Semi-Organized Chaos

Slow network users be warned: this is a photo-heavy post.


*Last weekend I went with my mom and sister to Arkansas for my grandmother's memorial service. I'm really glad we did it. Here's a shot from the house mom grew up in... the beautiful house, falling into beautiful decay (if you can manager to find decay beautiful mixed with the sad).

*Jumping back a bit. Following my last post - no, literally, 12 hours later - I got a call that went something like this: "Hi, Jessie? This is ____ from Brelli. We heard that your umbrella broke and we'd like to get your address so we can send you a new one right away." Tempted as I was to yell, "I'm not giving you my address, you crazy-head, are you spying on me???", I did not. Turns out, once in a while, being a blogger can come in pretty handy! My new umbrella was waiting for me in NC, and I can honestly say I have never, ever had such incredible (and pre-emptive! I hadn't even called them to complain yet!) customer service in my life.

*(Although Olympus came close recently - my point-and-shoot came back from the shop and promptly broke again, and instead of repairing it they sent me a brand new model, box and everything. I love Oly.)


*The send-off party was a lot of fun (even though we ran out of booze). Above is one of my favorite shots, of Andreas and Marin. Below is my favorite of me and Mark.


*Our friends rocked the move-out process, which allowed us to rock the Penske driving down to NC, exhausted though we were. The apartment was sooo empty. And looked so small that way.



*Oh, I already mentioned the Blurb book. Here's the cover of it anyway, and it links to the site.


*We didn't get nearly as many portraits as we wanted to for our project. Here's the handful, in thumbnails. Click on the descriptions below to see them full-size. I don't know why Flickr always waters down contrast and saturation from my original photos... I try to account for it but am not always successful.

1. Seizi 2, 2. Jess 2, 3. Sean 2, 4. Emily 2, 5. Joe 2, 6. Melissa 2, 7. Georgia 2, 8. Rachel 2

1. Seizi 1, 2. Jess 1, 3. Sean 1, 4. Emily 1, 5. Joe 1, 6. Melissa 1, 7. Georgia 1, 8. Rachel 1

*Practically my first minute in Durham (which I'll mostly be writing about in the house-y blog, shaketheframe. com), I was plunked down in a group of photographers who meet biweekly and... basically... try to inspire each other to shoot better work. They are amazing. I feel humbled and crazy-lucky to have found them, thanks to Tyler (via Grace, my wonderful new friend). The first week I was there, we self-assigned a project based simply around the theme of water. Here's mine, based on an accident (the first shot was hugely overexposed; didn't have my settings right).



*Here's Jaden, whose headshots I did my first week to help him out for a real honest-to-goodness New York audition. He is an amazing singer/actor/dancer!


*He is also 9.

Forgive the massive unloading of photo-related news. Now I have to update Shake the Frame, which is even more daunting. Check back in a day or two.