our film to a computer and be introduced to Photoshop. Here is where my random mind set wild. I loved taking certain things out of one picture and putting them into another one and make it seem as if that object was actually there.
This current year, I am finally into the digital era. I am on the yearbook staff at my high school and I was asked to take a majority of the pictures that go in it. Our yearbook advisor purchased a very nice Nikon camera that I have been able to take with me everywhere I go. I love being able to take multiple pictures of something and look at them right away and make sure I have at least one good image out of the six or seven I took. I think that the thing I like most about the digital pictures is that I don't have to worry about messing up any of the developing processes.