New Favorite Painting

I got a call from Mom last week. She was so excited. My dad and her had just gone to see the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU museum and she wanted the family to go. She called me back an hour later and said she had us tickets to go the following Monday.

Love the etching

The exhibit was fantastic. BYU did a great job. We rented iPads which had a lot of interesting tools such as full views of the "homes" of each painting. I loved Carl Bloch's etchings. I left the exhibit with a new favorite painting. Not typical of LDS artwork, because of the wings, but I felt Bloch captured a moment so agonizing yet deeply gentle. I love that Bloch took a different approach to this moment.

New favorite painting of Christ

Photo the familiar #8

This assignment had a weird title. "The familiar." What does that even mean? Basically we could take photos of whatever we wanted. I just happened to be going to Island Park in Idaho for the weekend and took my camera.

My second photo for this assignment came as I was wondering the avenues looking for a park with swings (I love to swing). I came across a city worker  flooding the road. This is what I got.

Happy Birthday To ME! (Cali trip)

I am seating here trying to work on my photo final, realizing that I still have tons of pictures from my semester to post and also realizing that I have this post started and never finished for my California trip. So here goes...
I wanted to do something fun for my birthday this year, so what better way to celebrate then a road trip. My best friend Erika just moved to Mountain View in California to work for 3 months. I flew in to California for a little weekend bday trip.

1. Seeing Erika. I love this girl. She is truly a kindred spirit. We have a lot of fun together. We can switch topics 20 times in a conversation, yet always come back to where we left off. Everyone needs a friend like Erika.
2. Farmer's Market. I love just spending the day at the farmer's market and although here is Salt Lake we only get a few months of it, in Cali they have it almost year around. Reason to love California I'd say. I purchase some banana bread (I'm obsessed as Erika knows very well), strawberries, orange and raspberry sugared flavored almonds, and red potatoes (of which we made the most excellent Sunday dinner with).



Love the flowers at the market



Everyone is enjoying their Saturday morning



Yummy

3. Nature. We spent time in Golden Gate Park and taking a stroll around the "dish" (a hill nicknamed after the large satellite dishes living there).



At Golden Gate Park



My mom is a California girl, I took pictures of the palm trees cause they make her feel like home



Conservatory of Flowers



The DISH



You can see for miles on the dish

4. Stanford Theater. This was amazing. It was a fully restored movie theater where we watch "Lassie Come Home" the first Lassie movie. After which and old movie theater organ rose out of the stage and a talented organist began to dazzle us with classic movie tunes. This was the best suggestion I got for our trip. 



Seriously cool

5. Stanford Campus. Wow! It is beautiful. The Memorial Church is so pretty.

6. "Rock of Ages." We decided to splurge for tickets to see this Broadway musical. The ticket salesman reminded us when we bought the tickets that the show would be a little racy. I figured we must look very innocent which made me giggle (little does he know). The show...hilarious. Not as risk-ay as the gentleman made me believe. Great classic rock and 80s tunes with a entertaining and very talented cast.
7. Countless hours of talking. I'll say it again, everyone needs a friend like Erika.
8. Other random things...

My first real job was at a Boston Market.
They aren't in UT anymore so whenever I find one I have to go
Order the Chicken Carver and get extra sauce

Cool used book store

A List For 28

Twenty-eight is going to be a great year, I can just feel it. Twenty-seven was a tough year and I am determined to make twenty-eight stellar. I was planning out my summer trips with some friends today and I can't wait to get going. A combination of our summer planning and reading my awesome sister-in-laws list made me really excited to finally (2 weeks late) seat down and write out my list of goals for this year. The ideas have been floating around, but I needed to get them all down on paper (or electronic blog format).
I have modified my list this year, it is simplified since last year. I discovered last year was hard to accomplish. What is the point of a list if you can't accomplish it. So without further ado here is the list for twenty-eight.

Rockin' 28

1. Build a bike
2. Repair and refinish wardrobe
3. Visit Canada
4. Visit Glacier National Park
5. Visit Banff National Park
6. Compete in 2 triathlons
7. Compete in 2 bike races
8. Grow a garden
9. Enter my photography into a competition
10. Read all the conference talks for April & October
11. Visit the temple twice a month
12. Visit 4 new temples (previously never been to)
13. Start scholarship fund
14. Sew one article of clothing
15. Learn to use a map and compass (left over from 27)
16. Hike Lone Peak
17. Hike Mt. Nebo
18. Read one book on Geology
19. Post at least twice a month on this lovely blog
20. Go on 2 backpacking trips
21. Share the gospel
22. Design a calendar of family and friend's birthdays
23. Go to Spiral Jetty
24. Float in the Great Salt Lake
25. Take at least one class in a subject I am interested in
26. Create at least 12 week-long meal plans
27. Learn 12 new recipes
28. Finish typing "Helen's" (aka Grandma Berger) life story

Photo 6ish/7ish

So I may have shot for assignment 6 and 7 on the same day and just picked my favorites for each project. Assignment 6 was more to display the burning and dodging photoshop skills we had learned in our class. And 7... actually I don't know if 7 had a point either. Oh wait, it was dealing with white balance, so we basically just got to play around with our cameras and photoshop.

Ain't he cute
Burned in the sky

Burned in the window, dodged the walls

My new friend Pahoo

Just cause it is a cool truck

Adjusted the coloring to give it a old rusted feel

Photo #5 Lighting

Now this assignment was a funny one. And I say that sarcastically since I was completely frustrated. Yes I know what lighting is, but no my teacher doesn't know how to teach. My teacher spent an entire lecture discussing high and low contrast images then proceeded to show examples and asked to identify high and low KEY. The assignment was then to shoot high and low key images. I was so confused assuming that high contrast and high key were synonymous and therefore not preforming very well. High contrast and high key are not the same. Thanks to the trusty book I finally get it. No thanks to our so called "teacher." Here are my not high key or low key images.

High Contrast

Low Contrast
I love that it looks like these 2 chairs are having a conversation.

Sleep, you rule my life

Ok. The rumors are true, I have turned the snooze button back on. I just can’t do it. Actually, I don’t want to do it. I like sleep. I like the 10 extra minutes my alarm clock gives me once or twice (maybe three times) every morning. I think it helps (despite what modern medical science says). I am terrible at getting up in the morning and for now I am ok with that.
But I am not giving up completely on my Lent goal. I am still attempting to finish the New Testament by April 24. I spent my entire flight to California (post of my birthday weekend to come) reading my scriptures. Unfortunately, I am only on page 1310 which means there are 280 pages left and I have only 2 weeks to finish. My 8.76 pages per night has turned into 20. Well, here’s knowing you. I’ll see you in 2 weeks.