21 mm

Okay, so I’ve had my first crappy day of 2010 today. Everything spiraled down towards the end of the school day. First, my shoot with Martin went alright. I had a little trouble directing but I got better at it towards the end. I learned today that girls are better at shooting models because they’re more open to the fashion and modeling world, where as guys don’t really care. I’m finally done with the project though—er, besides the editing. Shooting with studio lighting was such an experience, and I’ve learned a lot from it. I’ll post the photos here on Tumblr maybe around Thursday or Friday.

I don’t really want to go into the details of my day cause it might seem pointless to some people, but it was all about my priorities and living situation. I mean, it’s not that I feel ungrateful for where I’m living, it’s just that I wish our family could grow a little more, economically. This morning on my way to school, my mom was discussing to our landlord that we can’t pay our rent for the next month. She kept asking for the favor to pay later in her broken-down English, while he discussed to her that he needed the money too. I wasn’t there to hear all of that conversation, but I think there was an agreement. I really wish things like this could get better. It’s really uncomfortable living life when you know things could happen unexpectedly life. Now Yearbook was mainly my only priority that I had stress in today, though I felt really overwhelmed by the work that is needed to be done. It’s frustrating when you find yourself stuck in a rut. I plainly remember myself running to my seventh period—Yearbook is my sixth—today with my backpack open, papers flying, papers in my mouth, and sweater falling all-the-while thinking in my head that this sucks. It got worse as I arrived to my seventh period and sat down next to this new jerk for the new semester. If you’ve ever known me as a friend, you’d know that I never tend to make a lot of enemies. But this guy… he just kept going and on about penises and vaginas and repeatedly talked about condoms while offending Mexicans as I tried to pull myself together in the beginning of class. He’s actually a new kid at this school and I understand it seems hard to get assimilated with a new environment but he won’t shut up, even when it’s dead silent. He was annoying as hell today and I couldn’t help but draw up an animation of him in my head blowing up. In that meantime, I was organizing myself for Yearbook and deciding whether or not I should be taking the SAT/ACT combo practice test at school this Saturday for a fee of $15 since the deadline was today when all of a sudden, I’ve noticed that I lost my new black pen that I bought for a dollar two days ago. It might’ve been lost in the photo room while I was overwhelmed with things in Yearbook. I can’t afford to lose anything—even as small as a dollar. While looking for it, I felt like crying because I felt swamped with everything happening. Once I end zero period tomorrow, the first thing I’m going to do is to quickly run over to the photo room to look for my pen. It’s really that important to me right now, losing it makes me feel like sh**.

I feel a lot better now that I’m at home. I collapsed myself on my bed first thing as I got home and felt happier when the sun shone on my face through a crack in the window. I realized that today’s weather was in fact, perfect. I then got up, boiled myself a Ramen for lunch, and flipped on an episode of Friends. Dang, sorry I wrote a lot… I’m actually tired of blogging right now… I’ll probably update again tomorrow night after watching Parks and Recreation + the Office.

This is a photo shoot I did with Daisy for my photo project about two weeks ago. Came out somewhat alright, but I still need more variety. So, today after school I took some shots against a black background. My original model couldn’t make it last minute (as did all my other models for the last few weeks) so it blew my ideas off track. I quickly grabbed two friends after school and took them to the photo room to shoot. I sucked today. My mind was blank and when it came time to take the shots, it was awkward for both me and my model. Asjflajsdkfj soo embarrassing… especially cause it was in front of my photo teacher, whose desk was right next to the whole setup. I don’t think I’m going to use any of those photo to turn in, but I will keep them and give them to the models.

So tomorrow, I have my final shoot. It’s going to be against the same white background—though I’m planning to move the lights around to make it more gray— and I am planning to use a friend that I hope will be able to make it. After I post this, I’m actually going to go through magazines, websites of famous photographers, and anything I could find to get the best shots tomorrow. I’m even going to draw up sketches of where the lights are going to be and where to place the model…

I need to start my 365 soooooooooon.

I was looking at galleries of this summer art program called the California State Summer School of the Arts and I’ve been really wanting to go after looking at their gallery images. But then I thought to myself, why? I don’t even take photos anymore… Do I even want to pursue a career in photography, or am I just wasting my time and money? Basically, it’s a month-long rigorous summer school at California Institute of the Arts, a very famous art school in Valencia, CA. You practically live there at the dorms and learn from professionals all day. I’ve actually been to the campus a couple times and roamed around buildings and the environment there is quite interesting. What sucks cause there are only a limited number of spaces for photography. I don’t know, I think I’ll try out for this… I just don’t want to waste $20 on an application, so I will have to try reaalllyy hard. If this doesn’t work out, then Art Center!

And so today was just a waste. I spent my day watching Friends and Futurama and fell asleep while watching Ocean’s 12 in the afternoon. Woke up at around 7:30 and I haven’t eaten dinner since… Where are my parents??

Stats: Most likely will fail.

History: Most likely will pass—he lets us use our notebooks.

Chemistry: Fail, just fail…

I only had one final today: English. I thought it went alright but I got a 14 out of 35. Oh well, it was hard. I still have a B though. The rest of the day was only photo and yearbook. I found out my grades and surprisingly, I maintained an A in both classes… I feel so thankful about that. Thing is, I need to turn in a night portrait photo project tomorrow for photo but I’m too scared to take pictures outside cause I don’t want to get mugged—one con about living in the Heights. I might light trail myself or something… he said we could do that, but it’ll probably turn out lame.

I really don’t feel like studying right now. I just woke up from a nap about half-an-hour ago and I feel groggy. I had an odd dream though… I was being chased down the mountain by a blown-up Jessica Simpson and everything was slow motion. Then I was playing the Sims and rearranging a backyard… I need to stop taking naps. On the bright side of today, I fixed the camera I borrowed from photo class. It’s the same camera I borrowed last time but I got the film advance and shutter release messed up, so I took it apart and fixed it. And it’s also black-and-white film I wound up back in October so I’m really excited. B&W + Rainy days= Yes Yes.