The Grand Canyon State

Being a Harker student, I traveled to Arizona with my class for the 7th grade trip, where we rode a bus for hours through desolate stretches of desert, hiked for miles between columns of red rock, and endured blazing sun and swirling dust. This arid state also happens to be the home of my birthplace. Yes, I lived the first year of my life in a place where 100 degree weather was considered moderate, where javelinas and jackrabbits ran freely around the neighborhood, and where cacti lined the walkway to every door on the street.

Sure, the climate is harsh, but I still love this place. In fact, I associate countless fond memories with the school trip. We told scary stories as we rattled along an incredibly bumpy dirt road on a Jeep tour. We saw the one and only McDonald's with turquoise arches, designed to complement the landscape of Sedona. We made brief pit stops at western-style diners where we wore feather headdresses and reenacted historic battles. All this and several guided tours through breathtakingly magnificent national parks. I remember this experience as one of the highlights of middle school-- as educational as it was exciting, it was truly a memorable one.

The hike through Bryce Canyon left me speechless with wonder (and exhaustion)

Students inch down a hill of red rock on all fours in Monument Valley

Horseshoe Bend, Colorado River via James Neeley's flickr photostream

The view of Horseshoe Bend from our raft

Fragrant Daffodils

Yesterday, I cut about 20 stems of these lovely flowers from my backyard and arranged them in a crystal vase. After some intense Google-ing I learned flowers of this variety are called geranium tazetta daffodils.

Placing the bouquet on my desk was probably not a great idea, for the eye-catching spots of color and sweet, somnolent aroma are quite the distraction from homework.


jennie

Day and Night

Delicate flowers bloom on the donut peach tree in my backyard, the official mark of the start of spring:
(All taken with my meager point-and-shoot Sony Cybershot. Click for full-sized photos.)

Just before sunset, slanted rays pass over the rooftop, casting intricate shadows across the petals.

The dainty flowers set against a seemingly two-dimensional dusk sky.

Within weeks this lovely tree will shed its petals to make way for fuzzy little peaches.

Happy spring!
jennie

Almost Spring

Something about photographing flowers really appeals to me. A few days ago, I was at Home Depot buying light bulbs when I began to gravitate towards the pretty flowers...

The rest are from my backyard:

I'm definitely more of a winter person-- flowers, iced lattes, and summer vacation are pretty much the only three blessings that come with warm weather.


jennie

Spotless

Spring has arrived in my backyard in the form of budding leaves, blooming daffodils, and these little red insects. At this time every year, ladybugs begin appearing throughout the vegetable garden, their predatory feeding habits sweeping it clean of pesky aphids. Oh how I wish my camera had more powerful macro functions.

I played around with Picnik, my favorite [free] online photo editing application, and made my mediocre photos look somewhat acceptable. Picnik offers a wide array of functions, ranging from the basics (auto-fix, crop, sharpen, etc.) to fancier options (heat map, night vision, vignette, neon, etc.) to text/frame/sticker add-ons. Picnik's digital cross processing (used in photos 1 and 3), lends a glowy, sunlit effect to photos-- a little bit hazy like a vintage photo, but without washed-out colors. As for a friendly user interface, Picnik also displays the cutest messages while loading: warming breeze, fluffing clouds, coloring flowers, growing grass... Although it may not be very professional, I highly recommend this application for any basic photo editing endeavors.