I thought it might be interesting to include some behind the scenes photos and information of some of the more conceptual stuff I have been doing lately, if only for some sort of a personal account of the whole process. So I thought I'd start with my Zia shoot that I did back in March. I came up with the idea when I was in the shower one day, which is in and of itself an amazing thing because ideas never come to me in the shower. I know this is when a lot of people get their ideas, or at least that's what all those memes floating around the internet seem to be suggesting, but I usually get all my ideas as I'm trying (note the word trying) to fall asleep. But this one was special and came at a time when I could truly appreciate its awesomeness! And it inspired me to do a lot more photos like this, so let's hope it continues!

I had been looking through my favorite photographers' flickr accounts and just generally enjoying their work and being amazed at their creativity. After about a week or so of obsessing about how amazing they were, I started thinking to myself "I don't want to just take normal photos of families or people for the rest of forever." Don't get me wrong, I love taking photos of people and I have found that I enjoy photographing families and teenagers (just don't ask me to do a wedding...), but it doesn't stretch me at all. I want to be able to take my photographs to the extreme and try things I haven't tried before. So 'lo and behold, as I was showering one day, I was thinking of how I could be this creative. And all of a sudden an idea came to me that I had a lot of friends from a lot of different states (there's a lot of variety out at BYU, in the "domestic / all 50 states are represented" kind of way. We're still severely lacking in the other country/anything other than White/Caucasian area). Anyway, each state has it's own motto or something it's known for, so I thought wouldn't it be cool if I created a photo representing each state? So to test my new idea I decided to use my roommate, Bri, who is from New Mexico first.

New Mexico is known as the "Land of Enchantment" and uses the Zia, or sun, symbol often. It's actually a part of their state flag. I guess they must really like the sun. So I thought I needed something with reds and yellows like the sun, and maybe turquoise, because for some reason turquoise just seems magical to me. Then I began to experiment with my friend Cora on Bri's makeup and hair. These were just taken with my phone. I figured I didn't need super nice quality of makeup and hair styles taking up space on my hard drive.

 

Bri always jokes that she could make a photo album filled with embarrassing photos of myself. I think I've got enough of her to start my own photo album. I think I feel a contest coming on...

 

As for the costume, the three of us decided a trip to DI (Deseret Industries) was in order. We found a lace curtain, and about 10 yards of this coral/red fabric. Perfect. Then we found some cool props that I didn't necessarily use in this photo shoot, but that I hope to use in the future. We did use the horn at her waist (it was from a tacky Christmas wreath that I'm guessing was made in the 80s) in some photos, even though it didn't make it into the final photo I decided to go with.

Having figured that out at about Saturday night around midnight, we decided since she was a pseudo- sun goddess, we needed the actual photograph to be sunny, so we waited until the next day. After church on Sunday, we came back to my apartment and began to once again get Bri all dressed up. Then we headed up the canyon. I had envisioned going all the way to the top of Squaw Peak, which would have given us an awesome view of the sky with her standing on what would look like the edge of the world. BUT, the road was closed for another week because it's Utah and they do things like that there. Lame. So we tried taking some photos a little lower, but it just wasn't epic enough for me. See what I mean?:

And do you see how I believe I have my own fair share of embarrassing photos of Bri? But disregarding Bri's awesome modeling skills, the huge mound of dirt behind her, otherwise known as a mountain, did not lend itself to the whole sun goddess/Zia/Land of Enchantment idea. So then we went to the lake, because it's flat out there and there wouldn't be any mountains in the way, right? Right, but.... it was super windy! Blast! Literally.... It was so cold that we got out of the car for about two minutes and thought "I think we should move on." So finally, as a last resort, I convinced Cora and Bri to give me one last shot and try somewhere that they weren't necessarily thrilled to try out.

Y mount! Yeah! My thinking process: "big mountain, no mountains behind it blocking my view of the sky, the sun is setting NOW, and it's close. Maybe the sunset will look really nice. It'll do." Their thinking process: "The sun is setting, I'm freezing, and there's lots of people there. I look really weird to be walking around in public right now. No way."

I won. :)

And I'm glad I did because it ended up being perfect! With Cora throwing Bri's train in the air (super windy by the lake apparently does not mean its super windy on the mountain) I got the exact picture I wanted! Here's the original image of the photo I decided to use:

And after snapping a photo of the sky from my apartment parking lot for a new background a few days later, here it is with the the more dramatic background. The final image:

It's a little rough around the edges in some areas, but I think it's a good start to trying to do some more conceptual and fun pieces!

On Saturday I went with the family to their Horsepark. The parents were having a party for all their friends and brought in a chef to cook a really nice dinner for all the guests. The food was really good, with awesome appetizers, salad, chicken, steak, potatoes, and some sort of Strawberry dessert with some tart white foamy stuff on top. I have no idea what it was, but I wish I did so I could make it in the future. We stayed the night there, which was nice. Although I will say it's a good thing I have lived in India and experienced nights with no air conditioning in 120+ degree heat, because I got to relive the experience all over again. But I'll be honest and say that it wasn't nearly that bad, because it was probably only about 80 degrees... Still a little too warm for my taste. I generally like to turn the air conditioning down as low as it will go at night and then make a little nest for myself of pillows and down comforters and snuggle on down. Anyway, enough of my sleeping habits. Here are some pictures of the park. This first horse is named Denny. He's super nice.

That's Magda petting Denny. (I'm assuming that's how you spell his name, but it's probably actually some Czech word that's spelled entirely differently). And here is part of Horsepark. The Stables are to the right, and the big riding area (horse people out there, what are those called?) is straight ahead.

While they were getting ready for the party, Martina (the mom) asked me to take the girls on a walk down to a nearby lake. I did not anticipate this little walk being anything more than just a calm little outing to get the girls out of their parents hair while they were getting things done. That turned out to be a mistake, haha. Here are some photos from our walk:

The nice little dirt path we were told would lead us straight to the lake took us past a forest, but just at the end of the forest, the path had completely overgrown. Not wanting to get ticks and other such bugs all over us, we decided to just walk through the field next to the path which looked like it wasn't currently in use. This worked pretty well....

Magda wanted a picture of her blowing the seeds of the dandelion. They kept saying "Yay! We're helping to grow plants!" I neglected to tell them that most people would view these lovely little plants as weeds, haha.

So at the end of the field we could say the lake we were supposed to be going to, but through some pretty impenetrable thickets. Hm. Well that idea didn't work out so well in the end. But after a little searching we found a path that some tractor or truck had cleared between our field and an adjacent one. Perfect. Until we all got about ten steps down the path and encountered some mud. We thought "eh, it's not that bad, we'll just jump over it and be on our merry way". Wrong. It ended up being deep mud that sunk around our shoes and stole them from our feet. At this point, covered in mud, we really had no choice but to keep going and hopefully make it to the lake so we could erase the evidence of our little escapade through the mud. Luckily I decided early on to carry Barbara just in case, so it was just me, Anna, and Magda who got covered. I was wearing sandals, so the mud was literally flicked all the way up to my knees. Anna and Magda escaped with just their shoes getting muddy luckily. After crossing another field and a small village (with our shoes and feet being stared at, haha), we made it to a small stream leading into the lake and were able to wash our shoes, feet, and legs off.

Putting their wet shoes and socks back on after cleaning them off.

But I'm glad we kept going, because there were some pretty sweet views to be seen.

From left to right: Magda, Barbara, Anna. Madga's name is actually Magdalena, which is Madeline in Czech. So we have the same name! She's a pretty cool kid to share the name with, so I'm digging the name buddy. :)

On the way back we decided to try our luck going through the town to avoid the mud. It took a lot longer than taking the path would have and we ended up having to carry Barbara half the time, but we made it back to Horsepark (fairly) clean.

They have sheep at Horsepark! Sheep are hilarious creatures.

Here's Denny again, with their pony Roger in the background. Roger is a sweetheart and will start to nod off and go to sleep when you pet him, haha. He has this awesome 'fro, and people say he looks like Micheal Jackson, which I can kind of see. So funny!

See the Michael Jackson resemblance?

And here is the courtyard of Horsepark. The building to the left next to where I'm taking the photo is the dining area/kitchen. Next to that (clockwise) is the stable, then the supply barn area. Next to that, where I am standing is the offices/rooms for staying the night.

There were also some pretty epic views of Prague Castle from the Academy of Art's windows. I felt like I fit in with all the hipsters with my fancy DSLR camera. Although maybe I was a little too mainstream with my 2012 camera, instead of an SLR camera from 1952...

You guys have probably heard about the flooding going on over here in Europe right now, or probably not. In case you haven't, it's been raining non-stop for practically the last two weeks and now a lot of Europe is experiencing extreme flooding. I thought I'd share some of my pictures of the flood from when I went into the city this past Tuesday. The family I work for lives up on a hill to the south of the city, so we haven't had any problems, except for the fact that the main road leading into the city from our little town (Velká Chuchle) has been closed. It goes down into the valley near the river, making it dangerous or simply unusable during high floods. So this means the buses haven't been running their normal route and this has led to some adventures on my part. More on that later...

View of the Old Town. Usually there's probably a ten to fifteen foot drop between that island and the water line.

This is the restaurant I have a picture at of me and Anna that I shared a couple of posts ago. The water level had actually gone done several feet in the days before I took this picture. The Krseks told me that it was just under the roof line the Sunday before.

If you look down at the waterline, you can see it's gone into the building.

I also decided to wander around the Kampa area to see if I could find more flooding. Apart from a lot of closed off areas by the police, who deemed them unsafe to be in, I found this cool church...

And I also stumbled upon the Lennon Wall. I found some cool things written on there.

A cool lock bridge with some interesting fairy tale character. Or what I'm assuming to be a fairy tale character...

It always makes me a little bit sad when I see a cool building like this one above, and then right below it someone wrote a huge graffiti message. I guess, though, that Europe has a lot of old buildings to spare so its not such a big deal. Not like in the States where the government is all "this building is 56 years old! We must preserve it for all to remember!" Not that I blame them... I mean, in 500 years, that building will be really cool too!

I guess ten years ago there was also an extreme flood in Prague and so the government officials decided they would build this wall that could be put up and taken down whenever the need arose. However, as these things usually go, the construction was delayed, and so it wasn't finished in time for this wall to be of much use. However, it was finished in some areas of the town, as you can see above, so it was able to save some of the more historic downtown areas. It's pretty cool how much water these things can hold up. I saw a picture where the water was literally about a foot from the top of the wall and it was still holding up just fine. This is a huge river, with innumerable amounts of water rushing by per second, and this thin, tiny little wall is holding it all back from flooding the rest of the city. Amazing what they come up with these days....

This island, however, was not so lucky, and was under probably about at least a foot of water in some of the higher areas, and I think even deeper in others.

So on to my "crazy" adventures, which are not actually that crazy. So Tuesday was my day off, hence why I was in the city. Martina told me that I could get a ride into town with Petra, their assistant (I think that's what she is, at least), when she took the girls into school, and I could get a ride back with her in the afternoon. Well, on the way, I noticed the buses that I usually take driving around, so I asked Petra if the buses were working, even though the road was closed. She told me they were and so I thought, well then I have a ticket for the public transport, so I'll just use that and not have to worry about meeting Petra at a certain time in a certain place without a cell phone to facilitate in the matter (no worries, I have now acquired the use of one, so we're all set).

At the end of my jaunt through the city I get on the bus and don't bother to look at the stops listed to make sure it will actually be stopping in Velká Chuchle.... big mistake. What the bus was doing was taking the back way from it's beginning stop to the end stop with very few stops in between, and none of them anywhere near the usual stops it takes. So I'm in the middle of the back roads of Prague and thinking "Well dang it. That was a waste of thirty minutes. I'll just have to stay on the bus until it goes back to the beginning and try to figure out how to use the other bus that goes to Velká Chuchle, hoping that that one does actually stop in Velká Chuchle."

But, on the way back to the beginning of the line, I recognize one of the crossroads were about to pass. So last minute, I push the "Stop" button on the bus and it stops at the next bus stop, which is more in the middle of the country than I realized it was, driving to the Krsek's home at about 40 mph the two times I had actually gone that way. I get out and realize how stupid I look, walking along some country road with my huge bag (I was lugging around my camera that day, of course, and some things I picked up at Tesco before heading back for the day) as multiple curious drivers flash by me. To make matters funnier, I just decide to heck with it and whip out my camera, because as ridiculous as the situation was, I wanted some pictures of those danged fields (which I think are really pretty)! So not only am I in the middle of the country where there's not a sidewalk or another pedestrian in sight, but I'm very obviously some stranded tourist with their massive camera taking pictures of some random field with huge power lines. But there are three positive things I've gleaned from this experience:

1) It has been reaffirmed that I'm pretty good with directions, and can correctly distinguish one field from another in estimating just how close I am to home.

2) I got what I think are some cool pictures.

and 3) I made it home!

So that's what's been going on in my life. I hope everyone else is doing well in their respective endeavors. I love you all!