the end and the beginning

well. i'm done. it feels good.

as most of you know, i turned in my final portfolio on may 21st, and june 6th i finally went up for review. the review process is quite intimidating. all of my final images were matted and displayed in front of about 100 people in our main auditorium. the judges (3 professional photographers who had never seen any of my work) got to inspect each print closely for about 10 minutes, then as they were scoring my overall portfolio all of my teachers had the opportunity to inspect my work closely. my name was announced and i had to go up on the stage to hear my fate.

portfolio passed. two of the sweetest words i've heard in a while. (c:

then the judges came up, one by one, to critique my work. i got a lot of great feedback and really appreciate what each of them had to say. here are a few of their favorites (mixed with a couple of my favs):

this is one many of you may have seen before, but it was definitely one of the judges favs


high-key female portrait (they also really liked this one...but i think my model helped a lot. thanks, shalee!)


architecture shot


architecture shot


child portrait (this was probably all three judges' favorite)


art history reference (my interpretation of rene magritte's "this is not an apple")


pet and owner portrait. (james and nelson lookin' all bad ass)


digitally altered portrait (whitney)


they didn't say a lot about this one...but i like it.


couples portrait (steve and lauren)


couples portrait (jake and nicole)


graduation was june 20th and it was a pretty good time. it was really long...but good nonetheless. i promised myself that i wouldn't get all emotional and cry, and being that i'm not the kind of person who wears my heart on my sleeve, i figured it would be pretty easy. then my friend mark won the presidential award of achievement. it was already emotional enough, just him winning the award and his lovely wife and brand new baby going up to accept the award with him ("somewhere over the rainbow" playing in the background) but i did alright. then he asked george, the school's president, if he could say a few words. i cannot tell you how amazing those 3 minutes were, but if mark ever wants to give up photography, he's definitely got a future in public speaking. made me cry. me. that's a feat for sure. thanks, mark.

anyway, mom and i took 3 days driving back to the ol' CO. we rescued a stuffed puppy in NY and named him frank. made fun of people from Massachusetts to Colorado. it was awesome.

now i'm home and just trying to get back into the swing of things. it's good to be back. (c:


for those interested...mark's speech. (c: