i haven't done a journal in ages so i might as well throw something on this.
i would use proper capitalization but i'm home from school for a long weekend and i really can't be bothered.

my most recent barrage of photos are from my two week trip to new mexico to stay with my roommate sonya. honestly, we spent most of my time there siting on her couch eating apple sauce and watching The West Wing (we started at episode one and made it almost all the way through season three). i would've liked to go out and photograph more, but january in albuquerque, while not as cold as it is in new york city, isn't very fun. you can see for miles, but on a whole it's very... brown. i've always lived on the east coast, so i'm used to trees and grass. the mountains were definitely cool, though, but when i went into them it was dark anyway, and i was almost always in a car when outside. one day i'll go back (probably this summer unless i get a bomb internship) and properly photograph. being able to see that far makes night very pretty.

the photos i did get were all taken from sonya's car as we drove four or five hours from albuquerque to a cabin in durango, colorado, and then a few more were taken in the car in durango on our trips up and down the mountains to ferry people to and from purgatory, the ski resort. i did not ski or snowboard, because the one time i snowboarded i broke my wrist on the bunny hill. also, i'm too cheap to afford lift tickets.

anywho, it was a cool trip and photographing landscapes was nice for a change. i love the street and architecture stuff i can get in new york, but i'm in a bit of an nyc photo rut right now. i think this happens when you live somewhere and don't leave your 1-mile-radius bubble of familiarity very much. it may also be the result of living somewhere impatient. i'm too busy jaywalking to get to my destination to carry my camera around. but i'll branch out as it starts getting warmer, per the "new semester resolutions" sonya and i wrote in december. speaking of those, i went to the gym twice last week. me. i did that. weird.

i'm also in a little concert photo rut, but that's a matter of opportunity rather than inspiration: i've either been too far back in the crowd or, more recently, seeing shows in churches where the lighting sucks. i hope to have better luck at the AP Tour in april and possibly the Framing Hanley show in march (headlined by Sick Puppies). i've also discovered that i can't really photograph Conditions because i'm too busy rocking out. i never had that problem with Saosin, who i loved just as much, but they were also a more distant (and more well-lit) band, so maybe that's it. very interesting.

this weekend allison and i are roadtripping to lewes, de and then to berlin, md - the former to stay with my parents for my dad's bday, and the latter to see Conditions and Life on Repeat play in the middle of nowhere in a church. we'll see if the dslr gets any action between the open-sunroof-civic-dance-parties and the 300-people-packed-into-a-chuch-concert.  



ps - regarding my "reading" below; tana french is amazing and if you like mystery novels and att (or character-based novels, i guess) she's worth checking out. i started the book on my way to new mexico and am only half waythough thanks to homework, but it's good. her previous book in the woods is one of my favorites of all time.