the 28th week

I know it's been a while since I last posted a progress report on my 52 weeks project (it's been 25 weeks,) but lately my biggest obsession is reading blogs. I've been following several blogs and I've been inspired to do more with my own. So I'm going to start attempting to blog regularly (hopefully weekly,) and that can also help inspire me to take more pictures.

Last Sunday was my 18th birthday. The concept of being an adult is weird to me, even though I don't feel any different. I spend my day with my family, I finally went to Gourdoughs (film pictures to come within the future,) I cruised around South Congress, I saw "Despicable Me 2," and we went out to eat for dinner. While browsing around SoCo we went to shop where I got a toy dinosaur succulent, that I've been eyeing for a while. (They also have an online shop, where you can get dinosaur planters and other animals)

I also went out with my friend the other day to get snow cones! I got a kiwi banana flavor while my friend got a chocolate.

Leah

Last week, I photographed my friend Leah, an aspiring ballerina. Last December, I saw her dance the part of Clara in The Nutcracker, and I can't wait till the day that she's dancing with the big league. I took these around sunset on the first day of 100 degree weather here in Texas, so kudos to Leah for sticking with me on this one. Overall I'm very happy with how these photos came out and I pretty much used the same coloring on every photo but I think that the coloring matches the tone of each photo. 

Hopefully this is the start of many photo shoots I do with actually people and not my dogs or my face. 

high school graduate

Early this month I officially graduated high school! I can't stress how excited I was to finally be done with high school and some of my peers. But as excited as I was to leave high school behind, I was sad to leave a place where I met many of my friends and the safety net I had established there.

A few weeks ago, I posted this mini-diary on my tumblr, along with the following two photos I took of downtown Austin on my way to prom.

I took these a few weeks back when we were on our way to prom in my friends dad's fancy car. I'm going to graduate next week and I've been struck by a few waves of nostalgia. It's crazy how fast this year has flown by and I will admit that apart of me doesn't want to let high school go. I've spent the past 4 years wanting to escape high school but now that I'm so close to the end, I want to hold on for a little bit longer.

So in honor of the conclusion of my last year of high school, I'd like to reminisce the best parts of my senior year; I was an orchestra officer and I somehow ended up as section leader of my orchestra for the whole year. At the end of my junior year, I was inducted into FHS (French Honor Society) and I was elected historian (even though we hardly did anything that required picture taking). I somehow managed to ace all my classes despite my laziness and lack of motivation. I discovered a passion for playing the piano and my new 50mm lens inspired me to take more pictures. I was dragged to prom by my friends and I ended up having a good time. Freshman year, my friends introduced me to Darren Criss he quickly became my biggest inspiration, on my last day of high school I had the pleasure of meeting him and it was like my high school life finally completing a full circle. 

Farewell high school. Here's to see what road life will take me...

orchestral (part 2)

Hello again! I've been meaning to make this post for a week now but I've been swamped with AP tests and prom. So here is what happened at my last orchestra banquet: the officers decided on a birthday theme, because who doesn't love birthday parties.

Our decorations consisted of balloons, party hats, signs, and a pinata (that we unfortunately didn't have anywhere to hang, so we are saving it.)

I might have have gone a little overboard with photographing the decorations...

The officers unfortunately had to count 120-something ballots for superlatives (I got out of that because I had to do a ton of work on the slideshow...) But the awards were so much fun and entertaining. My favorite award was "Most Likely to Survive Fear Factor," the unlucky winners award were to eat all of the gummy worms out of pie tins filled with pudding without their hands. Unfortunately, our director wouldn't allow that because apparently it's too messy.

There was also karaoke and dancing. It's always fun to watch a bunch of musicians try and dance and sing. 

Overall the banquet was a blast and I'm truly going to miss orchestra next year.

orchestral (part one)

Last Friday I had my last orchestra banquet and there were tears. I'm an officer this year and we've been prepping for this event for a while now. The past few weeks have consisted of editing pictures and yelling at my fellow seniors to send me their baby photos. My main job for this years banquet was to compile a slideshow that reflected our school year, and if I do say so myself, the slideshow was one of the best parts. Here are some of my favorite shots that ended up in the slideshow:

And to avoid this post being a little two picture heavy, I'm going to post my pictures from the banquet in a separate post within the next few days.