can't escape it...

saw this posted on my friend's blog and thought it was a beautiful shot. and yes, i've totally fallen into the twilight obsession (the book series that is. i did see the movie, and it was awesomely bad...haha) i was so hesitant at first, but the books are very addicting. 

recent motion work

"the grove", a spot i worked on a while back for the dubai mall. its cool to see pics of it on location :) click here to see the movie.

new camera and fun new app!

(my little apartment tree)

(my favorite ornament!)

got a christmas present a little early, a new canon SX10 digital camera :) its sweet. so many more manual features than on my older canon :D

and i just downloaded this polaroid app, which is pretty awesome! its in the beta stages now, but it seems pretty cool :) (and its free!!) just drag and drop your photo and "wait" for it to develop. i like it

baby it's cold outside

my parents christmas tree :)

and another slightly random fortune from the great wall in rockford this weekend. made me laugh.

save handmade!

the consumer products safety improvement act, that congress passed this year, will put many small toy manufacturers, independent artisans, and crafters out of business :(  to learn more about it and ways to help out, click on the button above.

shopping in a snow storm

target w/ ssonyo after work :) ha!

i kinda want the hat, it was comfy, lol.

my log pillows!

fun little craft that i've been working on for the past few days :) i love them! (sorry the pictures aren't that great, its hard to photograph these buggers...ha)

caught up with netflix

"Run Lola Run"

it's been sitting on my desk for over 2 weeks and i finally got around to watching it tonight. i liked it :) very fun despite the plot.

everything will be okay...

( via becausewhy )

shake it like a polaroid picture...

so christmas came a little early for me when my mom dug up her old polaroid camera yesterday (which still works like a charm!) and gave it to me :) i was able to snag the last pack of instant film during our black friday shopping at target early this morning and began testing the camera out.

i'll have to check out the available settings to see how/where i can control the exposure...the outdoor shots were really overexposed...but i don't mind it too much :) comes with experimentation.

oh, and i received a random fortune tonight that made me laugh:

photo fun

christmas + friends = :)

(photo by j. esser)

makeshift fisheye lens :)

i already want to add more cameras to my lomo collection, and the fisheye 2 is the next one i'm hoping to buy :) since its kinda expensive, i'm deciding to wait until after christmas shopping (and bill paying) to purchase one. HOWEVER, i stumbled across this old instructables blog about a $11 Super Wide Angle Digital Camera. the title alone got my interest right away, esp the "$11" part...haha. pretty much all you have to do is go to a hardware store (i went to lowe's) and get a door viewer, or peephole, for around $8-$11. and you basically hold the door viewer up to the lens of you digital camera, zoom through the length of it, and you have a 200 degree wide angle distortion :)

it's pretty cool! i tried it out on my older canon powershot A520 with decent results. the viewer doesn't quite fit over my lense, and i kinda have to mess with the placement of it, but the test pics turned out pretty cool. now, if i can figure out a way to attach the viewer securely to my camera, i'll be in good shape ;)

this will definitely hold me over until i can buy the fisheye :)




*you will need quite a bit of light for these shots, and using a flash will leave shadows of the door view itself. i'm excited to try it out in the sunlight :)

loving these!

motionographer recently featured a series of animations by PepperMelon for Lucchetti a few days ago. they are amazing :) so well done and funny! check all 4 spots here. my favorite is "kitchen light".

updates

a lot has happened since i last wrote here...i ordered my 09 fit and finally got it oct. 27th! very exciting! i absolutely love it, it is amazing. lol, however, she has already suffered some damage....so sad. i was driving to my parents' house the night of the 3rd, and a deer hit me while i was on I-90!!! it was running right towards my window, and before i could react, it bumped the driver's side. it didn't hit too hard, thank goodness, but it did leave a dent and a long scratch on the driver's side. i was so bummed :( its getting fixed this week tho, so she will be as good as new soon :)

i was super excited to be a part of history this election. this was my first time voting, which i found pretty common among people i've talked to. tuesday night was amazing and moving :) i got chills listening to obama's speech. i can't even imagine how awesome it must have been to be in grant park that night.

what else... work has been pretty crazy, but it's starting to calm down a bit. i've been able to work on a lot of cool projects, so that's always fun :)

still taking pics like crazy ;) check out the latest on my flickr

hope

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a people will get there."

delightful movie :)

just saw *dan in real life*...very fun, cute, feel good movie....and the soundtrack is amazing :)

pleasant surprise

i was snapping photos at the cubs/brewers game last sunday, and forgot that i had some expired film loaded in my supersampler camera...lol. i was pleasantly surprised when i picked up the roll....the colors are great :)

the girl effect

i saw this video a while back on motionographer and thought it was very well done. my sister just asked me about it today, and i got chills watching it again. check it out.

busy bee

a lot has been going on since i last updated. i dyed my hair! got blue streaks :) i had been wanting to so something different w/ my hair for a while, so after i got the ok from the bosses, i finally did it! and i love it :D

there have been a few more photo adventures... shot a lot of film over labor day weekend. went to peoria to visit the sis and got some great shots by the river, then met up w/ some rockford buddies for photo fun at a park right by my house. here are a couple of my faves :)

 

a couple of weeks ago the group ventured out to devil's lake for a camping trip. the weather was gorgeous and the sights were beautiful. got a good workout hiking and got some much needed relaxation. i had such a blast, cannot wait to do it again. 

 

and just this past weekend the kelly clan made their way to colorado for my second cousin's wedding. we flew into denver and drove about an hour and a half to breckenridge for the festivities. breckenridge is a cool little artsy town, i loved it. the girls got some great shopping in before the ceremony ;) and the wedding was absolutely beautiful. dan (my cousin) and his now wife anitra were married on a mountain top! it was so amazing. lol, and it started snowing up there! luckily we weren't outside for that long. we had such a blast. and our hotel/lodge was sweet! 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, a flat screen in each of the bedrooms and main room! it was awesome. wish we could've stayed longer. definitely going back there sometime :)

i took a bunch of lomo pics while we were out there....just dropped them off to get developed, so i'll post those soon :)

for more pics from the past few weeks, check out my flickr

great weekend :)

spent the majority of the weekend outside (which hasn't happened in a long time) and finally got some swimming in!!!! good times with great friends, couldn't ask for more :)

took a ton of pictures too, mostly with my supersampler and my holga :)



*more pics on my flickr

more photo fun

yesterday i met up with a friend from college and had a photo adventure :) this is one of my favorites...the rest are on my flickr

my new favorite song :)

*john mayer-in your atmosphere (where the light is, disc 1)
i cannot stop listening to it! it's beautiful:)

it's been a crazy 2 weeks...

so for the majority of the past 2 weeks i've been traveling for work, 3 big video shoots....the last week of july i was in san jose, CA and this past week i was in pittsburgh and LA! very exciting, very tiring ;) im definitely glad to be back home (although i feel like i should be packing for something...lol)

i had the most fun in LA this past week. i was able to see my one of my bosses who has been out for most of the summer, and definitely enjoyed the downtime we were lucky enough to have :) we stayed at this amazing hotel right by LAX, the Custom Hotel...."a sleek, classically modern boutique hotel". it was awesome! we got a chance to hang out by the pool and relax, and the whole place has this funky/fun vibe to it :) i loved it. although it's not within walking distance of crazy cool areas, i would recommend it to anyone visiting LA. it's incredibly reasonable, super close to LAX, and a short drive from Santa Monica, the beach, excellent shopping, etc.




*pictures from the website, exactly what it looked like :)

the first night in LA we drove to Santa Monica and hung out at the beach for a little while before dinner. first time having my toes in the pacific :)



i flew back early friday morning just in time for the C22 outing....TRAPEZING!!!! oh man, it was insane. im super scared of heights, so it was a big battle to walk up the ladder and stand with my toes on the edge of that tiny platform. i did swing once, wasn't quite able to pull off the knee hang trick i had done on the ground earlier, but i was glad that i did try. lol, however, i hit the net thinking, "wow, i did it! but, i have no desire to try this again!" hahahaha, so i sat out while others were going on their third and fourth rounds. im kinda disappointed that i didnt try again, but im also glad that i was able to jump off that ledge! big step for me :)



*picture of my friend chad, who mastered the trick and was able to do a catch!

the traveling was fun, but im really glad to be back home :)

the dark knight

incredibly amazing! i won't go into a long blog post about how much i loved this film...lol. just go see it! :D

worth your time

so i was at target yesterday waiting for my supersampler film to be developed when i stumbled upon a documentary called "the 11th hour". i had heard about this film when it was coming out in theaters, but wasn't able to find a theater near me that was showing it. it's only $4.99, so i picked it up and watched it last night. it's produced and narrated by leonardo dicaprio (already a thumbs up, haha) and talks about the huge impact that the human race has made on the planet recently, focusing mostly on the climate change/global warming. it was very well done, and after watching it, i immediately wanted to go out and do something about it, make a serious change...that's how effective this film is! whether you believe in global warming or not, i highly recommend watching this film. it will really make you think.

*and here's one of my favorites from the supersampler film, taken @ the taste this year

ping.fm

so for the past day or so, people have been talking about this ping.fm on twitter. it's a site that lets you update tons of different social networking sites from one location. you can do it online at http://ping.fm (which is what i'm doing right now), or you can set it up to update from your IM account or email. it's beta right now, and you need a beta code to create an account...but i was able to find one fairly easily just by googling it (dreamofping). so far so good, im liking it :)

i ♥ WALL•E!!!

this past week has been a big movie week for me. saw pixar's latest, *WALL•E*,  2 sundays ago, *Wanted* this past tuesday, *Hancock* on thursday, and *WALL•E* again yesterday :) i highly recommend this one, it's incredibly touching and WALL•E is beyond adorable!!! i have always been a big fan of pixar's stuff, and this movie easily rises to the top of my list. so go see it! you'll thank me ;)

as for *Wanted* and *Hancock*, both were entertaining movies, but i liked *Hancock* a little better. Will Smith does another amazing job :) he's awesome (♥). James MacAvoy (another ♥) also does a great job in his film. 

next up,  *The Dark Knight*! cannot wait!

movie of the night

thanks to netflix, i've been catching up on all these movies that i should've seen years and years ago. tonight i finally watched "an affair to remember" (the 1957 one w/ cary grant). oh wow! i'm kinda embarrassed that it took me this long to see it. i kinda knew the plot, only from that scene in "sleepless in seattle" when rita wilson is telling the guys about the movie and starts to cry. well, it was amazing, and i cried my eyes out. lol.

its official

i have car fever! i've been playing around with the idea of getting a new car for a little while now, but it wasn't until this last weekend when i decided to make it happen... so i've begun my research and have started saving. i don't really know when i'll be able to purchase anything, but i'm hoping before the next year (crosses fingers). of course with gas prices on the rise, and with the good of the environment in mind, i want to get something that is fuel efficient. a hybrid would be my first choice (i really like the toyota prius), but that's a bit out of my price range. so the number one choice (right now): the honda fit :)

photo fun

*after the cubs game sunday with my supersampler

*C22 office, ssonyo took the picture and i ran around with the light ;)

birthday celebrations! and cubs games :)

so my fabulous viente y cuatronera took place may 14th and it was fantastic! everyone looked amazing, and the food was delicious :) i'm so happy that (almost) everyone at C22 was able to be a part of it :)  

and i've been lucky enough to attend a few cubs games this year :) fun stuff! GO CUBS GO!!!

here are some pics from both: