slacker

and that is all the patience i have right now to update
i will tell you that i went to these places though, in the time that i've been gone:

• bogotá, barranquilla and cartagena in colombia, south america
• brooklyn, one of the five boroughs of new york city
• areas around san francisco, california
• shunyi district in beijing, china
• rome, sorrento, sicily and venice in italy
• corfu, greece
• dubrovnik, croatia

so i guess when i have time i will post more travel photos. by the way, if you like travel, you should check out the travel blog camille and i operate.

album cover

my freshman year roommate eva araya is a singer and asked me to help her with her album cover for her new EP, 'the too young' which you can download for free here.
here are some of the test covers i created before i knew the name of her EP/what she really wanted:

the first one i edited. now that i look at it i think it feels very cheesy and i'm glad we didn't use it.

with a bar across the bottom

my personal favorite, hence the indecisiveness with the color

i really liked the reddish color in contrast with the b&w

she ended up liking the bar idea a lot (#2), so we sat down together and i asked her what sort of vibe/theme went with this EP. she said it was sort of fun and cute. then we found an outtake of the shoot we did that day:

so i turned it into this:

then we did some more research on other covers and then changed it around a bit till i got this:

and that, ladies and gents, is eva's new EP cover. (also don't ask me why it's not 'the too young' on the actual cover. i thought it was called just 'too young EP' and when i figured it out i offered to change it but she said it was fine.)

the font i used was trajan pro, and the program i worked with was photoshop CS4.

people of manhattan

can't decide which one i like better

these were all strangers. credits for guts to have to go up to strangers and asking them for their photo goes to my cousin natalie, whose flickr is here.

pixie dust

in which we make huge fools of ourselves and attempt to look like magical fairies
no, it's not what you think it is. it is flour and glitter.

i wish they fit more of a general theme but i wasn't thinking much while i was shooting/editing, just trying not to get any flour on my camera.

sorry

that i abandoned you.
NOT that anyone really looks at this shit anymore (or ever) but i am about to post a ginormous update so here ya go.

dizzyland '11

i couldn't resist

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Okay, I'll admit, the only reason I got this book was because I saw it in the Muir Woods store and thought it'd be really hipster if I bought it and read it. I actually didn't touch it for almost exactly one year, never being able to get past the first chapter.

Let me just make it clear, I'm sixteen and I'm about to enter my junior year in high school. I have only a small interest in botany, having gone to environmental science camp three summers in a row, but would never seriously pursue it. I do not take biology or any kind of science at school right now. So in a way, it's strange that I would even read this book, since the target audience is definitely not me. It's even stranger that I enjoyed it.

Even though I'd previously lost interest, I picked it the story while I was on a trip this summer and decided to put my heart into reading it. Because I've always loved redwoods. Once when I was standing there underneath the trees in the Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve, something clicked. They were majestic, so tall and so powerful, and I felt safe underneath them. Being inside the woods made me quiet and meditative, and I was able to absorb the trees’ looming presence. I touched one, and its massively thick trunk comforted me, and when I looked up, I couldn’t even see the peak. The trees were strong, and they were there for me, in a way I couldn’t explain.

The thing is, I think the only reason I enjoyed this book was because I appreciate redwoods. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a redwood geek, really, and I don't care to learn about its biology. I just enjoy them.

The book gradually became more compelling as I read on, learning the history of some of the characters so significant in the science of the redwoods' canopies. Although I generally barreled through the technical sections of the book, I did learn a bit about the trees. Preston's writing was also very strong, his language and casual tone made me enjoy the story.

In the end, though, it's not the most interesting book, but I will say that if I had been anyone else - more interested in science, more knowledgeable in botany, more mature - I would've loved it. However, I do know I wasn't exactly the type of audience Preston had in mind when he wrote this fantastic book.



View all my reviews

*I wrote this this summer, so I guess it's a little outdated. I, however, have decided to make this blog into a haven for the stuff I read as well as my photos... since I enjoy reading. And because I was too lazy to think of anything at the moment I copied one of my Goodreads reviews. There.