Mitama Matsuri (Lantern Festival)

Over the 3 day weekend (thanks to Marine Day) I was able to travel up to Tokyo and explore Yasukuni Shrine for the first time. It's out near Akiba in the Chuo Ward so it took me quite a while to get up to the East side of Tokyo. The following photos were shot on my D40X.

Hanami/ Cherry Blossom Viewing

I haven't uploaded any of my photography in ages on this blog. Once a year (for about 2 weeks) a major event happens in Japan; cherry blossoms are in bloom! This year I travelled to Shinjuku and Ueno to celebrate. The following photos were taken w/ my Nikon D40X.

Photo Restoration

So this week I took on a big challenge, I decided to restore an old family photo from 1933 of my great grandparents (on my dad's side). The original size of the image (barrel and all) is about 4" x 3". The image itself is about 2.5" x 1.75". My family is pretty sure they are at the World's Fair on Lake Michigan. The first image is the unrestored image and the latter is my restoration work.

Thesis Show

These are the photos from my senior show. You can see everything came together. The dress, the character portraits, etc. My environments and turn-arounds were in the book on the table along with my artist statement and business cards. The show went great and I saw a lot of old friends! This is my goodbye to Ringling.

Photography Final

This is final portfolio for my photography class. The entire class had 2 1/2 weeks to get together an advertising campaign of sorts from start to finish. This includes the concept, finding models, purchasing items, and printing the 5-6 finished pieces. I chose to do a lifestyle campaign on lolita; primarily because I own quite a few dresses and I have little money in my bank account.

If you modeled for me and don't see yourself up here it isn't because the pictures were terrible or you were a bad model; it was because the images weren't creating a cohesive body of work. I have to say a HUGE thank you to Amanda, Aless, Lindsay, Vicki, Monica, and Alex for modeling for me. They put aside their busy schedules to help me pass my photo class. Thank you for saving my ass! <3

Jeans

Catalogue and advertisement for DKNY jeans. Thanks to Lindsay for being a great model!

Toys and a Dress

These are the toys I made last year finally shot in the studio. I've had them sitting in my room and I finally made time to go shoot them! This weekend was all about photo shoots. I helped my friend Nicole shoot some toys and afterwards, my other friend Nicole came and modeled my dress for thesis. Does this dress look familiar? It is the dress the main character in my comic, "Atelier," wears. Link to the reference sheet I used to sew this dress can be found here: http://kfitzpat.blogspot.com/2009/11/thesis-turn-around.html A big thank you to my mother for helping me construct this dress. She spent hours gathering the fabric for the ruffles and I truly appreciate that.

Perfume Photography

Advertisement and Still Life shots for perfume campaign. The perfume is Paris Hilton's "Can- Can". REALLY big thanks to Vicki for not only modeling for me, but providing the perfume. No thanks to Walmart for sucking when I had to pick up the fabrics and flowers for this shoot.

Watch Ad

This was the current photo assignment for my Still Life/ Advertisement class. My second time shooting in the studio and I feel like I'm learning a ton. Thanks to Amanda who was my model!

Shoes! OMG!

Japan Panoramics

These are panoramics taken while I was in Tokyo. Will post more later one. None of these were taken with a tripod and were constructed in Photoshop CS3. 1st one @ Meiji Jingu Shrine. 2nd one in Kamakura. 3rd one @ Mad House Studios.

Japan Land

Well... I've been having way too much fun in Tokyo and the surrounding areas for the past two months and it's about time to come home. I'm dead broke at the moment, using my credit card to pay for groceries, already borrowed money from the parents, and just generally feeling the burden of how bad our economy is doing compared to that of Japan. I've probably lost around 200$ just in conversion and fees since I've been here. It sucks.

Anyway, besides problems with money, I've loved my time here and I feel blessed to be back in Japan. I'm looking forward to Tex- mex, seeing my family, boyfriend, and animals, and being back in a country where I fluently speak the language, but I will miss Japan dearly. I'm highly considering coming back to take an intensive language program for 2 years or so. We'll see what happens.

Photography final pt 2

I originally did a project involving diptychs where these images arose:

Thus leading me to produce a series of diptychs involving spontaneous portraits with things that described people. Somehow I ended up using Kyle twice. Most likely because I was having creative blocks and had little time to shoot. These were used for the first half in my final photography portfolio of the semester.

Photography Final pt 1

This is what happens when I get my hands on film... Holga 120 slide film cross- processed that expired in 2002. I used a Red flash w/ each photo. These were half of the photos I took for my final portfolio in my Art and Science of Color class in photography. Thanks Monica!!!!