Realization

October 17, 2015

Today was the day appreciation came to me. I squinted through lens trying to focus on a flower at my high school. Poway High the place I walk through everyday and would of thought that I've seen it all. It was a boring campus same old same old, but that one flower zoomed in was breath taking. It was something so close, that I saw in such great detail. Something so unnoticeable focused into something so beautiful and I had never experienced that before. It was a really neat realization and I'm glad I took the time to recognize something so little.

Sunset Picture

October 6th, 2015

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Effort

September 30th

Guillebeau’s Chapter 10 Lesson: EFFORT CAN BE ITS OWN REWARD. At the beginning of this project I thought of taking the easy way out. Just take a couple pictures, make them look cool and all will be good. Then the day came where I put around 4 hours into shooting my friends and I’ve never seen such pretty pictures. After that day I felt such a sense of accomplishment and pride.This lesson tied perfectly into the Chapter 10 lesson of my book. I've learned the more effort I put into my project, the more joy I can get out of it. Those 4 hours of photography gave me more than just completing some project. I felt true joy from doing something related to school.

Commitment to Quests

September 23 2015

“People choose to put themselves at risk to find happiness. Chris McCandless ended up unintentionally killing himself because his quest was to try to live off Alaska. McCandless felt happiness comes from new experiences.” I loved how Guillebeau added this quest in his book. At first I read this section and pondered at how stupid putting yourself in that situation was. The more I thought about it, all I felt was jealousy. He got to explore, find something he wanted to commit to and all I can think I commit to, is being on a sports team and going to practices. That is the life of about every teen around me. I can’t even begin to think when the last new thing I tried, until Mr. Bowers encouraged my classmates and I too. Even though my quest of photography I’m pursuing isn’t as much of a commitment, I hope to feel some of these achievements as Chris McCandless, even though his quest was high risk.

Connections

September 19 2015

In my English class, Honors Humanities, our conversations with Mr. Bowers and the book I'm reading The Happiness of Pursuit are tying in extremely well. "Follow your Quest" is a repeated phrase Guillebeau uses frequently, that goes with Mr. Bowers’ "learn what you want to do". It’s nice to lately for me to be receiving two similar the messages. I'm actually being told to do what I want. In my opinion that isn't the common message you receive as a 15 year old girl, but it is allowing me to actually put time into something I care about which is neat. The more I hear them, the more in depth I feel I should pursue them in. I've been encouraged to follow my passions because so many people can get stuck in life and not actually living life.

Passion

September 15 2015

“...taking and editing photos, her true passion” (Guillebeau). My life is a constant; everyday is repetitive. Except the first day I put times towards taking photos. The first day made me feel passionate, excited and happy about something again. I never really thought a lot about how uplifting photography would be. I do have those found memories of taking pictures in 6th grade. I would have quote on quote “photo shoots” with my best friend in our backyards. And of course the purpose of our "photo shoots" was to find the perfect Instagram picture. The other time when I took photos for pleasure was when my sister and I had our stuffed animal photo shoots and posed the stuffed animals all over the house. I spent days creating those silly photography memories, but the joy it gave me wasn’t something I fully wrapped my head around. Hopefully the more pictures I take, the more I feel this way in the future.

Happiness

September 12, 2015

Guillebeau quotes, "When a person is really happy they don't have to tell people about it. It just shows." Happiness is a big focus of mine to capture in my photos. Just recently I went to a pumpkin patch with my friends and we took pictures. That day was remarkably fabulous and looking back on those pictures it was as if you could see the happiness sparkling in their eyes. I am taking the pictures from behind the camera, but still I hope to achieve happiness from there. I got to choose what I am learning and it is something I look forward to doing and so far I have received happiness from it. That is one of my main objectives, not defining happiness, but showing happiness in photos and in myself.

Success and Failures

September 6, 2015

In Chris Guillebeau's book The Happiness of Pursuit he describes a fact, with successful outcomes people tend to think whatever you achieved was brave, courageous, smart because it was completed. The other part to that is with failed outcomes people default to how that attempt was dumb, naive and anything else negative. I actually believe failed attempts may be more common than successful ones. No one wants to realize what you learned from the failure or what you gained. From experience I was practicing getting the lighting right in the day time, where the sun is strong, and in all my pictures I couldn't achieve the sun not overruling my shot or making everything around it dark. By myself failing I was able to get some pretty cool pictures and rather than being upset, I simply learned.

Photography Adventure

September 2, 2015

Photography is something I've always yearned to put times toward but I never made the time. Two contradicting statements, but now I finally have the opportunity to. For my Dream Big project I'm putting 20 hours into learning photography and producing photos. Pictures I feel describe more than what you see at a first glance. People's smiles are more meaningful than showing off teeth and the moments seized by a photo shows a special moment.

When I was younger we took the traditional family pictures that I used to dread, but just last year our family photos were retaken and I was so fascinated with the photographer's expertise. So I thought, when this project came into play I felt like learning photography fit what I wanted to learn about. By researching the right times to shoot, angles, people poses, and finding picture perfect spots with and without “models”, I plan to show my progress by the improvement of my photos. What appeals more to me, would be taking pictures of people because I anticipate I will enjoy the social part as well as photography. I am so excited to begin this project.This blog will keep everyone updated with my photography adventure.