More lab photos...

So I went back to the lab, this time with my camera in hand with more intention in my photography. I love the craziness of the lab, and the weird stuff lying around - especially in my lab, where everywhere you turn is some dead fish. Unfortunately I was unaware that my camera was shooting in JPEG so my photos can't go very large. I wanted to go back to shoot with a lens that goes wider (in terms of aperture) anyway, so it's not that big of a loss. This is more a preliminary sort of shoot, I guess.

Glowstick!

Ok, so I know Halloween is over, but there are still pumpkins out there, which basically means that we should still be carving them.

ESPECIALLY if we carve them into my study species, the three-spined stickleback! This pumpkin shall henceforth be known as the "glowstick." Obviously.

Here is the most amazing gourd carving I have ever witnessed, done by my friend Lauren Ackein, who's a grad student in the lab I work in. She came to the lab to do work, but instead found that the most amazing pumpkin carving tools were lying all around her (yay dissection kits!) and so clearly, this is the result. Well, after three hours of intense carving anyway.

I love these photos because I'm always a big fan of contrast but you usually can't go crazy so as not to loose detail in the extreme darks and lights - but not here! They're so graphic that the detail in the extreme darks and lights doesn't need to be seen, and the high contrast really adds to the mood. The middle two are my favorites because I love the weird lab stuff in the background - the huge Erlenmeyer flask full of brine shrimp is especially strange. I think I want to take more lab pictures, there's so much interesting stuff in there.

My blood likes to stay IN me.

Definitely not going to try to give blood again. It didn't work particularly well. I have horrendous veins, so they didn't even succeed in getting an entire pint or whatever amount it is they need. :(


How creepy, right? Sorry about this. I've always been kind of fascinated with the colors that bruises turn, so that's why I took this. It was that awesome phase where it's like three or four colors at once. Plus it's almost Halloween, so I guess if I'm going to post creepy pictures, might as well do it now, right?

So when I run out of other people to photograph, I take self-portraits

I almost NEVER EVER show my self-portraits to anyone else. I don't know why, I just... don't. So here is the world-premier of my self-portraits. Not the first of them, obviously, just the ones I took earlier this week. I don't know whether or not I'll print any of them out for class or not. Which is weird, since if I show them in class then about 15 people see them, whereas anyone could see them here. It's probably something weird and psychological about whether or not I see their reaction.




I made the backgrounds entirely black because I found the background of my dorm room really really incredibly distracting, so getting rid of it entirely seemed like a good idea. Right? They're taken using the light coming in through my window, which I love. I love using natural light, as silly as it may be. I'll probably be teased horribly if I actually do anything professionally with photography and tell anyone that. Anyway, I just liked that it made my skin look sort of luminous, especially after I obliterated the backgrounds using a combo of channel mixer, curves and burning. Good times.

The fam.

Some portraits... since that's what I like.


I like the interesting light on Child No. 4's face here. I think it's what drew me to take the image in the first place. This captures her pretty well, although I wish the top right corner was the same mottled green as the rest of the background and I'm not sure if I love or hate the shirt she's wearing... Is it slightly distracting or do the polka dots and touch of red add a nice extra element?


Ahh, Child No. 3. I love the look on her face here. It's so... thirteen? Very pouty. Not to mention the motion of putting on the sunglasses, which is like a shield against the morning to any teenager. This is on the way into the car as we left for our family road trip this summer. She was indeed very upset about being awake at the time, being that it was before noon, so clearly sunglasses were called for.


The first appearance of my mom! Here she is with Child No. 6, who's very very (did I mention very?) attached to my mom, despite (or perhaps due to) only being home since early this summer. This one's very typical of what you'd see if you happened to be in my house - my mom doing whatever (here I believe she was reading the newspaper), with Child No. 6 quite often just sort of attached to her. I also like the light here, raking in across them from the kitchen window and the fact that my mom is sort of oblivious to the camera while my little sister is looking straight at it, with a face that says "Yeah, that's right. This is MY mom." It's very sweet how much our adopted kids just adore having families. Of course, it's mutual.

My brother.

This is the brother who always refuses to let me take his picture. SUCCESS!!! This is at the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release this summer, and I took it while aiming up at my brother while sitting on the floor in Barnes and Nobles when he got up to stretch. He didn't notice till after the picture was taken, and he hates it when I take his picture with no warning. Or with warning. In fact, if I warn him he usually covers his face. However, this time I managed to catch him (although he yelled at me afterwards and has now taken to calling me "paparazzi" which is a really attractive nickname) and refused to delete the picture because I loved the way the light falls on his face and arm. I also like the X that his arm/shirt crease forms with the strong line in the ceiling, and how it's echoed by the tiles in the ceiling above that.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

I know, everyone and their mother has pictures like this from Monterey Bay... But jelly fish are just so awesome!!!




So I guess I was going for more portraits of the individual jellyfish rather than lots of jellyfish pattern-y pictures. I'm a big fan of portraits, I don't know if you've noticed. :) I also really enjoyed the blue background with the particular color of these jelly fish - they're so calming, white and pale red, compared to other more electric-colored jelly fish.