Win an amazing $10,000 canon 5D MKII camera setup for the launch of camera+ for iphone at wwdc!

Okay so I really want to win this Canon package from tap tap tap, a leading iPhone and iPad app developer and publisher. It says to spread the word, so here it is! I'm spreading it!!!

You can check it out at http://tinyurl.com/camplus

Help my friend win $10,000 for her wedding!

If you don't already know Megan Kirkland, well then you should meet her!!  She's super eccentric, hilarious, one of the most creative persons I know, and has a HUGE heart!  Megan and her fiance have signed up for this contest with dexknows Weddings where they could win $10, 000 for their wedding!!  Megan has asked me to be their photographer for their wedding so I would LOVE to shoot a wedding of contest winners!!! Oh, and I would really like my beloved friend to win this for herself :)  All you have to do is go to wildfireapp.com and vote for them. They are under the names modern (affordable) bohemia, the third couple on the right, and just click on them to vote! I already did!!!

Awe, look at this precious photo of Megan and her fiance I stole off her facebook... 

Vote for them!!!

Cianhua Field Day Fun!

This Saturday we the English teachers at Cianhua Elementary attended what I would consider a field day at our school. We were told to arrive at the school at 7:00 AM. That meant we had to leave our apartments at 6:30 AM on a Saturday morning! I think we were all pretty irritated that we had to wake up that early on the weekend... To be honest, I did NOT want to attend this! I absolutely am not a happy person when I have to wake up that early on the weekend. We also weren't really informed before hand what was going on at this event; all we knew was that we were to play tug-a-war. This didn't really excited me either... as you might notice I wasn't blessed with muscles. 

However, when we got there several students from different schools in the Shih-men district were arriving at our school in their precious uniforms. This instantly got my spirits up since I LOVE the Taiwanese elementary school PE uniforms! To my surprise I loved this field day!! At the beginning of it all several schools and adult clubs performed dance routines for the town mayor. That was the best!!! I had so much fun watching all the dance routines and walking around taking pictures of all the cute kids! I hope you enjoy all the pictures I took from this fun day.  

the crew

Here we are, the Cianhua English teacher crew!  From left to right: Jessica, myself, Eric, Nick, Leah, Tom, and Autumn.

girls in pink shorts

I want a pair of these shorts! These girls were so cute and so sweet. I love the combination of the girl who is wearing her knee-high white socks with her shorts all hiked up. 

Johnson

This is Johnson! He is one of my little nuggets of joy who goes to school at Cianhua. He looks like a hundred pound baby! I would seriously like to know how he's going to look when he becomes an adult. I hope he looks just the same!!

pretty details

This girl was very shy with me while I was taking pictures of the pretty details of her outfit. Her friends however were not at all shy about pushing her in front of me to take her picture and telling her how to pose. It was quite amusing! 

These women put on very lovely show for us!   

cheer up!

Can you now start to see why I started to love the day?!! This boy was absolutely priceless! He was so photo-ready, not camera shy, and so energetic, he made laugh so much. More of him and others coming soon.... 

the wrist bell dance

Ummm.... RANDOM!

I'd like to call this short little photo blog RANDOM because these photos are nothing but random. Please enjoy.

What makes this so random is that this little lady was found in an Aboriginal tribe's little town down in Kenting area. I don't know what it was for, but as you may be able to see it's right next to a window of some ones apartment. Creepy...

What? It's art.

Along the east coast

During our Chinese New Year break my parents came to visit and take a road trip with Eric and I around Taiwan. We drove down the west side of Taiwan which was basically just highways and freeways, but on our way back we drove up the east coast. The east coast is absolutely beautiful! It's full of windy roads up and down mountains and (which was rough for me since I get car sick semi easily) along  beautiful coastlines of Taiwan. The weather was pretty cloudy and sometimes rainy, but I was still able to get some decent photos of Taiwan's east side.

The Monkey Face Rock! Our first stop was in Kenting. Kenting was recommended by all of our coworkers to stop at and visit so of course we had to! This town is pretty much as south as you can go in Taiwan; home of the most southern tip of Taiwan. The weather was actually quite lovely this day, but the water was way to cold to swim in. I didn't notice it at first, but my dad pointed out to me that this rock is famous for having a monkey's profile on one side and Nixon's profile on the other, which I didn't get to see...

I'm not sure if the person holding the umbrellas is a man or a woman, but she/him/shim looks like someone who has a baby growing inside it's chest! This photo was also taken at a beach in Kenting.

The beaches in Kenting were really pretty. The water was turquise blue and the sand was light tan, but the sand was very rocky! It didn't have giant rugged rocks all over the beach, but more smaller coral like and smooth rocks. The sand was also very course like tiny little pebbles. 

We all graffiti. However, it's much more interesting finding graffiti in another language. I like to imagine that this might say something like Pee-Wee Herman rules on! 

Oh yes, that's right... he's shirtless and oh so confident. oh, and studly.

I heart you too.

The Taroko Gorge

This past week Eric, myself, and my parents went on a road trip around Taiwan. One of our stops was at the Taroko Gorge, which was probably the most visually memorable stop. It was a really cloudy and dreary day, but at least it wasn't raining! which a lot of the days in Taiwan at this time of year tend to do. Here's just a few of the photos I took of that day. 

Hey look, it's Eric in a tunnel! He's my #1 model. This by far is my most favorite photo from the day! There was actually a group of girls walking through the end of the tunnel (through that hole), but I decided to yoink them out and make Eric the focus of the photo. 

This place is awesome! Monica and Ryan, if you come here next year I'll take you camping at this beautiful Taiwan destination!!

One of the SEVERAL landscape photos I took at the Taroko Gorge.

              

This was at the bottom of the Gorge which didn't have much water flowing. However, the dried up river  really made the rocks pop which I really liked. 

The Taroko Gorge is GORGEous! But the photos of it all start to look alike after awhile... 

Hat Lamai, Thailand on Koh Samui island

Wow, what a beautiful island! After leaving Kanchanaburi we took an overnight bus that took us to a ferry that then took us to the island of Koh Samui. It was a very, very, very long and uncomfortable ride to get to this island, but it was completely worth it I tell you! 

I loved this bridge. This bridge was really only used by the locals who would either fish off it or hang out on it. The man standing on the bridge was a local who I caught staring off into the sunset.

Ha! All these pictures were taken with my self-timer which I would make Eric sit/stand in place while I would run as quickly as I could to get into position without looking like I had just ran into place. Each photo took about three times until I got into position in time!

Funny story: I thought this was Eric when I took the photo, but realized when he stood up that it was a gentleman who was about 70 years old wearing a speedo.

Here are the photos I took of Eric after I figured out which one he was.

I believe these women were the women who would walk along the beach giving manicures and pedicures to sun bathing tourists. I caught them while they were taking their break under a shady tree by the beach. 

I loved this boat! I don't know the significance of the crosses on the boat, but I loved the blue color of them. I had taken the picture of the boat just a few minutes before I turned back towards the boat a saw this little local boy sitting next to the boat playing with some sticks. He looked like he was having a good time!

There were almost always local fishermen out fishing around the island where we were staying at. I'm not sure what all kind of fish you could catch at this island, but I saw several large, ugly, dead blowfish that had washed up on the shore.

There were several neat looking boats around Hat Lamai. I saw several boats that looked liked this one, which I believe is a fishing boat. 

Kanchanaburi, Thailand

While in Thailand we stopped in a town called Kanchanaburi. A fellow teacher of mine, Tom, used to live on and off in Thailand for about 3 years and recommended visiting the town. It was kind of a small quaint town with few tourists. Most of these photos were taken while walking around the town.

I didn't get the name of this man, but he was really helpful and nice and didn't act like several of those who were out just for your money. 

This little boy was so cute. I don't know what it was, but the little boy had this white powder rubbed all over his face which looked like baby powder. I saw several children and elderly people in Thailand with this powder stuff rubbed on their face so I'm really curious to what it's for.

Left photo:  This boy was really shy and I'm really surprised he posed for me in this photo. I noticed that the people in Thailand are much more willing to be photographed compared to the people in Taiwan who really don't want their photo taken at all.
Right photo:   While Autumn, a fellow teacher who also went to Thailand, and I were walking around in Kanchanaburi we found this graveyard which we thought was worthy of walking around in. Some of their gravestones are similar to those in Taiwan and some don't look like any gravestone I've ever seen before.  

This row of gravestones or monuments looked like old furnaces to me. I'm not sure if there are ashes inside of these or what?  They looked pretty interesting however they work though.

Stay tuned...

Stay tuned for some of my photos from Thailand!

- Here's one I worked on while the others were downloading. The rest will come soon!

My TOP TEN Portraits of 2009

Alright ladies and gents who might be paying any attention to this mini photo blog of mine! I've decided to pick out my top ten favorite portraits that I've taken in the year of 2009. I just started doing photography as a kind of hobby this past year and thought it might be fun to look through my work and pick out my favorite ten portraits that I took in 2009 and share them with you! So here they are in no particular order:

1 & 2

Left photo:  This is a photo I took of my beautiful friend Laura, who I believe could make it as an actual model, while I was visiting back home in Orlando. She was gracious enough to let me practice my photography with her as my model. Laura really made the photos with her perfect choices of clothing and fun props. Thanks Laura for helping me with my photography!
Right photo:  These three: (from left to right) Grace, Ludine, and Tony actually came to me asking if I would take some photos of them! There was no reason for the photo shoot, they just thought it would be fun. I found this really cool oldish looking car that I though would be really cool to take the photos of them with, which was, but it was scorching hot that day and caused the photo shoot to be cut short. Even though it was cut short I got some really good shots of the three. I particularly like this photo based on Ludine's facial expression!  

3 & 4

Top photo:  I love this photo of Katie and Brad. I think it's a really sweet picture of the two. It was a really cold day that day in Collegedale, TN when we did this photo shoot and I snapped this while Brad was blowing on Katie's hand trying to keep it warm. I really appreciate these two allowing me to take these pictures of them since it was so cold and I asked them to be models for me. Congratulations to Katie and Brad for they are now a Mr. & Mrs.!!! I'm truly sad that I wasn't able to be at their wedding, but at heart I was there. 

Bottom photo:  Oh how I love Monica and Ryan! They are truly some of my most favorite people in the world and I miss them so much! This was taken actually the day before their wedding day, but in their wedding clothes. The day didn't really go as expected due to rain and once the rain slowed down we began losing light quickly. I love-love this picture of Monica! She beams beauty.

5

I don't know if I can quite call this photo collage a portrait since I cut all their heads off, but I had fun with it! This is from my friends Tiffany & Dustin's wedding, which I was their photographer and now know I have MUCH to learn about shooting weddings. It's really TOUGH and I have so much to learn!!! Obviously in the center is the bride, Tiffany, and in the six photos surrounding her are her bridesmaids. While I was taking these photos I kept telling the girls to not worrying about smiling in these since I wasn't including their heads. I don't think any of the girls understood what was going on...

6 & 7

Left photo:  Here is the beautiful Tiffany & Dustin who's wedding I photographed in Idaho during the summer. Their wedding was possibly one of the most fun weddings I've ever witnessed! I loved everything about their wedding: the scenery was gorgeous, the people who were in their wedding, the people who attended the wedding, the fun dancing in the mud, and the over all aura of the wedding. I loved being apart of their special day! 
Right photo:  Here we have Katie & Brad again, but this picture was taken after they got engaged at the beginning of the summer. I think Katie looks so beautiful in this photo. They both look so peaceful in this photo which is really quite the opposite of their silly-outgoing personalities. 

8 & 9

Top photo:  In this photo is the lovely, newly mother Dalia. While I was in Orlando before I left for Taiwan Dalia contacted me asking if I would take maternity portraits for her. I'm not sure how far along Dalia was when we took these photos, but I'm going to guess she was around 8 months... My point is: look how gorgeous she looks!! We actually took these photos at Forest Lake Academy's campus where she works and lives next to. 
Bottom photo:  This is Grace who was apart of the picture above with this same car. I pretty much love this picture because Grace looks HOT! What a model she turned into!! That car was really gross and smelly inside so I appreciate her being willing to sit inside of it for awhile in that heat. 

10

This is Katie & Sam who were actually the last photo shoot I had  before I left for Taiwan. They were so much fun! Sam is from Australia so that alone was fun for me because I enjoy talking to people with accents. What I love to so much about this photo is their outfits! God bless this couple for being so awesome to bring an oldies outfit!