Today I went to the Getty Museum in LA. Above are interesting photos from the day...

I have been enjoying being able to have enough time to go out and photograph every day. Today I went out for a stroll. There are multiple colleges in the Claremont area so I went to the 'downtown' area to look for a photo that might relate to my assignment for the week. I didn't really find a shot for my assignment but I did meet these two lovely musicians outside of a little cafe/smoothie shop. Ben and Ena were their names... I appreciate them letting me take a quick portrait of them. The top photo seemed to talk about a cliche California that I have observed... old school mercedes and a typical californian style ranch home.

Tonight I met up with my friend Maciej (who I know from Penn State). He's a painter who lives in Long Beach... so we met up and went to Venice and then to Santa Monica. I have to apologize to him for the bad portrait... sorry Maciej. Anyways Venice is really cool, even though we got there at sundown just in time for the bums and drunks to be out--and to recieve their harrassment. Then we went to the oldest boardwalk on the west coast I think... Santa Monica. It was sweet. I wish I had better photos to show for the trip but we got there after sunset... next time. I'm excited to be headed back to Columbus/Penn State next Monday :)

This past weekend I had classes on Saturday and Sunday. I decided to save some money and be adventurous by camping rather than staying in a hotel. But there were other benefits to camping other than saving money... the chilly nights were a good motivator to wake up and go photograph. So these photos were taken earlier than I have ever been able to wake up... around 5-6 in the morning. All three from Santa Barbara Harbor area. I wish I had some photos of my campsite but I was really only there at night and never bothered getting a decent shot of the campsite.

I'm hesitant to write this but... did I mentioned how spoiled (blessed) I'm feeling about getting the opportunity to be out here doing what I'm doing?

I just pulled an "all nighter" (Jill would be oh so proud of me) working on the rest of the galleries on the main part of this website, so now PLACES is officially updated and ready to be critiqued. I'm tired and ready to go to bed now that it is 5:02am my time. But before I do I wanted to post this lovely envelope that Aura sent me a postcard in. Yes I know I'm so emo...

With a little more thought and a little feedback from my professor... here are three more versions of my assignment- now all I have to do is pick one to print for class critique.

So my first photo assignment from school is to take a familiar symbol and use it to reverse it's meaning, and form some kind of ironic statement... I'm not sure I'm doing that here now that I think of it. But here is my first attempt. It is about National Security/Homeland Security being held together by something that is a temporary fix. In this case the red, white and blue is duct tape. Duct tape was originally developed during World War II in 1942 as a water resistant sealing tape for ammunition cases. Hum... I still have some thinking to do. I thought I would post this to maybe get some thoughts on it...

I just realized it's September 11th...

I made it to Santa Barbara and through my first weekend of classes. Up to this point I still can't get over the weather... it's beautiful to say the least. I haven't had much time to photograph so far but I did get a few shots around the shore of SB. more to come soon....