Throwback Thursday- Paris!

My darling husband whisked me away to Paris this past weekend to celebrate my birthday. It was my third time in the city though the last time was eleven years ago. Its funny how different my life changed between each visit.

My first time was in 2001. My mother and I combined our tax returns and bought ourselves one week staying near the Opera. It was a couple of years after my dad died and I just graduated from junior college and had yet to receive my acceptance into Syracuse. I was very unsure of my future and myself and it was pretty scary. My mom and I were just beginning to travel and it was so incredibly exciting to be in Paris.

My second trip was in 2003 towards the end of my semester abroad in London. I went by myself during our November break and met up with my girl Jess and two other girls from my photo class and we stayed in a hostel in Montmartre. This time I was more confident about myself and I was having the time of my life. I remember sitting on the banks of the Seine at night smoking and thinking, “this is the life.”

This photo was taken during this trip, as I seem to remember my photo teacher giving us a challenge to take a “different” kind of photo of the Eiffel Tower. My husband cannot look at it though because it makes him nauseous. I still think its one of my favorite photos from that time.

This time I am a very happily married woman was a steady job in England. I am probably the most confident now than I ever was in my early 20’s. I will put together a post of my photos from the trip soon.

Throwback Thursday- Zombie Walk

A few years ago when I lived in Edinburgh, Billy and I were heading up to the Royal Mile to meet some of his co-workers. The Royal Mile is the mega touristy spot usually filled buskers, street performers and well, tourists as it is the main road leading to Edinburgh Castle.

But in the middle of the week in October it was totally dead. I mean it was empty at first and then it quickly filled with the dead. Billy and I had unknowingly came upon a Zombie Walk.

It was crazy seeing the Royal Mile with some of the Scotland’s oldest architecture fill with the undead as bus drivers where waylaid by fairly convincing zombies. I luckily had my camera as we were going to see the Beltane Fire Festival, which also took place on the Royal Mile and is a Gaelic festival that has fire breathers and crazy puppeteering by dred-locked guys.

When the zombies attacked I got in front of a zombie nun trying to frame the cathedral into the shot and then the zombie got really close and actually freaked me out!

Throwback Thursday- Graduation Day

I love this photo. It’s my graduation day in 2005. I had been through two ceremonies the day before for Newhouse, where I got my photoj degree, and arts and science, for my anthropology degree. This day was the graduation ceremony with the entire graduating class and our speaker began by speaking in chimpanzee.

Yep, it’s the awesome Jane Goodall. When she looked down on the sea of cap and gowns she would have seen inflatable apes being tossed around and monkeys hanging from nearly every student’s mortarboard. My biological anthropology professor must have been going mental since neither or those are Chimpanzees!

After the ceremony I took my family (my mom, sister and my niece and nephew) to our photo studio to take a family portrait and then we headed over to the Schine Student Centre (I totally had to Google that because I couldn’t remember the name) and we queued up to have books signed by Goodall.

When it was our turn I asked if I could have a photo taken with her and she agreed. You can see how thrilled she is to have her photo taken with me! I still love this photo because it was the first time I’d met someone famous who I actually admired and I had just spent the last four years studying her work.

I found a video of her commencement speech but you have to fast forward through the rest of the ceremony so it may not be worth it unless you really have an interest in Syracuse University’s graduating class of 2005.

Throwback Thursday- Renaissance Festival

Hazzah! My friend Arielle (pronounced r-e-l) and I had one of our first friend dates at the Atlanta Renaissance Festival in 2007. I think we were both afraid to let our nerd-dom out in case we scared the other off. Luckily we have the same level of nerdiness so it all worked out good. We have so much fun when we’re together that it’s a shame we live so far apart.

We had spent the day walking around the venue where swash-buckling pirates performed, knights in shining armour battled for a maiden’s love, and horses paraded and danced around an arena. It was brilliant. We both wanted some memento of the day and we found the perfect items. We both got clay formations strung on a thin rope- mine was a pair of cat ears and Rel’s was little horns.

They blended into our hair and Rel’s were so subtle that they almost looked real! We wore them the rest of the day (which did end up hurting after awhile) even when we went to Rel’s friends house where her entire Indian family was having a meal and thought us silly. Oh, and my cat ears also matched my actual cat's ears. 

I think that day was the real start of our friendship, so it will always be special to me. Hazzah!!

Throwback Thursday- Wedding

I’m off today, with my lovely husband, to spend five days in Portugal to celebrate our sixth anniversary. Six years! I honestly can’t believe it’s only been six years- and I mean that in a good way. I feel like we’ve been together forever.

Six years ago, on the 27^th, we got our friends from Washington DC, NYC, Atlanta, London, Edinburgh and Glasgow together to help us celebrate our big day. It was a perfect day considering we were in the middle of a tropical depression. Two days before the wedding the water from the Indian River was lapping over the sides of the at the place where we had rented four old Key West style fishermen cottages and the grass where the marquis was being erected was soaked.

But by the Saturday, the wind had stopped, the ground dried and the weather was perfect. Not too hot and wonderfully sunny. Pretty soon after the ceremony, which took place under an arch erected right by the edge of the river, we jumped into my friend Meg’s rental car and jetted across the bridge to Jensen Beach where we caught the last bits of sunset.

Then we headed back and dug in to my favorite bbq from Dales that was catering the event. Mmm, I know I don’t eat meat, but I still love their special sauce and baked beans! Then we went for the cake. I didn’t really want a cake, but my mom convinced me. Instead of the cheesy cake toppers I bought little groom and bride cut-out thingies at Michaels (which is where I got most of the stuff for the wedding) and I pasted our funny faces on and they still make me laugh when I see these photos.

We are going to attempt to have a wedding reunion for our tenth anniversary and invite everyone (well, mostly everyone- one of the couples have split and a friend married another one of my guests so I don’t think her old bf would come) to stay in the cottages again. Its very rare for me to see my friends in the states and it would be incredible to all be in one place again.

Throwback Thursday- Scottish Edition

For my photo blog this week I spent hours scouring my image archives digging out photos from Scotland. I lived there with my husband the first three and a half years of our married life and had visited many times before when he and I were long-distance so there were a ton of photographs to choose from.

So in honour of Scottish referendum I am putting up a whole slideshow worth of Throwback Thursdays. I do sincerely love Scotland. Whenever I go back and see how beautiful it is I have this feeling that if I didn't have any ties there, if it was uncertain that I would ever be back, that would be devastated. But knowing that I will have a connection with the country for the rest of my life makes leaving it a little easier.

My husband is a highlander. But no body calls it the Highlands except for Americans. In Scotland its just called the North or up north. Thurso is as far north as you can get without getting on ferry and taking it to Orkney or Shetland. And north of that is Norway! Thurso is right where the Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea and therefore was home to an international surfing competition. (Billy's step-dad who sadly passed away this time last year used to say "Bondi Beach, Thurso!" comparing the surfing beaches).

Whenever I go up north I am always freezing. My mother-in-law (who was born in Glasgow but moved up there when she was 13) always has the windows open- even in the winter!! She opens the window in the bathroom after a shower and then I go to take a shower and my teeth are chattering. I always gravitate towards chunky fisherman sweaters when I'm there. I want to be warm and cozy. The sweaters/jumpers are called ganseys and they were different in each village so that if a fisherman was killed at sea whoever found him could find out where he was from by looking a the pattern knitted on his jumper.

See its these little things that make Scotland so special. If you want to know more about my opinion you can see my blog post on my photo blog though I tried to stay neutral.

Throwback Thursday- Front Page News

This photo was taken in 2006 when I was working for the Southbend Tribune in Southbend, Indiana. It was a seven month-long internship and it was the second internship I had worked after graduating.

I was still learning. I feel I learned more practical knowledge with those two internships than I did in my four years at uni. I loved working at the Tribune because it had a huge photo department and all the photographers there were great. They were so nice and helpful and one of the photographers, Chago, is still my buddy to this day. He, incidentally, is now the photo editor.

It was Chago who took this photo of me on my big day. I had had a frontpage photo before, but it was still exciting when it happened. The way the Tribune worked was that the Sunday paper was a big seller and they would keep it in the newspaper rack all week until the next Sunday paper came out.

On this particular day I came to work and stopped on the street outside where I saw my photo not just on one of the papers, but on both. I did a little happy dance right there despite the looks from the guys in the security booth.

The photo on the left is from Easter Sunday and the other photo is from a story on Indiana's first Saint that I had to go all the way to Terre Haute for. 

This photo reminds me of how far I’ve come as a photographer. And it reminds me of how far phone technology has come! Seriously, look at that flip phone. Thank god for iPhones.   

Throwback Thursday- Roman Holiday

I've spent the past few days going through old photographs and videos on my computer in an effort to free up my scratch-disk so I can actually do some proper work. Its crazy the photos I've found that I completely forgot about, both professional shots and just-for-fun friend shots. I also came across a ton of 'selfies' from when my husband and I were long-distance dating. We didn't have webcams back then so we relied on photos to remind each other what we looked like!

I've decided to do some 'Throwback Thursday' postings with old shots on my professional website to highlight work that has aged out of my portfolio (you don't want a bunch of old work in your portfolio because people will think you haven't done anything new). I figured it would be a good idea to do it on this blog too. Hopefully I won't embarrass my husband/friends with all of our youthful dalliances. I don't care if I embarrass my family cos lord knows they embarrassed me enough growing up!

This photo is of my dear friends Jess (Larsen) Jukelevich and Meg (Vincent) MacKay at the Colosseum in Rome from December 2003. We were at the end of our semester abroad in London and about to head back to the states. We all look like babies in our early twenties!

Meg and I were mooning over the Scottish boys we had met a few days before when all three of us had gone to an indie club in London. Fast-forward to present day and Meg and I are married to those Scottish boys and Jess is married to her boy who was at the club that night. 

If it hadn't been for Jess neither of us would have met the lads. Jess dragged me out on the dance floor and literally pushed me into the arms of my future husband and we proceeded to dance to the Clash and play some mean air guitar.

Crazy huh? We think it would make a good movie someday.