“For last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words await another voice” t.s. eliot

On new years eve, my best friends and I found ourselves recalling some of the memorable moments from 2010. We started in January, working our way through the months, laughing about the the good times we had almost completely forgotten about. All night volleyball, our ultimate Frisbee team, re-discovering "spring creek," (which quickly became our second home over the summer) huge sleepovers, and making so many great friends through it all. It was bittersweet for me to mark the passing of another year of great times- and sometimes not so great. But through the laughter and the tears, my friends and I were always there for each other in a heartbeat. And that's the exciting thing about it, that I know the year to come will be filled with so many more memories with the people I love. And on that note we said goodbye to 2010 to make room for what is to come...

                                                    "First Night," in State College, PA

                                                  

                                                    smile!

A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost. ~Marion C. Garretty

 I was blessed with three crazy sisters, and we've had so many good times together. I don't know what I'd do without my little sister Emma, who over the last few years has become one of my best friends. I'm so happy to have that little high school freshman as a role model, someone who I can talk to and actually learn from. Love this girl!

  "Erm" finishing her cross country race..I was injured this year and was named "team photographer" for the season, and watching her run those races made me soo glad that all I had to do was take pictures

3 wishes

If you could have any 3 wishes, what would they be? Trying not to be superficial with this this prompt, I'll admit was a bit of challenge.

You may say that I'm a dreamer...

My word for 2011 is Dream. Maybe it started with my best friend telling me I had the most dreams and aspirations out of anyone he knew, or my mom slipping in the phrase "dream big" anywhere she can, including my Christmas presents; a "dream big" laptop skin and Dream perfume (she was never one for subtlety).  Capturing my cousin's Caroline, Reese, and Luke's  many expressions pushed me to dive into my my dreams rather than watching them from afar. It's easy to say "I want to be a photographer when I grow up," its off in the distance, "when I grow up" seems like a world away to me. It's a lot harder to put myself to the challenge by replacing "later" with "right now." It forces me to push myself past my comfort level and start making my dreams a reality now.

"I believe in the power of telling our stories – the stories of how we muster up our courage and leap and dance and breathe our way into our creative dreams." -Kelly Rae Roberts

The Power of Failing

About a week ago my Photo Arts teacher asked my class to create a photograph that portrays some type of transformation. Lost for ideas and short on time, I finally settled on photographing my friend, Hannah, in two different looks. The first would be relaxed and simple while the second would be edgy and constricted. My idea was to show that real beauty was shown through the girl who was comfortable in her own skin, rather than covered by makeup and glamorous clothes. But sometimes life doesn't stick to our original ideas. When I showed my work to the class, they were less than impressed with my "transformation," in fact it was agreed that it wasn't a transformation at all. I looked at my final photograph for a while, and noticed that it was actually the opposite. It never seizes to amaze me, how the world of photography teaches me a new lesson everyday. And here, in my picture I considered to be a failure, I saw a girl, without makeup or fancy clothes, standing back-to-back with herself, caked with makeup and zipped into a brand new dress, but the look on her face was the same confident, "I rule the world" face Hannah wore every day. And here I realized that sometimes the exterior doesn't change the interior, sometimes fashionable clothes and makeup, or lack thereof, doesn't change a person at all. Sometimes, what's inside a person is really all you ever see, no matter how much the outside has transformed. And to find that, all I had to do was fail.

Finding My Story

In Spring of 2010, I was challenged by my Photo Arts teacher to photograph in the style of a famous artist. Not knowing what interested me other than fashion, I chose Nigel Barker, "noted fashion photographer." I struggled to figure out a way to incorporate this style into my work; most people don't have million dollar gowns in the back of their closet, not to mention an exotic jungle or breathtaking canyon in their back yard. It took a while for me to realize that my images did not have to be an exact copy of Barker's work, in fact, that would be completely useless. What I finally discovered was that I had to find my own style, my own story to tell, in order to really call my images art. In this discovery I was able to find my own creative voice, not a copy of another's. Venturing through a typical pennsylvania farm; my gorgeous and extremely cooperative friends Michelle, Elaine, Nora, and Marie, helped me find to beauty in the most unexpected settings. And so my story began...