Day Drunk in 2014

In 2014, I lived in Vermont for a whole year, started a tiny house business, and turned 27. It also marked a year of collaborating with Nessa and I even got to introduce you to my friend Kyla! Aside from finishing up documenting my cross country road trip with Nessa (just in time for my upcoming trip!), I really feel like this year was a great stab at truly finding my blogging voice and confidence!

Here are a few of my favorite posts from 2014:

(You can find other faves on the sidebar!)

Dreamland & the Extraterrestrial Highway

Trail Cam No. 2

From The City to The Country

Photo-an-Hour: A December DIY

Picspam: The Burning Piano
 

Orange Season

And my favorite collaborations:

A Week In Black Rock City by Nessa

The Beetle Who Thought he was a Dragon by Kyla

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Photo-an-Hour: A December DIY

9am: Good morning! I'm kind of an "early to bed, late to rise" kind of girl, so my day usually starts around nine with a good Aeropress full of espresso. With AGP out of the house for a couple of days, I have to remember how to do everything for one!

 10am: My cats' animosity towards each other has been thawing lately and I have been delightfully obsessed with seeing them relaxing in the same room together. It warms the cockles of my heart to get an eyeful of two happy cats at once.

11am: Chores in the country include bringing my own trash to the dump. We ain't got no trash collection. Although this is actually a pretty fun chore because they have a cool recycling transfer station including a "take it or leave it" section with lots of free goodies.

12pm:  Just showing off some of the awesome stuff I snagged at the dump. Not pictured is a sweet bench and a few other kitchen essentials. Don't you LOVE that bedspread and tiny frying pan?! Obviously taking free trash is not weird, right? Right!

1pm: I took a walk on the look out for some winter textures. I always forget how nice it is to tromp around in the snow, even on a cold, icy day. I made this quick and dirty mandala out of branches from a downed birch limb. I'm trying to get better at identifying trees, especially in winter, and this book I snagged is great: A Guide To Nature in Winter.

2pm: Potted plant appreciation time! This begonia is one of my favorites. It is prospering fantastically from some clippings I got from a girlfriend in late fall. It doesn't mind the winter at all.

3pm: A little exercise and a little X-Files. This pose looks provocative. Scully looks incredulous. Get it, girl.

4pm: Phyllis thinks exercise is for chumps. She'd much rather turn into a great big pile of fluff for 18 hours a day. Can't say I blame her.

5pm: Project time. A before shot of our little bedroom shows it to be a bit... lacking. I have been gearing up to try this statement wall DIY from A Beautiful Mess behind the bed for about a month now and it's finally time! Okay, take a deep breath and jump in!

 6pm: This is my stencil. A bit of a different take on ABM's design, but a bit more my style. I call it The Aztec Urn Pattern. I perfected the stencil the night before, then carefully carved it onto a fresh piece of cardboard I got from the dump today. I'm about halfway through the wall at this point. 30 Rock is my friend.

7pm: Yes! I LOVE it! I will share a better "after" photo once we install our nightstands and spruce up the space a bit more, but this statement wall project was the first step in our total bedroom rejuvenation. The pattern and overall effect make me smile, even with all the slight imperfections. Thanks for the idea, ABM!

8pm: Dinner in bed is totally reasonable when you just want to stare at your new pretty wall, right? This is some absolute bachelorette food: roasted red peppers, caramelized onions, chicken, brie, and apples on french bread. A DIY dinner to end the day.

Accidental Light Painting

I've been seeing a lot of light painting on the internet these days, popular among tech geeks with tripods and headlamps or newfangled LED light strips (which I super want, by the way). And don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of intentional light painting too, but I am more often amused by accidental light painting. You know, when you snap a picture of pretty lights in the dark and when the digital preview pops up, you think, Woah.

My history with digital photography has been pretty loosey goosey. I've mostly stuck with point-and-shoots because lugging around expensive, bulky equipment on my many adventures is not my favorite thing to do. I want something small, compact, and inexpensive so I can continue throwing it in my bag without worry.

(It's hard to get drunken, on the fly shots like this if you have to lug your camera bag around Reykjavik, Iceland at 4am.)

Shitty camera + nighttime settings + pretty lights + the flick of your wrist and you've got yourself some blurry, streaky, colorful art, creatively dashing across your friend's beautiful faces or lighting up the night sky. I tend to lean towards drunken whimsy, so these pictures actually end up capturing my memories more closely than boring old real life.

There are many ways to light paint without props. With cheap point-and-shoots that don't give you supreme control over your exposure lengths, you'll probably end up sticking with nighttime as the best time to paint. I usually find the Night Portrait Mode, or something similar, as the best setting because it features a long exposure and a timed flash that prevents your subject (should you choose one) from getting too blown out (not that I mind that look too much). But don't forget to play around with your settings to find the best one for you and your camera.

The best thing about the Night Portrait Mode is that it will capture your subject but still give you that beloved long exposure to play around with. It can get double exposure-y and I love it. That's why I like to get jiggy and call upon that desired light play.

Here are some of my favorites over the years and some interesting lights to play with:

The bar/venue scene is a great place to start with some fun light painting. You know you are going to be there anyway, surrounded by bright lights and dancing around. Plus, the blown out quality of night portraiture can end up painting your subject in a flattering light once you reach that not-so-flattering part of the night.

Fire is also a quick and easy light painting subject. You can really never tell what kind of paranormal, sentient flame work might be captured.

Also, try burning a piano some time. It's fun.

Ever try to photograph the moon? It almost never comes out in photographs the way our mind's eye perceives it. A long exposure gives the opportunity for spelling and shape making, almost like reverse light painting: instead of standing in front of the camera and waving a glow stick to draw something, you move the camera around the light subject. Except you have to do it backwards. The following two pictures were taken with the moon and a lot of paper lanterns at the Wakarusa Music Festival in Ozark, Arkansas.

The above picture was also taken in Arkansas at Woolly Lake State Park in Greenbrier; a different place, a different time. Boy, I love Arkansas!

And then there's Burning Man. I won't even elaborate on that here. There are pretty lights everywhere and if you aren't seeing them streaky to begin with than you're doing it wrong!! It may be hard to tell, but the next picture is of a 60ft tall rooster mutant vehicle.

I also love these whitewashed pictures I took one overcast evening just before dusk at the Devil's Hopyard State Park in Connecticut. They fall more into the realm of double exposure photography than light painting, but the spooky swirls light get me every time.

And then, of course, there are just the streaky, unformed free-for-alls I love so well. The recipe for these is simple: point, shoot, and wave your camera madly around until the frame is captured. Some times they are psychedelic and some times they are just plain spooky. Win-win.

Hooray for low budget light painting!

Dreamland & The Extraterrestrial Highway

 

Okay, I lied. I am a bit more like Mulder than I am like Scully, which is I would go far out of my way to drive Nevada State Route 375, also known as the Extraterrestrial Highway and home to the infamously paranormal Area 51 at Groom Lake, also known as Dreamland. Scully would never willingly go to such a place.

Just how out of the way is the Extraterrestrial Highway? The only reasons you would ever have to drive it would be:

1. If you were trying to get from Cedar City, Utah to Tonopah, Nevada (extra points if you have heard of either of those places). 
2. If you were a UFO nut headed out to Dreamland to catch glimpses of covert paranormal activity - which apparently happen 2-3 times per week. 
3. If you had family in Rachel, Nevada; the only town that the Extraterrestrial Highway passes through in the entirety of it's 98 mile expanse. 
4. Or if you are me and Nessa on a westward cross country trip with an "out there" bent and a love of the 90's television show, The X-Files. 

So naturally we spent a splendid September afternoon attempting the lonely feat of cruising through the southern reaches of Nevada's Great Basin Desert, surrounded by, well, pretty much nothing. And trust me, as someone who has traversed the Canadian plains AND lived briefly in central South Dakota, I do not use the word "nothing" lightly. But if you ever find yourself traveling the Extraterrestrial Highway into Dreamland one day chasing the ghosts of Mulder and Scully (and I sure hope you do), you will find little more than miles of barren open cattle range against a backdrop of linear mountain ranges interrupted by brief patches of Joshua trees, and then back to nothingness again until you reach the small town of Rachel, where you WILL stop for nothing but a bit of ambiance. We saw far more cattle than cars or people on our journey that day. 

Of course, that's exactly what the government wants you to do. If you aren't looking close enough, you just might pass by the clandestine entrance to Area 51, the top secret military airbase whose main purpose is still publicly unknown. Ask a conspiracy buff and it is where our government is obtaining extraterrestrial technology from flying saucers and conducting classified aviation experiments. Well, one part of that is true. They ARE conducting aviation experiments as verified in recently declassified reports, but whether or not the technology is extraterrestrial is still unclear. Basically, Area 51 is the government's worst kept secret - these days you can drive right up to it's very locked gates and the cloud of paranormal mystery that surrounds it does nothing to keep UFO seekers away. Just take the road at the infamous "Black Mailbox" and drive until they turn you away. Oh, and the legendary Black Mailbox is white now, so don't get fooled. 

Once you have made your peace with Area 51 and have either seen the aliens or not (Pro tip: if you didn't see any little gray men, you probably just had your memory erased by MIBs), head on over to the Little A'le'inn motel and restaurant, the heart of Rachel, Nevada. There you can swap stories with other SciFi freaks over beer and pie before turning in for the night. Be sure to add your dollar to the collection on the ceiling so you have proof that you were there before you get abducted. And look for ours while you are there!
  

 
Or instead of spending the night, you can press onwards to Tonopah surrounded by more of the same: cattle, open range, and distant mountains that never seem to get any closer. We actually made it all the way to Mono Lake in California that night, but only after some major white knuckle driving dodging the shady cows that peppered the road. 

As you can see in the above photographic evidence of flying saucers, I was very nearly beamed right out of Rachel! Good times.10/10 would get probed again.

(Oh, and for those curious, you can watch Mulder and Scully experience a temporary transtemporalia in the season six episode arc, Dreamland and Dreamland II.)