LA Galaxy: 28 August, 2010

Last Saturday I attended an LA Galaxy soccer game at the Home Depot Center (the team's home stadium). Soccer is by far my favorite sport to play and watch, and one of my favorite things to do in general. As I knew I had really good seats for the game (3rd row, on the sideline) I came prepared to take tons of pictures of the players and the field itself. This was probably my favorite of the night (not counting pictures of my favorite Galaxy players from only a couple meters away) as it showed the Galaxy banner on the back lawn and the flags were almost fully unfurled next to the scoreboard. While the game result was a disappointment (my team lost 2-0), I still had a lot of fun and got some great pictures out of it!

Guitars; 27 August, 2010

I took this photo when I was a part of the Worship Band for my church's vacation bible school. I have always wanted to learn guitar, so I loved wandering around the stage taking pictures of my friends' guitars. This one was especially fun because of the unusual color of the guitar and the clown nose placed on one of the sound controls. The week was Circus themed and each day was a separate dress up theme, so on the "clown nose day" we were given foam noses. It was very difficult to sing with these noses on, so after we got onstage, we all abandoned the noses. So not only was this fun to take, showing how the noses were put in unusual places, but also because the colors seemed so bright in the dimly lit sanctuary.

CIF Gifts: 26 August, 2010

It's a tradition on my high school cross country team that whenever we make it to CIF and/or to the State meets, our coach's wife makes us some sort of stuffed animal, generally a bear. Even though it may seem embarrassing to have a stuffed animal delivered to your first period class and to walk around high school holding it, I always loved these gifts. The bear and dog in the center of this photo are my CIF animals from freshman and senior year, respectively. This is just one of the many stuffed animal collections I have around my room, but this one is special to me because it is centered around my CIF gifts, which I worked very hard to earn.

Medals; 25 August, 2010

I have lived in just about every bedroom in my house, and the room that I've been living in for the past two years once belonged to my two middle sisters. These are their medals, hung up in many layers above the closet. As I've been looking around my (current) room to find all the things that I wanted to take with me to school, I noticed how the medals hung low enough to be reflected in the mirror. While there are a great deal of medals hung up (I've often been afraid that if I put one more medal up, the whole thing would collapse), I really liked how the reflection in the mirror seemed to double the amount of medals hung up. I also absolutely love the different colors and how they are contrasted in the faded foam plane also reflected in the mirror.

Handprints; 24 August, 2010

These hand prints (one for me and each of my sisters) were made 13 years ago (1997) when I was 4. Since then, my hand has grown so it is a little larger than my second oldest sister's hand from that time (second from the top). In a way, these hand prints seem to document not what we were each like at that time, but how I've grown over the years, even though I'll never have hands the same size as my oldest sister did. It was hard to photograph these prints as they are fairly spread out on the wall, and start pretty low to the ground. In order to get the exact angle without having too much of the adjacent window and door in the edges of the picture I had to lie on the ground. This made it difficult to zoom in with my manual zoom lens, gravity was working against me...

Mugs; 23 August, 2010

With three older sisters, I have a lot of college "stuff", shirts, sweatshirts, bumper stickers, and as you can see here, mugs. As I was looking into various colleges, my sisters liked to joke that I could only go to a college if it matched the color scheme of our mug collection. While I have yet to get a DU mug to add to the collection, I still wanted to capture one of the many places around my house that represents all four of us. While I took this picture at several different angles, I liked this angle the best as the picture of me and my sisters was in the background showing how each of the mugs represent us and what we've done.

The four mugs are (L to R) Albertson College of Idaho, US Air Force Academy, Exeter College (part of Oxford University), and Washington and Lee University, and soon University of Denver.

Memories; 22 August, 2010

As I cleaned out my room to see what I want to pack and take with me to Denver, I came across all of my high school yearbooks and my scrapbooks from each stage of my life, elementary school, middle school, and high school. It was interesting to look back on the memories that I had chosen to go in each of my scrapbooks and see how different they were from what was put into the yearbooks. I love looking at what people wrote and the inside jokes that I had completely forgotten about. As I head into this new stage of my life, I like to keep looking back at what got me here and I tried to capture that in this photograph. I know I will miss all of the people represented by pictures in my scrapbooks but I will always have a reminder of them.

Aliso Creek Beach; 21 August 2010

I love the beach, and I've been spending a lot of time at the beach before I'm in a landlocked state. Tonight, I went to the beach for a family picnic and watching the sunset. I love the sunsets on the West Coast, because the sun sets so perfectly over the beach. It was a bit unfortunate that there weren't any low hanging clouds so the colors weren't as brilliant as I've seen in the past. Of all of the pictures I took of tonight's sunset, I liked this one the best because it showed both the flowers and crashing waves in the foreground and the sun in the background. Although there were no clouds, it was nice having a clear night as I could see all the way to Catalina Island, which was surrounded in a slight red glow from the sunset.

World of Color; 20 August 2010

As I said in a previous post, I absolutely love Disneyland, and really anything Disney related. Last night was the last day before my Annual Pass expired, so I took advantage of it and went to go see their new show World of Color. A quick word of explanation, World of Color takes place on the "Paradise Bay" in the middle of California Adventure park, and is a show with lights and pictures projected on fountains of water with accompanying music. This photograph was actually taken before the show began, when the lights were only on the Ferris Wheel behind the "bay". I loved how the Ferris wheel and the Mickey face on it was completely reflected in the water and I wanted to capture that image. Most of my attempts to photograph the show itself did not really turn out, but here's the final image of the show as an example.

Flags; 18 August, 2010

I've been lagging on posting pictures, so this one is from a couple of days ago. I had originally intended to take today's photograph at the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts, because I knew there would be some awesome artwork and sculptures that would be interesting to photograph, but unfortunately no photographs of displayed artwork was allowed. Instead, I noticed that the breeze was hitting this flag at just the right angle so it was almost completely unfurled. I had hoped to get more of the sky in the background, but as there were very few clouds, and buildings instead, there wasn't much I could do.

Roses; 15 August, 2010

I took this photograph because it was something that I could play around with more than my previous two. Those I could only take from differing angles, whereas in this shot, I could rearrange the flowers in addition to the angle I was taking it from. While I originally was just interested in capturing the roses themselves in their entirety, as I started taking pictures of them, I noticed the stark contrast between the deep red of the roses and the blue of the wall behind them. Rather than photographing the entire vase, I instead chose to focus on the flowers themselves and the wall behind them. I have always loved taking photos of flowers, but this was the first time I was in a controllable environment. The complexity of roses combined with the simple beauty that they displayed has always interested me, so it was great to be able to capture that combination.

Balboa Beach; 14 August, 2010

This photograph was taken at Balboa Beach, in the morning before the marine layer had fully cleared and the sun was not yet showing. There had been two guys skim boarding right before I took this picture, but as the waves were breaking extremely close to the shore, they were unsuccessful. After leaving their board propped up in the sand, they returned to the water and were just a few feet in front of their board when this was taken, but since the sand dropped off before the water and waves, they could not be seen. Despite it being a fairly gloomy morning, I think this photo turned out really well with the drastic contrast between the sand and the water, and the smaller contrast of the water against the sky. While the beach and horizon were pretty flat horizontally, the board broke up the monotony and gave me something to focus on. I tried several angles, but felt that this one was the best with the boat far in the background. I am a typical Southern California girl, so I love the beach but it was very different being able to capture the simple beauty of the beach without the typical bright sunshine and crowds.

The Happiest Place on Earth; 13 August, 2010

For my first entry here, I wanted to have a photograph that showed something I loved, and as I was already at Disneyland for the day, it only made sense to have my picture be of Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland. What separated this photograph from the other that I had taken was that I angled my camera slightly downwards, away from the castle in order to capture not only the castle, but all of the people also taking pictures of the castle when it is lit up right before the fireworks show began. While I was able to get some of the lit camera and phone screens to show up, there were so many more there that were blocked and that I wasn't able to capture. However, I still really like this photograph as it shows something that I love being loved on by the rest of the world.

Personal Histories of Photography

This blog is a part of an assignment for my Personal Histories of Photography class. For the next while, I will be posting a photograph that I have taken that day with a little explanation of the photograph itself, and the significance of it (why I took/chose that particular photograph, etc). Hope you enjoy!