disalignment

(flickr)

day eighteen

Something you crave a lot

A film SLR...which surprisingly, I received in the mail today :). Thank you Victor! He's lending me his 50mm lens and giving me the extra AE-1 he bought--I'm so, so psyched to test it out (I actually already played with it a bit and cleaned parts of it, but no where to the extent that I plan on)!!!

Another thing I'm craving is the iPhone 4 for Verizon, WHICH AS OF TODAY HAS A RESERVED QUANTITY THAT IS PURCHASABLE FOR CURRENT VERIZON CUSTOMERS and my brother bought me one at 3am today, when it went on sale online! I don't know what I'm more excited about at the moment, this camera or my new phone. My goodness.

But to put a damper on today, the report card I received yesterday afternoon was flawed :(. I noticed that my AP Statistics teacher curved our midterm grade, which was incredibly kind and bumped me up back into the 90s (I was doing fine until just recently so I sort of felt like it was appropriate), BUT I became aware that it was an accident today, and I do think she changed it back. Which is actually very upsetting since I perceived my grades as fairly strong with that one in the 90s, but after the drop I can't help but feel sad, if not disappointed.

Yet at the same time, it really is the grade I deserve. And I'm writing a scholarship essay on dishonesty, so this is fitting. Even though I was not dishonest, in all honesty, I'm lucky to have an 88 with the effort I lacked at the end of the marking period (although I studied 5+ hours for the midterms...sigh).

Time to trust in God--or should I say: a reminder that I need to trust in God always and less in my academic transcript.

OKAY but I cannot trust God to delay my scholarship deadline that I've just barely become eligible to apply to, so OFF I GO. Forty-five minutes until its submission!

--

PS, I can't believe I forgot this; Happy Chinese New Year, of course! :))

PPS, If this challenge q was asking about food: avocados and mashed potatoes.

one more...

I know, I know: studying. However, I realized something.

Wide-angle lenses are like an addiction. You think your 28-135mm kit lens is decent and can take great landscape shots until you buy the 17-40mm. And then you're happy, really happy, because it's a beautiful prime and you know you'll use it forever and it's such quality glass that it will please you shot after shot after shot.

And then there's the 10-22mm. Not a prime, but just as expensive.

But even wider.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/efs1022/pool/with/5255876556/

I waaaaant oneeeeee...but I suppose the greater need at the moment is a decent zoom lens. And macro. And fisheye, for funsies. I'm hesitant to invest in non-primes (I know, I sound like a brat), though the primes cost a fortune, because I know they're highly replaceable. Primes are timeless. A real investment.

But this one is so, so tempting...

chez moi

It's confirmed:

I can't study at home.

The naturally comfortable, cozy, secure feeling that arises when I enter the green front door to my green "foyer" to my green room...is intangibly lethargic-inducing. I knew that it would be in my best interest to bring my laptop and textbooks with me to school today and then directly head to the library after my dismissal, but I thought I would drop home to first change, ...and then I fell into a slight slump.

The warmth, the sun casting its rays through my windows, the feel of soft plush blankets and cotton sheets against the skin.

And so I dragged myself out of the house at a bit past noon, which was my predetermined time...not bad, but I was thoroughly irked at myself. I didn't want to leave. No, no, no.

So, to sum up what I learned today: always bring what I need to study into the car if I plan on getting any studying done. Mid-drive stops back at home are really not productive.

On the plus side, today consisted of no midterms. In art, famous illustrator Iassen Ghiuselev dropped by to give a short presentation...his work consists of the most beautiful, traditional, Renaissance-inspired gouache paintings that I have ever seen. Combining perspective and attention to detail, he is the epitome of "artist." We had the chance to see his prints and books, many in foreign languages (Chinese included!), and what I anticipated to be a boring and waste-of-time morning session turned into an awe-inspiring hour.

Ghiuselev takes on mostly traditional, classic stories--he's famed for his work with Alice in Wonderland (his daughter's name is Alice, too. How cute is that?), which is actually a single work that gets graphically cropped into separate images for the books' use. It was curious to hear about graphic designers for different countries interpreting the crops in various ways: I actually had no idea of the process behind storybook producing, so this gave some much-welcomed and interesting insight.

Yet overall, I think his work puts much of modernism to shame. Of course they are different categories and cannot really be judged on the same scale, but when I see things like Ghiuselev's work, where detail is so meticulously planned and one wood panel commissioned illustration takes three (may I say it again? three) years to finish...I can't help but feel like all the random, nonsensical art that claims to have a "background story"; it's all just nullified.

But we are in the 21st century, and I happen to fall into the same category (hello? Photoshop CS5? Random doodles I turn in for the Scholastics competition?). Not sure what to really think. All I know is that I admire this man, and it was more than my privilege to be able to listen to him speak, see his books, and be in his presence.

...Anywhoo. I need to get back to work soon...but on a similar-but-unrelated note, I am thinking of purchasing a film SLR! I've found one of the old Rebel bodies for $30 flat, a pretty good deal, eh? I would love to buy one of the AE-1 cameras, but they are fairly obsolete and besides looking like a complete vintage, hipster-freak, are quite useless for my purposes.

I want to learn how to use film.