Alright, I confess. I am a geek. A Harry Potter geek to be specific. I started reading the series 13 years ago and have been hooked ever since; some of my best summer memories are of getting the newest book and curling up in a hammock to read, not wanting to do anything else till I’d finished. And then I usually would read it again, just because I could (I know pretty much the entire series by heart). Eventually my entire family became hooked and so for Father’s Day this year we gave my Dad a family trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando.

It was like walking into the movie (if you ignored all the tourists ^-^’). The recreation of Hogsmead is amazing, all the details are there, down to the voice of Moaning Myrtle occasionally making comments in the bathrooms. And looming beyond the village is the hulking mass of Hogwarts Castle. I’ve been waiting to walk through those gates since my eleventh birthday (upon which I received a Hogwarts school letter delivered by a wonderful snowy owl; guess it just took a little while to get my credits transferred over ).

The details in the castle are beautiful, especially the holograms of the characters talking to you and the moving portraits. The interior of the castle is actually the queue for the ride “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey”, a roller-coaster/ virtual reality experience that takes you on a flight through the school grounds and the forbidden forest. Closet you can get to actually hopping on a broom and taking off.

We spent two days in Universal Studios (both parks), starting and ending in the Wizarding World with big mugs of butterbeer (the frozen butterbeer is fantastic!). Our third day was a slight change of pace with Disney’s Animal Kingdom. A good park in it’s own right but somewhat anti-climactic after the sheer awesomeness of the Wizarding World.  The landscaping in the park is spot on, from Asia with it’s looming version of Mt. Everest and prayer flags to Africa with it’s sprawling savannah (complete with a safari ride). Definitely not a ‘high thrills’ park but Expedition Everest is a decent coaster and the safari ride is pretty cool for what it is (especially for those who have never been on a real safari, which is probably the majority of people there). My sister thought that part was pretty neat as well and called it a good preview for the next two months, which she will be spending as a medical volunteer in Kenya. Probably one of the big highlights of Animal Kingdom for me was the “Festival of the Lion King”, which was a musical and aerobatic performance of the Lion King (my favorite Disney movie). Made me even more determined to see the Broadway performance while I’m in the city.

More to come soon,

Cheers!

“Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one”

-John Lennon, “Imagine”

Last Saturday marked what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday and here in NYC the occasion was marked by several events over the city, including a a screening of LennonNYC at Strawberry Fields and a gallery display of Lennon’s artwork in SoHo, provided by Yoko Ono. I was unable to attend any of the festivities on Saturday (more on what I was doing later in the post) but I was able to make my way up to Strawberry Fields on Sunday. It was a beautiful early fall afternoon and there was still a large crowd around the “Imagine” memorial; some leaving flowers, others simply enjoying the live music (all Beatles’s tunes of course!) .

Happy Birthday John.

I got to spend last Saturday in the studio, working with Steven Walsh on one of his projects: shooting the base images for a large photo-composite to advertise the club he is starting at FIT. He recruited me as the photographer since, while this was his concept and project, he was also the model and there’s only so much one person can do I was more than happy to help and it gave me a great excuse to get into the studio and play around with lights. We’ve been covering a lot of lighting concepts and theories in my Lighting Principles class but the shots we been taking have been strictly to demonstrate how light acts in different conditions and to accurately show this, we’ve been instructed to shoot our models in a standardized way. While I understand the purpose behind this, it doesn’t do alot to satisfy that creative itch and this was a great opportunity to apply some of the things I’ve learned to a creative shoot (and hey, they actually worked, how ’bout that?). We shot a fair amount but here’s one of my  favorites from the day:

Well that’s it for this post; more to come later,

Cheers!

Yup, it’s baaack!!! The blog lives again with a shiny new purpose: following my adventures in the grand city of New York. For those new to the game I moved to New York at the end of August to start college at the Fashion Institute of Technology to study what else but photography! I’m living on campus in the apartment-style dorms (it’s essentially a two-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and bathroom shared by four people) which has it’s pluses and minus. It’s great being so near my classes and being able to cook for myself is wonderful (I’ve been in the cafeteria twice since semester started ^-^’) but hey, shared living is always interesting, right?

My schedule mostly intro classes this semester (intro to photography, intro to digital photography, intro to styling, etc.) and so far most of what we’ve covered has been review. My photo 1 class is a black and white film class and it feels great to be back in the darkroom again after almost three years. I still remember how everything works; thanks Mr. Blessing! We’ve done a couple assignments so far, including the 1-minute and 1-hour rolls, where we had to shoot a roll of film in one minute and one hour respectively. The 1-minute roll was hard because well, it’s a just under a frame every 2 seconds! I think too much to shoot that fast! So my roll ended up taking me about 3 minutes to shoot ^-^’ The 1-hour roll was a little easier; we had to return to the same place we shot the previous roll (mine was a subway station. Hey, I’m in New York, why not?) and do it again. More time to think about things was nice and I actually ended up finishing too early. Apparently I’m good at following directions…

However my favorite class so far is styling. I love doing the styling (hair, make-up, wardrobe, set, etc) for my own shoots and am really looking forward to learning more techniques. Our first project was to create a mock advertisement for SmartWater. I was stumped for ideas; water bottles aren’t usually my first choice to shoot. However one of the girls in my group had the fabulous idea to run with SmartWater’s new Breast Cancer Awareness campaign and run we did. After some issues finding a model to work with (apparently it’s difficult to get someone who will pose topless for a group of students at 1:00 on a Monday afternoon) we ended up shooting one of the members of our group; the ever-lovely Maddie.

I don’t think we could have found a better model:

More to come later, just found out that our RA baked a cake for the floor and I’ve learned that you never turn down Corey’s baked goods (they’re amazing). Cheers!

Alright, so just a little post to break the silence but I wanted to give you all an update on life and the blog. Some of you know that I’m back home now and am in the process of transferring all my files to a new computer. As they get transferred and edited I will be updating the blog with the remainder of my trip, including Spain, France, Germany, and Switzerland. So stay tuned for updates over the next couple weeks!