“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!

Scotland: land of stunning vistas; kilts; and the water of life, whiskey. Also home to some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. There was very little I didn’t love about Scotland (mainly the temperature, which was decidedly chilly) and with a whole bunch of new friends there was a big part of me that simply never wanted to leave.

I started out in Edinburgh, the grand medieval capital of Scotland. I was in love from the moment I arrived; ‘Old Town’ is really that, old. Built on the hill leading up to the beautiful Edinburgh castle, the city is a veritable labyrinth of back alleys and staircases winding their way between the medieval stone buildings. One of the easiest and most enjoyable cities to get lost in, and when you decided to get un-lost just head for the castle looming above the city. ‘New Town’ is only new in relation to the medieval old town and is a gorgeous Georgian area with wide boulevards on a logical grid system that’s in sharp contrast with the maze of the old city. The two are divided by the train tracks that cut through the center of Edinburgh.

My first day was spent exploring the massive Edinburgh Castle and wandering down the Royal Mile to the home of the Scottish Parliament, a hyper-modern building that, while neat, feels very out of place on this side of the tracks. The building was designed to resemble the Scottish Thistle when viewed from above (a feat possible by climbing one of the many paths up the small extinct volcano that is now Holyrood Park), and it actually kinda does if you apply a small dose of imagination. After my wanderings I spent the evening ensconced at a corner table in the back room of the Elephant House café, scribbling parts of my novel on the rather generously-sized paper napkins. And for those of you who don’t know, the back room of the Elephant House is where J.K. Rowling first penned Harry Potter on the rather generously-sized paper napkins.  Here’s to hoping that it’s the napkins that are lucky.

The next day I took a bus out to the coast to visit St. Andrew’s and the ruins there. The ruins were beautiful and plentiful, the coastline was majestic, and the town was quaint. And the weather was miserable. It couldn’t make up it’s mind whether it wanted to rain or snow, so it spent most of the day doing both, throwing in a good strong wind just for kicks. It was a good exercise in attempting to keep my camera dry and the water spots off my lens (even so a good chunk of my shots from that day have lovely spots on them). But it was still a good day and I’m glad I got to go, the ruins were worth it and the weather did add a certain atmosphere.

Saturday found the weather cool and partly cloudy, perfect weather for a nice hike up to Arthur’s Seat, the crater of the volcano. Well, due to not feeling great I didn’t make it up that far but it was still a nice hike and offered some pretty fantastic views of the city, the hills beyond and the harbor. Hung out on a little outcrop for nearly an hour just enjoying the view before heading  back down to the Royal Mile for the ever-wonderful institution of afternoon tea, complete with fresh scones with clotted cream and jam.

Feeling warmer and revitalized I took my camera for a walk and got delightfully lost in the winding back alleys of Edinburgh. Some day I want to take a model with me and get lost there; the possibilities for awesome shoots are everywhere, every corner holds something new and interesting. Finally it started to get dark and I managed to get myself un-lost and make my way back to my hostel to get ready for a night out. Went to a neat little club held once a month in the basement of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- themed pub and had my first real experience with just how much fun Scots can be. Everyone was just chill; they were just there to have a good time and they wanted to make sure everyone else had a good time too. Great fun.

Sunday was a not-so-early train to Glasgow (I got back from the club around 4:30, early was not going to happen) despite the part of me that simply wanted to stay in Edinburgh. That part of me was grumbling loudly when I showed up in Glasgow and it was raining and I didn’t know where I was going to stay (having been the brilliant person I am and not having booked a place in advance). Luckily the lovely lady in the tourist information center was able to call around to find me a bed and then gave me directions on how to get there.

The hostel was in the West End district of the city at the top edge of Kelvingrove Park, about a 10 minute bus ride from the city center. Luckily the rain stopped briefly after the bus dropped me off and I followed the signs for the hostel for a good trek up a hill and around to the far side of the neighborhood. Got all checked in and then told that my room was on the third floor, meaning I got to haul my luggage up four flights of stairs. It was worth every friggin step. The room was located on the top floor with a big window overlooking the park and the city beyond and a windowsill more than wide enough to sit on with a blanket, my laptop and a pot of tea on the chair next to me. Which is exactly how I spent my first evening after venturing down to the city for dinner and watching one of the most spectacular sunsets from the park.

Monday took me to the eastern side of the city to the grand old Glasgow Cathedral and sprawling Victorian Necropolis. The Cathedral was quite nice, especially the old crypt underneath where the body of a saint is supposedly buried and they have a little museum giving some of the history of the cathedral. The Necropolis is situated on a hill overlooking the city (there are a lot of things situated on hills overlooking cities in Scotland, they’re rather fond of their hills) and it is massive. I spent nearly three hours there and didn’t manage to see all of it. The gravestones and monuments are beautiful and many of them are covered in carved Celtic knotwork. And in keeping with what I learned is the typical Glasgow weather pattern, as the afternoon wore on the clouds began to break, letting through shafts of sunlight and creating a beautiful sky.

Nessie was the word of the day on Tuesday as I took a one-day tour from Glasgow all the way up to Loch Ness in search of the ‘monster’. It was nearly 12 hours in a van made more than bearable by the fact that we were travelling through some of the most spectacular landscapes I’ve ever seen. The Highlands of Scotland are truly awe-inspiring. Our first stop of the day was on the bonnie, bonnie shores of Loch Lomond, immortalized in a famous Scottish song “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road”.

We made a few other brief stops along the way, including Glencoe, famous for the massacre of the MacDonald Clan, before arriving at Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness. We had a short (and I mean short, like 20 minutes kind-of short) time to explore the castle and I’m glad I skipped the 10-minute video about Nessie since I barely got to see everything as it was. Then it was onto a boat for a cruise on Loch Ness ‘in search of the monster’, or at least a nice view of the loch and the castle.

Then back on the bus for a brief drive through the city of Inverness (there’s not much to drive through) before turning south and heading for home. We made one more stop in Pitlochry, a little Victorian-style village that had a heavy flavor of tourist trap but it was fine to grab some snacks for the bus ride back to Glasgow. We passed though more stunning landscapes and drove past Stirling Castle and the William Wallace Monument, our guide, a young Scotsman named Colin, continuing his monologue of history and stories about the areas we passed through, interjected with carefully selected music (as in we listened to the song about Loch Lomond as we passed it and various songs about the Highlands, etc.). All in all a very good day, though sadly no sightings of Nessie to report. The mystery lives on.

Wednesday was the day for the ‘water of life’; whiskey. The name comes from the Gallic word ‘Uisge Beatha’ meaning water of life and it is the national drink of Scotland. You don’t just order a whiskey here, some bars have over three hundred different varieties to choose from. So to further my whiskey education I made the journey to Glengoyne Distillery, the southern-most of the Highland distilleries, for a tasting tour. They started us off with a dram of 10-year while we watched a short video on the history of whiskey and the distillery itself before taking us through the different areas and explaining each step of the whiskey-making process. My tour then continued to the club house to sample a 12-year and a 21-year while learning how to properly ‘taste’ a whiskey. Things ended with a dram of 17-year single cask that was simply amazing (and of course very expensive).  A fabulous end to what I thought was my last day in Scotland.

I was supposed to fly to Barcelona on the 29^th to see VNV Nation in concert on the 30^th but due to three of the four members of the band being ill the show was postponed. Until September. Needless to say, I will not be able to attend. But the one lucky thing is that I learned about the cancelation Wednesday night while I was still able to change my plane ticket. I had two options, go to Barcelona anyway and continue with the original plan simply sans concert or spend an extra week in Scotland. I chose the latter, which I’m thoroughly convinced was the right choice.

Thursday was spent reworking my itinerary and deciding where I wanted to go with my extra week. I decided to head up to Glencoe to spend a few days hiking in the Highlands and then back to Edinburgh for a few nights. New plan in hand I spent Friday wandering the city and visiting a few of the museums on the University campus, including the Mackintosh House, which was a very nice collection of works by Charles Mackintosh, an Art Nuevo architect/artist from Glasgow. The day ended with me playing around with the macro filters for my lens and the myriads of flowers in Kelvingrove Park.

Saturday a fabulous day followed by an equally fabulous night. Things started off with meeting up with Jon, one of the Glasgow Steampunks, who was involved with a Chopin piano recital at the beautiful , if dilapidated, Britannia Panoptica music hall. The hall was once part of a Victorian entertainment venue that housed a zoo in the basement, a bar on the ground floor, performance space/music hall on the first floor, and a freak show on the second floor. One ticket got you into all of them and there were a whole range of events that occurred in the music hall. In the current day and age, a casino occupies the ground floor but they still host concerts and various other performances in the music hall.

After the recital Jon and I went for a cup of coffee (or hot chocolate in my case) to, well, get to know each other. He’s a thoroughly delightful chap and we passed the afternoon by him giving me a tour of all the best charity shops for acquiring steampunk gear (and if there had been room in my suitcase, I would have walked away with a few smashing new pieces. Alas they remained hanging in their respective stores). We parted ways and I headed off to the Glasgow version of the club I attended in Edinburgh. Met some amazing people and an awesome night.

I was supposed to go up to Glencoe on Sunday but I found out (luckily before I left Glasgow) that all of the hostels in Glencoe were full that night. So plans got rearranged, again, and I took the bus up on Monday instead. The three days were an experience. The area is absolutely spectacular, though sadly I didn’t make it down to Rannoch Moor like planned, and for the most part the weather cooperated. I got two good hikes in despite the food poisoning and simply the trip there and back made everything worth it. Definitely made me even more interested in doing the West Highland Way, a 95-mile walk from Glasgow to Ft. Williams through the Highlands.

Returned to Glasgow on Thursday in time to head to the University for the weekly meeting of the Glasgow University Steampunk Society, where we watched Wild Wild West and had cake to celebrate the birthday of one of the members. Then it was off to the student bar to continue the party and watch the result of the election come in.

Sadly Friday meant it was time to leave Scotland and move onto the next stop, Barcelona. The two weeks I spent in Scotland were amazing. The scenery is breathtaking, the whiskey is plentiful, and the people are fantastic. To all my new friends, thanks for everything and I’ll be back soon. Cheers!

The blog is back! I apologize for the rather distinct lack of posts, internet was a hard thing to come by in Africa (and quite frankly, so was free time to write). But I’m in Europe now, sitting on the train to Edinburgh as I write this and posts should hopefully become more frequent.

Since it’s been a while since the last post and a lot has happened since then this post is going to be kinda an overview of the last two months rather than a detailed post like previous ones (because it would never get finished if I tried to cover everything and I really would like to get caught up and back on track). As usual though this will be a picture heavy post (are you surprised? No? Good ) And with that why don’t we pick up where I left you in Thailand?

The remaining weeks of the TEFL course were fun and very busy. We had a ton of homework because of all the lessons plans we had to write but we still always found time to go out and have a relaxing dinner, usually on the beach (really, why would you eat anywhere else?). Our classes went well, the Thai students really are wonderful and most of them are actually interested in being there and learning, wish more students in the States were like that.

When I wasn’t studying or writing lesson plans I started planning my itinerary for the week after the course. My plan was to fly to Chiang Mai and then work my way back down to Bangkok by train and bus, seeing the sights along the way, similar to what my sister did when she spent ten days in Thailand and I was able to copy parts of her itinerary, which made planning much easier. I was excited and Sophia decided that she’d come along with one of her friends, whom she was meeting in Chiang Mai.

So with rough itinerary in place my attention focused back on finishing the course. It was fairly uneventful, we all passed and received our certificates in addition to fairly nice, fairly large backpacks (like, proper backpacking bags, not school bags), which was a nice unexpected surprise. I had yet to realize how much of a pain in the ass that bag was going to be to haul around the world (and to ship home, what a nightmare).

The one nifty thing that did happen during the last week of the course was that JB got in contact with a monk who did traditional Thai tattoos (like with the big needles and everything, no machines here) and went to get a piece done. It was stunning, the level of detail that can be achieved is mind-boggling, everything was so clean and precise. Well JB decided that one wasn’t enough and went back to get another. This time me and my camera got to tag along. It was amazing to simply be there, much less be able to photograph it and I came away with my first serious photo essay. A pretty cool experience all around (and JB got three beautiful pieces of ink to remember Thailand by).

Well, the course ended and Sophia and I flew up to Chiang Mai to start our little adventure. The city is beautiful and, after a little trouble finding her friend, we headed out to explore the city. We ended up at an infamous little club/bar called 2am and danced the night away (literally, we got back to room a little before seven). I got up a few hours later to explore on my own and set up my jungle trek for the next day. It was a good day that ended with Chiang Mai’s famous Sunday Market (one of the coolest markets I’ve seen, there was a little bit of everything). Sophia and her friend decided that they were going to stay in the north and explore the area around Chiang Mai rather than heading south with me so after my trek (waterfalls, elephants, and rafting; all spectacular if you ignore the fact that I had a nasty case of food poisoning) I head off on my own.

It was a week full of adventures. Everything from missed/wrong buses to spectacular ruins to beautiful temples to communication problems to wonderful people. Saw pretty much everything I wanted to see, took a ton of pictures (most of which are still being edited, my apologies), and got to enjoy the Thailand that I had pictured before I arrived in Ban Phe (northern Thailand is very different from the southern regions). My last stop was Bangkok, my 36-hour trip to civilization before heading off to Africa. It felt nice to be back in a city and, despite having strep throat (not a great week in the health world for me, eh?), I acquired Mister Donut (after having been eluded and taunted by them since my arrival in Chiang Mai), Starbucks and, much to my great delight, Alice in Wonderland. In English. In iMax 3D. I was giddy to say the least. The movie combines many of my favorite things in film (Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, Helena Boham-Carter, Alice in Wonderland) and I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was going to miss seeing it in theaters. After all, what was the likelihood that it would be released in Thailand the same day it was released in the US? Pretty good apparently

My brief stint in civilization was nice but soon it was time to leave Thailand and head off to the wilds of Africa. After almost missing my flight from Bangkok, it was a short hop to Kuala Lumpur then on to Johannesburg. The flight was uneventful till we landed and one of my bags failed to show up at baggage claim. Normally wouldn’t be a big deal but my sick-adled brain had packed all of my electronics chargers in that bag rather than carrying them on like a smart person. Needless to say I was less than thrilled but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do beside file a report and hope that it would show up soon. So I sat at the gate for my flight to Richard’s Bay, ate donuts and people-watched, trying to figure out who else there was also on the African Impact program. I guessed one right (his lowpro backpack gave him away ).

We arrived and were met by Andrew, who runs the African Impact St. Lucia programs and waited for the luggage to come through. My day was made when both of my bags showed up, unharmed and most importantly, there, in my hands. The rest of the group seemed nice as we all loaded our luggage into the van and headed off to St. Lucia, about an hour away from the airport. I slept for the majority of the drive.

St. Lucia is a tiny little town (again, one main road, though much, much nicer than Ban Phe) situated at the southern end of the iSimangilisio Wetland Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Beautiful location with good access to the park, the estuary and the beach. The volunteer house ( a spectacular house with huge living room, two story tiki deck with bbq pit, and a swimming pool) was about a 10-min walk from town (longer at night because you had to skirt around the little grassy area because of the hippos that hang out there). My roomies were Leslie and Alison, two lovely Scottish girls from Glasgow (Kelly, from Australia, was in our room for two nights before she decided to abandon us in favor of a bottom bunk in another room. What nerve ;P).

The first week was mostly devoted to our little photography intro course taught by the fabulous Emil von Maltitz, a South African photographer. All of us learned something (there were six of us from all levels) and had quite a good time (despite the moaning about getting up at 4:30 on two of the mornings to shoot the sunrise ). We had photo critiques each night which were useful and a popular photo of the day vote, where everyone in the house (not just the photographers) voted on their favorite photos.

The rest of the month was a crazy mix of game drives, bush walks, Conservation Club at the local high school, volunteering at the Crocodile Center, photo editing, and a bunch of other things. Obviously the game drives were one of the highlights, we got to see some pretty amazing things, including a juvenile Martial Eagle, Africa’s largest eagles, in flight. Working at the Croc Center was one of my favorite parts, we did everything from catch and move juveniles (about 3ft long) to help baby crocodiles hatch (they’re sooo cute!). Our last week we helped release an adult croc who’d been injured and rehabilitated and got to spend a day slogging through a swamp forest to track and tag wild crocs. We all stank by the end of the day but it was really, really neat. I mean seriously, how many people can say they’ve trekked through a swamp forest hunting wild crocodiles?

Even though the project was only Monday-Friday, our weekends were always busy. The first weekend a big group of us went up to Mozambique to snorkel with dolphins (amazing!), stopping on the way there to watch turtles hatch at Kosi Bay and hitting Thembe Elephant Park on the way back to see elephants (which f course we didn’t see, but it was still a nice drive, the park is quite beautiful). Other weekend activities included surf lessons at Cape Vidal (I managed to stand up on my third wave!) and game drives to Hluhluwe-iMfolozie park. The game drives are what I did that last two weekends I was there and they were the best drives I did all month (along with our first drive to iMfolozie, which was also amazing). I got to see cheetah two weeks in a row (there are only around thirty of them in the whole park, which is about 9000 hectres) and on my last day in Africa I got to see a pride of lions hunting warthog and the day ended with our jeep getting charged by a bull elephant. One of the most amazing days of my life.

But then, sadly, it was time to leave Africa. Originally I was supposed to return to the States after my program ended but I’ve been bitten hard by the travel bug and decided that I wasn’t ready to go home yet. So instead I hopped on a plane to London to start a two-month tour of Europe. I only spent a day and a half in London before heading up to Liverpool to stay with a friend of mine, meeting her at Warwick Castle for the day before we headed to her home in Liverpool. I spent a week there, exploring the city (which is a very nice, eclectic place) and starting to catch up on all the life stuff that had fallen by the wayside in Thailand and Africa.

With a tentative itinerary in hand I headed back to London for a week to explore and do the tourist thing. I went to the British Museum, saw the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament,  took a bus out to Stonehenge and watched the changing of the guard. I also got to wander around Camden (my kind of place, lots of quirky stores and fantastically dressed people, like the Harajuku of London with less colour) and visited an old Victorian operating theatre. Another busy but fabulous week; London is a really cool city with a lot going on, I would have loved to spent more time there but there are other places I want to see and only so much time and money to go around (and London was not easy on the wallet.)

So here I am, sitting on a train to Edinburgh for a week in Scotland before catching a flight to Barcelona to see VNV Nation in concert and explore the city before heading off to Paris. From there I’ll make my way to Leipzig for the massive Wave Gottik Treffen music festival and end my trip with a week in Berlin and dinner with friends in Switzerland. So stay tuned for adventures on a brand new continent!