My Own: Secret Stash

Okay, I'm still in the mood of Moroccan love, and I think this photo pretty much sums up what my life has been about for a few months- love and chaos. The funny thing is that even tho it's been chaos it all interrelates and somehow when one thing gets sorted out ten others follow.

This set is called "Secret Stash". It took a couple hours to get it right, and I'm still not all that satisfied. But it has been somewhat of a revelation to me in that, things that matter to you are going to take time to develop, so stay true, have patience and keep on keepin' on.

Ps. I forgot that my trial of Fotki unlimited is now over. So, until I decide I want to pay for the account, I won't be posting my sets :( It sucks, but what can a girl with no job do?

Country Of My Heart- Morocco

I am posting twice today because I have really been feeling love for my wonderful country of Morocco. When I say "my country", I mean the country of my heart, or where my heart takes residence. Morocco has been that place for about 2 years now and what started it all was the promise of a visit to Fes. Well, that promise has not yet come to fruition, but I am eagerly awaiting it's reality( and changing the destination to Marrakesh). In the meantime, I have grown to love everything Moroccan- the country, the culture, the people, the architecture, the design, the food, the caftan(oohhh the caftan! I can only wait to get married in such a beautiful work of art because I know I have to), and of course my wonderful Moroccan man *blushing*.

Such wonderful things bring me to my obsession with gathering as much as possible that reminds me of this lovely country- the beautiful photography of wonderful photographers who have been all over the country; converting my once Asian inspired bedroom to Moroccan inspired; finding as many Moroccan restaurants in Chicago as I can; and starting a collection of Moroccan lanterns.

I've seen things from the desert to the souks, the only thing I lack is to experience it first hand. Soon I will make the trip, inshallah. Until then I gaze on these pictures hoping somehow they will transport me to my "home". I hope you will enjoy them as much as I.

Casablanca

Marrakesh

Souks

Fes

Desert


not sure(I'll have to ask, my labels are messed up)

Caftan- I want something like that white one when I get married.

I find many photos of Morocco, at these sights:

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Africa/Morocco/

http://www.smallfamilies.co.uk/album/morocco/slides/morocco_01.html

http://www.hansrossel.com/photos/morocco-pictures-images/index.htm

http://www.stokely.org/europe.html

http://www.femmesdumaroc.com/Caftan/Edition2006

http://community.webshots.com/album/178763321TiPBfL

http://www.maion.com/photography/morocco/index.html

These are my favorite Moroccan Restaurants in Chicago:

http://www.andalous.com/Home.asp

http://www.taginemorocco.com/index.php

My Own: Photoshop CS and the Wet Collection

So I've been kind of bad today- playing with Photoshop CS instead of writing a book report, but it's just so much more fun...I took these pictures for this express purpose, actually. Ok, so I know I should still be writing my report, so I am going to, right after I post.

These are what I've been playing with..

Photo 1: Neon Glow White
Photo 2: Invert
Photo 3: Neon Glow White w/ Deep Red Filter
Photo 4: Desaturate
Photo 5: Diffuse Glow
Photo 6: Neon Glow -1
Photo 7: Diffuse Glow, Neon Glow -1, Neon Glow -23

I don't think that it's all that hard to figure out what these are of- wet hair, but I do love how I can play with them. All from- the Wet collection

And also I'm happy today because there's only 29 days until I turn eighteen . Yippee!

My Own: God's Promise

Due to low memory space ( less than 5%) I've been forced to go though all the photos on my hard drive and delete those not worthy of being posted on fotki (ok, between you and me, I may have saved a few more than that.) I admit, I AM a picture pack-rat, I have a NO DELETE clause, and I save pictures I find on the web and it probably doesn't help that I also download music, like crazy, in full albums. So yes, I have low memory, REALLY low memory, and I'm patiently awaiting an upgrade( Oh, Benny, please!! :) Anyway, my point in tell you all of this is that I went through my pics and low and behold, I found this-

Ok, so there is a rainbow right? Look closer, not only is there one, there are two rainbows. The rest of the picture really doesn't matter all that much, although it isn't a bad view of my street, and the sun has made awesome lighting on the trees. There are two of my brother's houses and then a basketball hoop that's in my driveway.

Here is the other end of that same rainbow- now, keep in mind I'm only standing on my back porch, I have only turned, I didn't have to go to another view point or anything.

Although, there isn't the tail to the second rainbow, it ws pretty amazing to see the beginning and the end of "God's Covenant". I have never again seen anything like that.

Up-in-coming photographers: Charity and Faith

My twin sisters have recently been my little apprentices. They really do pretty well, for 6yr olds, and I enjoy teaching them. They really retain everything I tell them, and remind eachother when one forgets. Charity does a lot of abstract and Faith has done a few portraits.

Here is one from each of them:

Charity's

~Flour for our snowballs

Faith's

Funny, that's Charity>

My Ambitions and Goals

Maryam of My Marrakesh presented an interesting question, about Dizzying Qualities, to me last night. She asked, "darling girl, why do you think that a pile of curtains represents you, I wonder?" That type of question I knew I'd get someday from a professor with something to prove, but I definitely wasn't expecting it now. I didn't feel I was going to able to answer it.

So, Maryam, you had me thinking for quite sometime. Then I realized that when I changed majors, from fashion designer to photographer, I carried with me my ambitions and goals as an artist.

~ Find beauty in that which isn't beautiful, find extraordinary in the ordinary. ~

I've had the ability to do this in the past and I wasn't sure how exactly to express that with out sounding vain, until Pink Mohair came in and said what she said, confirming my ability. That is when I realized that this has been my goal not only in art, but in life as well.

I have taken a risk to show that there is beauty in a culture that maybe thought, by the politically minded American, as rubbish; to show that there is something wonderful about it's people; to ask that they be given a chance. I'm not a rebel, but a reformer. And that is what La Vie Par Mes Yeux is all about- a chance for me to show the beauty I see, to others.

Here you can see the rest of that series of experimentation with my curtains. I will attempt to show more extraordinarily ordinary photos in the future as well.

Abstract: Dizzying Qualities

I was playing with the settings of my camera on Friday night, trying to come up with a new myspace layout. The product of such playing was this-

A photo of curtains piled on my knee. But it's weird isn't it? I mean that's not what you'd think it'd look like. It's all twisted and dizzy, I don't even really know what it looks like. I guess it's kind of cool, Cool enough to post anyway.

This was the layout I came up with-

A 50 pixel black border, a dark grey mat, and a pile of curtains in the middle. All text is dark grey, with the acception of the emphasized text which is in bright purple.