That's (not) my dress!

This weekend I traveled to Austin with my roommate Kalyn and our friends Kayla and Brittany for a dress fitting. As you all know--from my constant complaining--Kalyn is getting married this summer and Brittany and Kayla are two of her bridesmaids. Kalyn ordered her wedding dress in Austin and needed to pick it up. The girls were going to get fitted for thier bridesmaid dresses...and I was just along to take pictures.

So, after meeting Kalyn's parents, we go into David's Bridal, all of us excited to see Kalyn's dress for the first time. She's led into a dressing room by an employee with a garment bag. We here the zipper. There's a rustling of fluffy fabric. Then we here Kalyn:

"That's not my dress."

After much discussion with the manager, it was unanimously decided that David's Bridal had ordered the wrong dress and we could spend the $50 in gasoline to come back in several weeks and get the right one--no discounts. Despite our obvious disapointment, we decided to go ahead and get the bridesmaid dresses so that Kalyn's parents could pick them up when they came back to get Kalyn's dress (and save us $50).

So the girls hit the racks. Kalyn had already picked out a cute little strapless number so we found a random color in the appropriate sizes and headed for the dressing rooms. Kalyn will have four bridesmaids and her brother (although he will not wear a dress) standing with her at the wedding. The four girls are all extremely different body types.

While the chosen dress looked just beautiful on Brittany (far right, in blue), you can see from Kalyn (far left) and Kayla's expressions that the dress perhaps enhanced Kayla's assetts a little too much.

Which Kalyn then failed in attempting to hide with a scarf.

So Kalyn went with a quickly improvised plan B.

Different dresses but all the same color. They'll still be beautiful in the pictures, they just won't match completely. Two bridal disasters solved in one afternoon and we hadn't even eaten lunch yet!

And as we are checking out, from behind us we hear a loud "I want this one," and Kayla appears with a very white dress. But hopefully she'll wait a while...I can only stand one engagement at a time.


Shooting these pictures was a challenge and a lot of fun. David's Bridal was cramped with racks, dresses, and people (never go wedding dress shopping on a saturday!), so backgrounds were a little cluttered and the florescent lighting wasn't incredibly awesome either. Plus people were tripping over me or hitting me with hangers (accidentally, of course), while trying to get through the narrow walkways. But in the dressing area, the mirrors were a lot of fun to play with. They allowed me to get dresses and emotions in a very tight space. I wish that I had gotten a few wider shots and also a few closer shots. Also, I wish I had more verticals--normally I'm better about that, but I posted the ONE that I shot.

My very own speaker shot

I figured since Gary was working on his speaker shot, that I should go ahead and put mine up for comment. This shot was taken on Monday during lectureship. It is of Rick Atchley, explaining why he was chosen for a panel on Restoration Unity, and ran in Tuesday's edition of the Optimist.

For Non-ACU Viewers: Lectureship is a four day conference held at ACU that discusses theological ideas/issues. As far as I know, it's been held since ACU's creation. Theologians, preachers and alumni travel from all over the country to speak, listen or critisize the lectures.

I also took this shot of a senior as wild art but I'm glad they ran Anna's little kid shot instead. It was precious.

blowing bubbles, and other happenings

This week I decided to do something a little different. As I constantly have to remind my father, I do have five classes other than this one, so I decided to post a little of what I'm doing in those.

The following picture is one I took during Homecoming in October. The man's name is Joel and he's attending an outdoor game day, like inflatables and throwing darts at balloons, with his little girl.

Blowing Bubbles

So in my Art for Elementary Education class, we were getting a brief intro to watercolor, so I decided to use that picture. This is my first attempt at watercolor ever, so be gentle.


The next picture is one I took in August of 2004 while studying abroad in Europe. What you're seeing is the Robert Burns memorial, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and it is the first thing I saw when I stepped out of the train station upon arriving there. It is also one of my favorite images that I have captured, maybe because of the color, but more likely because of the moment it holds.

Witches, Poets and Pretty Pink Flowers

In my basic drawing class, we were learning to create value with ink lines and Mrs. Willis asked us to bring in personal pictures to practice with. Here is my result. The picture of the drawing isn't as good as it could be, but blogger didn't like my edited image. Grrrrr.

My first photo-story

This week I shot my first photo story. It will run full-page in Wednesday's Optimist, and I have to say it was a lot of fun. Here are some of the shots I got, though not necesarily the ones that ran in the paper.

This image is of Bitsy making a bud-vase, a popular Valentine's Day order. The vase will eventually contain several sprigs of leather, a leafy green plant, a little baby's breath, and a single long-stemmed rose. In this shot, she is spraying the leaves and stalk of the rose with Pokon to make them shiny. I like this shot because it shows the wrinkles of Bitsy's hand--a hand that is still strong and steady after 31 years in the business.

I've included this image just because I like it. I like the color, the composition...it's not the best picture in the world, but the feeling it gives is soothing and simply makes me happy. The gerber dasies are wrapped in "bonnets" to keep them from opening too soon. This picture was taken on the Friday before Valentine's Day on Tuesday, so they had to stay fresh for some time before going out in arrangements.

I've included this shot because it shows the chaos of the shop: flowers everywhere, baskets of orders for Valentine's Day, and Bitsy, as usual, up to her elbows in flowers. She is straigtening the heads of the gerber daisies so that they will stand tall in thier arrangements.

And here was a mistake I made: Debbie (yellow) and Lauren (blue) were arranged perfectly...well, except for the harsh backlighting behind Lauren's hands and head. It was the shot I was waiting for, had composed in my mind. They stepped into it...and then Bitsy did too. If I had been looking for her, as I should have been, I'd have waited for her to go a little further to show a sense of movement. As it is, she is just a distraction. In any case, the ladies are cutting thorns off of countless dozens of roses. All the roses arranged at Bitsy's have their thorns cut off--one less thing to distract from the special moment of recieving beautiful flowers.

And the finished product. The business next door to Bitsy's, The Tool School, allows Bitsy to use his tables, air conditioning, and most importantly space to store the finished arrangments. The arrangements start being made on Sunday and are mostly finished by Tuesday morning--except for the extremely late procrastinators that is. I did a series of shots like this in a sort of layered focus, but thought this one was best for the group of pictures I've included here.

My favorite mistake

This picture is a perfect example of my favorite mistake. It is a three-fold mistake, one layer adding to the next. First, I deem the pictures horrid at the scene of the shot, only looking at the camera screen. Next, since the pictures are so horrid, what's the point of going up to the person the shot is of and asking them all their caption information? I mean, why get thier hopes up if you know it's not going to run? And finally, the grand finale, turning the picture in to my editor anyway; neglecting to delete it, even though it has no information. And every time, what do you think happens????

It runs front page on the Optimist. I'm dead serious. Sometimes I think the most secure way I have of getting a picture on the front page is to neglect to get caption information. The caption that ran under this picture, somehow Brian, our chief photographer, got.

Lining up for some soul
David Galaz, Junior international studies major from Elsa, serves food to students Monday during the Soul Food Festival, an event to celebrate Black History Month.

Brian suggested that I learn from this mistake. Cade will suggest the same during our lab today. But lets be honest. Will I learn? Probably not.

There's no green in Abilene...

About two months ago, my roommate informed me I needed to start looking for a new fall residence...and a new roommate. Apparently, she decided she loves this BJ kid she's been dating, that she wants to marry him on July 22 or so, and the idea of me living with them was only a lot akward. And so began the long list of things that have to happen when you want a wedding: the actual proposal, calling everyone you can think of, apologizing to those you didn't think of, planning the day of JULY 22 down to the very last second, and, of course, the engagement photos.


These two photos were taken at Minter Park, on Cypress St. in downtown Abilene. I used my brand-new 50mm lens (that is fabulous, by the way) and an ISO of 200 (because I wasn't an idiot and actually thought about my settings this time). I find it extremely funny that Kalyn wanted pictures taken here, because she's been complaining since we were freshmen about the "pretty little park downtown that everyone at ACU proposes at." Kalyn has broken a lot of her personal rules with this engagement business. She's annoyed with herself that she's become the sterotypical education major she's always made fun of...and yet, she won't postpone her impending marraige and save me from having to move.


This photo was taken at the park next to the depot in downtown Abilene. We opted for parks with water because it is February in West Texas in a six month drought--There is no green in Abilene. Water is the next best thing. Spontaneous pictures are one area I definately need to work on. When I'm looking for a specific picture, in this case the perfect engagement photo, it's hard for me to switch gears and catch the happy couple as he attempts to throw her into the fountain...but, I think you can get the idea from what I did get.


And my vote for the engagement photo: two happy faces--who wouldn't believe this is a couple in love?--a nice bare tree to represent the dusty barren land in which they will tie the knot, and even a little bit of green. The colors of their clothes complement the background colors nicely, and the sunlight and wind--for once--worked with us. But I'll let you know what they choose.