little flowers that you have sewn show people you have known that i am love

b. werner and i went to phipps and took pictures. we got in for free. that was awesome. taking pictures was awesome too. in general, it was a great time. these are my favorites.



i like this picture. i had to use the flash, though. the macro setting usually almost always automatically makes the flash pop up. i usually hate the flash. i think people look stupid and i think things look stupid when the flash is on. but, today i learned that my camera does know what it's doing sometimes and that the flash is sometimes necessary and not always awful.


i loved the texture of these leaves.

the children of the wind are flying again

i finally saw the birds. birds fly in circles, a lot, which gives you time to get your camera out. i hope you like the pictures. not always sure about what it means to play around with the contrast and colors of photographs. i'm not always sure how i feel about it. either way, i did it this time to varying degrees with the birds.
taking pictures of birds has sort of been a spiritual undertaking for me. there have been huge lessons in waiting and patience and trust. also makes me question the point in taking pictures: sometimes i become so obsessed with getting a picture of something beautiful, i forget that the thing i'm taking a picture of is beautiful. i don't like that. maybe that's why these pictures worked: i was walking down the street with two friends who i love, the sun was shining, i looked up and there were birds circling, i got my camera out and took the pictures. usually, this process looks more like me sitting outside, waiting for the birds, getting impatient and then going back in my room, seeing the birds from my window, running outside to miss the picture and repeating the process at least 5 times until i stop looking out the window and focus on watching six feet under. like i can't enjoy the birds, unless i can have the birds. keep them in a photograph. which is so human of me. taking pictures exposes this deep humanistic quality of wanting to have, consume, hold, eat and capture beauty, instead of just enjoying it without owning it.

birds with wings

here are a few pictures. i took them today. if you've been friends with me in any degree of closeness over the last few months, then you know that i've been nearly obsessed with getting a good picture of birds flying. thanks to brian werner, who took a series of the best pictures of birds flying, i might die if i don't accomplish this goal. unfortunately, all of the large black birds have already flown south (to the southside) by now. maybe i'm more aware this year, but it seems as if pittsburgh is the center of all bird migration. everyone flies through pittsburgh to go south.

i would not call any of these photos successes. but i like this one. the birds aren't really in focus, and you can't really see their shape. but i like the wavey line that they create. it breaks the photo up into interesting parts. i also like the sunsetting on the houses. so even though the birds don't look great individually, i like what they're doing as a whole.

um. the sun is awesome. and i think that you sort of get an idea of the birds as individuals in this picture. you can sort of see their shapes.


the sunset was nice. the birds look okay. what i don't like is when the birds just look like flakes of black lint on your computer screen. that's what's happened in this photograph and that's why i don't like it.


sun is great. birds look pretty good in this one. it's hard to upload photos onto this thing because the thumbnail is so small, i can't quite tell which ones are which :)


okay. so, i like the above picture. the bird isn't really that clear. the below picture is perfect to me. my problem is this: in above picture, all you see is the road. in below picture, there's a lame green car that's messing it up. so i feel frustrated because the below picture is almost the best thing that's happened to me in like 4 days, but the stupid green car is in the way. clouds look awesome either way.

beechwood farms or the day that global warming turned winter into spring

i think the view from my back deck is epic. the colors felt so vibrant.

some days i think that the best option would be for me to work for martha stewart.

i like the sky here. learning how to photograph the sky/sun on the new camera is difficult. i like the graininess of my old crappy camera when i took pictures of the sun directly. the new camera doesn't do that. i think playing with the exposure might get me where i want to be though.

i like how blue this blue is.

above picture and below picture are happy pictures.

the studio

here are some pictures from the studio. most of them are of laurie/her artwork. i learned a lot this night. i read the manual. it had good things to say.

i think i might just like the colors here. and the fact that we're at ritters. but even this silly little picture looks so much better than anything the cybershot might have taken.

this was the blessed moment when i learned how to focus on one thing and make the things in the background blurry. crucial moment.