El Capitah

The tiny little size of this photograph doesn't do what I saw in Hollywood justice- the intricacy of the lights and detail on the signage of the El Capitan theatre needs to be seen in person or at least viewed with a better size quality (click photo). When all my exams are over I am going to have a Disney movie binge session and watch childhood movies from my generation that I never saw or don't remember. Maybe do some drawings and chill out for a few months.

Kings of Neon

I love taking photographs because it's like a reminder you can keep for your memory; I haven't thought about this photograph for a while since I looked through my photographs taken on my holiday at the start of January 2011 for two weeks. A tourist spot was a lot of shops all clustered together close to Universal Studios all light up with neon signs everywhere and as far as the eye could see. As I remember, my friends and I ate at Johnny Rockets and the burgers were big and mean with a whole lot of flavour.

A city full of light

It may not be the city of lights Paris itself but when we travelled around by limousine and stretch hummer around the gorgeous city of San Francisco on our last day of staying in America and stopped at a few different places to swap vehicles, a few trees were strung up from root to branch full of gorgeous fairy lights. There were more decorations of them then a Christmas tree set up in the city for the Myer windows back home at Melbourne. 

A water fountain light up by lights brought a lot of attention to the dare devil boys among the group; daring to run across the width of the water feature and risking getting soaking wet for the next hour and so and putting up with the shame and soggy trophy of wrinkled clothes.

Bright Eyes

Even after a hard night's work of refereeing basketball grand finals on a Friday Night I still manage to have energy enough to be able to run around the house, find my camera and take some quick photographs of a possum hanging precariously on the telephone wire. The best thing about this shot is how close the little guy was and the fact that after giving it the paparazzi treatment it had no where to go to and escape. It was a case of the old batteries giving out before I was done and satisfied with all my photographs taken that night. This blog actually started with photographs I took on a Friday night after work- to say I am happy with how it has evolved is an understatement.

Skippy

I was absolutely thrilled when I went to the Melbourne Zoo with my boyfriend- it was my choice of location for the date as a way to make up for being an hour late for the last date. I don't make a very good girlfriend sometimes though; if there's a camera around my neck I'm asking him to open up sealed bags of 120mm slide film that I can't manage and I generally ignore him until a.) I run out of film using an analogue camera and b.) the batteries on my digital camera give out on me. 

He's lovely though and manages to put up with me when I'm being a pain in the butt, as a good boyfriend should be. These photographs are from our mosey around the native Australian animal exhibits so there were lots of kangaroos and emus. 

Another wonderful thing my boyfriend does when he's with my and I have the camera around my neck is that he will gently tap on my shoulder and point in front of my nose- I nearly missed a great big brown kangaroo that was right behind us and casually hopped past and under the fence. You can see the arm of my boyfriend in the photograph with no zoom, it was that close to us. He was worried that it would take an interest to our bags since we had brought food from home that we had made in the kitchen with us. The kangaroo didn't seem very interested though, he was really laid-back. There were kangaroos of all shapes and sizes there, even some little grey coloured joeys were out and about. Although there wasn't a lot of sunlight for them to enjoy and bask in.

Wisteria Lane

I took these photographs of Wisteria Lane the set of the television program Desperate Housewives, mainly for my mother to enjoy - I remember watching the screening of the very first episode when I was in primary school and now I'm in my final year of secondary school Year 12 and it's still going. I wouldn't necessarily say it's going strong though, I feel as tired as Teri Hatcher looks and that is saying something. The houses do look cute in their pastel colours but it all looks so fairy tale and feminine, must be very horrible for the male actors to come onto set and be reminded that this is a show about women and for women. The flowers and lawns look all neat and prim, they must be all be made out of plastic or something. Like everything in Universal Studios neck of the woods and the people in Hollywood.

Furball

It was pretty difficult to take a picture of the lions with the many metal grates in the way but thankfully for digital cameras using automatic zoom and focus it's just a matter of holding your finger over the shutter button and being patient! Since patience is a virtue I'm thankful that it payed off for me and I have a lovely photograph of a lion from the Melbourne Zoo.

Whoville

Movie set of How the Grinch Stole Christmas aka Whoville! The tiny town resting in the depths of a snowflake. Set at Universal Studios in California. I was really intrigued by the smooth lines and the design of the cars and the buildings; smooth but asymmetrical and in pastel muted tones. I was let down by the position of the sun since it wasn't in the best place for this movie set at the time we took the shuttle tour.

The Bates Motel

They have vacancy at the Bates Motel. Photograph taken at Universal Studios in California, America January 2011. I had seen the movie before we came here; as the tour shuttle chugged past an actor holding a knife walks out of the door dragging a body bag towards the car. He looks at his audience and begins to run brandishing the knife above his shoulder advancing towards the back of the shuttle. We pick up speed and leave him staring at us, eyes pierced with concentration. It was sort of exhilarating hearing the other tourists scream with delight and fright even though I knew it was an actor. The surprise ending of Psycho really did scare me; I didn't expect it to be as psychologically thrilling as the title suggest and for the effects they had at that time they did manage to scare their audience.

Fish out of water (Girls out of water)

A few weeks ago was my friend Jess' 18th Birthday so she took a bunch of the girls down to a Rye to enjoy the warmth of the natural springs and have a good soak. The only problem was that at the time it was Winter so it was fine once we had plunked ourselves down into the soothing warm water but if we wanted to move in search of a better spot to soak then we had to endure the stings of a Winter breeze and watch the steam our off of our bodies as we walked with our arms crossed across our bodies; hugging ourselves for warmth. It was a relaxing day and I felt sleepy until two days afterwards and it was also nice to see her quaint little holiday house decorated with family pictures collage into one massive heaps on the walls. I also feel welcomed and relaxed by homely things - what does that say about my own home life really though? I always love to take a picture of the cake with the candles as well as all my beautiful friends.