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! 

Elephant Mountain

  Last Saturday Rika and Aaron Meyer invited Eric and I to go hiking up Elephant Mountain with them, which is located in Taipei. Elephant Mountain is a pretty popular mountain to hike in Taiwan since it overlooks Taipei 101 (the tallest building in the world right now) and has a pretty awesome view of the city. One of the teachers we work with at Cinhua, Autumn, also came along with us. Aaron and Rika told us to meet them at the bottom of the mountain at 2:00 PM, which Autumn, Eric, and I were late for by 20 minutes (we have to take public transportation so it's kinda unpredictable)...  

  When we got to the bottom of the mountain Aaron and Rika were not there which was odd to us since they only live about 20 minutes away from Taipei. As new teachers we don't receive phones until who knows when, so we didn't have phones to reach each other with. We waited for about 50 minutes for the two until we finally said, "forget them! let's just go!!".  After about 15 minutes of hiking up the mountain we found Rika and Aaron standing on top of this giant rock! Suprise!! They were there! They told us that they got horribly lost on their bus on the way and that their cab driver took them to the wrong side of the mountain. Luckily somehow we ran into the two and made the rest of the hike with them. I'm so happy we did because we all had such a spectacular time together!

  The pictures of us with the view in the background were taken on top of that giant rock we found Rika and Aaron on. While on the mountain we found a temple, which I took a few photos of some of the outside decorations. The picture I took of the car was at the bottom of the mountain which I thought was pretty interesting because it was a British car with a Kansas license plate on it sitting in Taipei, Taiwan. 

While on the hike we went through this path that reminded us of the Swiss Family Robinson scenery. It was pretty much awesome! It was raining while walking through it so I couldn't take any photos, but maybe I'll go back for some more later. I must say, it was a fantacular day! 

While wandering in Taipei

Here are a few photos I took while we wandered through a part of Taipei. Taipei reminds me a lot of New York City, except it's much cleaner than New York City or any other large city I've been to. We only saw just a bit of Taipei, but I'm looking forward to exploring the city more! 

Children at Cinhua

These children are some of the students at the Cinhua Elementary school which is connected to the English Express Wonderland (where I work at). I help Gwen, one of the teachers at Cinhua, once a week with her 1st and 2nd grade classes and these are some of the students of the classes. They are super spunky and pretty darn cute.