Ladyparts and the apple...

While I was working on my windows outdoors today, a ladybug landed on my glasses. I think she fell off the deck staircase that I was standing under. Usually they'll fly away again pretty quickly if you start trying to handle them much, but this one seems to have some sort of problem with her wings because the couple of times she's tried she just ended up falling over. (I'm referring to her as a female because she's fairly large compared to the other ladybugs I've seen around lately, and the females are - to my knowledge - usually the larger of the sexes in the species.)

Well, she ended up staying on my hand for 30 minutes... So I did an impromptu photoshoot with her in the kitchen, as it was fair practice in macro photography with a fast moving subject (not that the macro feature of my digital camera is very good but I didn't have time to go dig out my Canon).

After I'd put her back on my hand, I decided to see how long she'd stay. Well, 1 hour turned into 2 hours, even while I was using my hands to work on projects, and so I finally moved her off of my hand. Currently (it's been over 3 hours now and counting), she's resting on the velveteen bag my little digicam is usually in, next to my laptop. She moves around every once in a while, preens constantly, does these funny little aerobics steps...but she's sticking around.

I've taken to calling her "Ladyparts." Because I have a silly/12-year-old-boy sense of humor? Perhaps!

This may, in part, be because my room is about 59 degrees Fahrenheit in temperature and the chill makes insects sluggish. What can I say? I like it cold.

I sort of have this urge now to keep ladybugs as pets. Outdoors, they can live for up to 2 years! But in a container, even with aphids and pollen and moisture sources, they would probably only live a couple weeks tops. This makes me sad...

Meanwhile, I will likely post some more stuff at KeroseneCamera soon. And for the sake of clarification, the young lady featured in the background of the photo in this post is my youngest sister.

Kate doesn't sleep? Bird brain.

What happens when I'm not getting enough sleep?

My brain turns out weird shit while I'm trying to do my homework, that's what!

I was yelled at to update.

I have been...not here? Heh. Well anyway, "someone" yelled at me to update this thing, so...I'm going to do so in the worst way.

The following are a bunch of images which I shall blithely neglect to explain in any manner. Suffice to say, instead, that they are things I have drawn and/or been working on for some project or other for the last couple months. Many of them are incomplete thus far. SO THERE.



Chestnut copyright © Gaia Gandolfo
Unavisi concept and project copyright © Brianne Goetz






Lion copyright © Ruth Collins
Unavisi concept and project copyright © Brianne Goetz





Raven copyright © Elle Skinner









Timber copyright © Marissa S. Pittman











Grace Black copyright © Julie Davis









Aidan copyright © Amy










The following are images done as personal projects or as portions of work-in-progress commissions...

EPIC: We Were Small (4)

Oh no! More tiny people! Aaaaaah!

EPIC: We Were Small (3)

More from the EPIC series...

EPIC: We Were Small (2)

Another image from my EPIC: We Were Small book. This one was taken in a Footlocker store at the mall. The guys there seemed quite bewildered about what I was asking them for permission to do. Normally, stores are very adamant there about cameras staying out. I have been threatened by a security dude there once because he thought I was photographing window displays. Lucky me, with my talent for talking my way in and out of almost everything.

Anyway, the Footlocker boys were polite and very amused watching me set my figure up and then my macro to take the photo. It took several tries to get what I wanted, this strange parody of a climbing wall or a monument. 2 for $89.99.

Some editing was necessary, as there were some unfortunate bars disrupting the scale contrast in the bottom right. I think I got them all out fairly well.

EPIC: We Were Small (1)

For the current project in one of my classes, we all made up a list of words, put them in a hat, and each drew one out. I drew "tranquility" but wasn't feeling it, and REALLY wanted "epic." I managed to make a trade for it, hoorah!

Well, word drawn and all, the rest of the assignment consists of taking at least 24 photographs to represent this word. While it seems a lot of my classmates are favoring the idea of random images that interpret the word, I had a clear idea in my head before we even drew the words from the hat. Thus the reason I wanted "epic" so badly.

Since the final format of this is supposed to be a "book" of some sort, I decided it would be fun to make a semi-narrative. I intend to carry these little guys and others I collected for the project, who are less than an inch tall, around with me for a week or two, putting them in situations which are, for them, epic. But it's also meant to contrast them with the big bad world, ours, huge and seemingly absurd, and to find funny new interpretations of common scenes we take for granted. Mostly, I wanted to have fun, push the project with humor, and make something that I, or my friends or sisters, could enjoy after it was done.

I took this particular one at the local mall at the indoor "pond" that is just a glorified fountain in the center of the place. I took others there as well, but those will come later. It drew a bit of a crowd, I guess because people couldn't see what I was photographing and then when they could they couldn't figure out why. I can't tell you how many times over the course of the shooting I did there I was asked "what are those?" and "did you make those?" and "is this for one of the stores?"

...I could get a real kick out of making an ad campaign of some sort out of these for the mall. I once worked there for a while in a bookstore, and they insisted on employees calling it
a "retail resort." Yeahhh...MALL MALL MALL MALL MALL. Neener neener.

So how do you like my title? Haha.