as of late.

So this is what I have been up to lately.
That's me modeling in the middle : )
I have been traveling a lot around the city shooting at different workshops and meetings.
It has been fun and I am learning a lot and building a great portfolio.
I even have people interested in me shooting their wedding gigs in the future.
Funny thing though, because I never thought I would want to shoot anything wedding related as a photographer, but it is quite fun and there is a lot of money to be made doing weddings and bridals.

Come spring when I get loan left overs from school I plan on buying higher grade lenses and will get a business license.
22 years old, with my own business. Never woulda thunk it!

In other news, school is almost out! May 4th I am done. Also on May 4th my new Mac will arrive in the mail. My current computer is very sick and will be put to rest. Looking forward to having a quicker, easier work flow oh and more blogging!

We found our new apartment. It's awesome. I will post pictures when we get moved in. Our landlord is rather pissed that we are moving out 15 days early, but unfortunately it just works out better for us.

P.S.I have added more photos to my portfolio section at my new site Valfoto

I am rather pleased with them.

Goodnight blog land,
-Grown Up L.G.

Photo Site

My photos now have a home at Valfoto

I am thrilled.

If you have a gmail account I believe you can add it to google reader so you can be updated when I add more photos. If not, then you are Sh.. out of luck : )

I am gonna go run and tell my mommy now. I think she'd be quite thrilled for me.


Oh crud, I forgot to put more money in that dagum parking meter, gotta go!

-Val

I still love blogging.

You guys. I have been so busy lately. I just came on shift 2 hours ago. It's almost 5 p.m. and I am so wanting to quit my job just so I can go home for a teensy power nap.

I haven't been too busy with school. But, I have been busy with this photo student exchange with a photographer, Scott Jarvie. I will be working with him through-out the summer. I think he might be getting frustrated with me because I keep calling myself an intern. I am not an intern. I will be working in his office, on his personal blogs, editing photos and other business type stuff. I will also be going to a lot of his workshops and seminars. It will be a full time thing come May.

Also in May, I will be shooting my first wedding, ever.
Let's hope I don't blow it ( I am mostly confident). Wish me luck!

I have written down a few stories I have been wanting to post but I thought I would give you a grand excuse as to why I haven't blogged in almost 2 weeks first.

I love to blog. But sometimes it's the last thing I want to do.

Also. Not to diss blogspot or anything but, Scott my photo "coach" was showing me Wordpress the other day, because that's what he blogs with and let me tell you, it is far more advanced than this blogspot, and I think I may venture into the darkside to start a photo blog there.

On that note, I can't wait to be off work tomorrow night. I hope you all are happy and glad to see the sunshine and this beautiful weather. It sure does lighten my burdens!

**UPDATE** My husband dumped out the morphed soup contents in the crock pot. I'm easy to please, that made my day. I swore to him I would never make soup again : )

Furry.

I have sort of a dilemma.

It involves food. Furry food.

I made soup a month ago. It tasted good, but when I'm in the kitchen concocting up a recipe that I have never even heard of, I try a spoonful after every little dash of something that I decide to add to it. That usually ruins the whole meal for me.

I spent hours, HOURS making this soup. I had half of a bowl and that was it. Justin had quite a few bowls but with him being human and all he did not want to consume a whole crock pot full of soup in one week (dang humans!). So the soup sat and sat and it's still sitting in my fridge growing up into a fine young blob with green/blue fur (I'm so proud!).

Now the time has come, I am done ignoring The Soup.
I need to either suck it up and dump it out or take the easy route and just chuck the whole crock pot and save myself from the dry heaving.

Route one would ensure that I'd have a crockpot for future use!
Route two makes me very happy, because I can forget the whole ordeal ever happened.
Route one would keep me from being mauled by the I'm A Mormon Mom and Have a Crockpot to Feed My Huge Family of Fifty Club.
Route two would ruin all chances of my crocking ever again, which might not be a bad thing.

One friend mentioned putting the crock pot in the freezer and dumping the moldy ice cube remains. Some reason I get this feeling that it will spoil my food in the freezer by doing this. It makes me feel gross, but then again I have been eating food in the fridge all along and I'm not dead yet, so it might not be a bad idea after all.

See what horrible things I have to deal with in my life? : )

Life as I know it.

Life sucks sometimes. Like when the house stinks of poop covered in rotten milk covered in fish guts covered in burnt plastic covered in YOU NAME IT!

Or when we haven't anymore plastic silverware to eat food b/c we won't do dishes and we have used up all plastic resources and China goes bankrupt because of it.

It sucks when I don't have clean underwear for a week.

It sucks when I feel like I am going NO where and there is no end in sight to that nothingness.

It sucks when my entire paycheck has vanished in a matter of days.

It sucks when I never see Justin and don't feel married.

It sucks when I don't want to go to church but I do anyways. (sometimes I will skip until I have to teach my primary lesson -I don't teach them about douches FYI, unless you consider Satan being a douche..cause he is).

It sucks when a blog post turns into one huge suck fest!

It should be called The Suck Post, but that could be taken the wrong way.

Well I am here to inform you that most of those things are true except for my life leading to nothingness. Wanna know why? Sure you do.

I feel a tiny sense of success in the far distant future because my life + photography is soaring in the right direction. One of my fine art photos made it into my colleges art show. There were 470 entries and only 100 made it. -Win.

The Krishna Temple that held the Festival of Colors bought one of my photos that I took last Saturday, I don't get any profit because I donated my photos which I am obviously fine with, but I feel a little pride that someone will be displaying my photo. -Win.

I am so glad that I have been jumping at the opportunity to network with other photographers. That I am entering competitions fearlessly and always looking for more.

I am finally growing into my own photographic style which was quite a hard struggle for me before.

If it wasn't spring time I would probably be more unhappy with my situation because winter has that effect sometimes. But, Spring is here and every flower makes me smile and happy to be alive.

I just keep thinking- "this is normal, everyone goes through this muck before they start to benefit from the fruit of their labors".

There is just a lot more that I need to work on like:
Church- I haven't been at my tip top lately. It's been real hard. I know the church is true, yadda, yadda. But, being faithful and following all of those commandments is hard. real hard.

Marriage- It doesn't feel as strong as it could be. Life is getting in the way.

Family- Where are you?

Fun- I know you're near!

I'm happy. I am. Because the happy outweighs the bad. But I need more happy. It's playing with me like a game of footsie. Hiding under the table, flirting with fun, but truly hasn't gotten there yet

Am I making any sense?