Random Travels of a Jet Setter

Week 8 this quarter I got a phone call from Dad. He said, "Hey Bon, I'm going to London tomorrow, want to come?" Of course since it was a weekend trip I elected to go. So that Friday morning I headed out to Charlotte, NC where I met my Dad and boarded the plane for London. The plane itself was gigantic; probably about 10 times the size of my apartment. First class was full (like I care, I mean I am going to London after all), but i managed to snag a window seat in the 15th row. Naturally I didn't sleep during the flight, and when we landed I was dazed to say the least.

I managed to make it through customs, although I did receive many a strange look from the guards ("What do you mean you don't know the address of where you're staying?" ... "Well, Sir, I'm flying with the captain of the light crew, and I have no idea where we're staying. He didn't tell me!" ... "So let me get this straight... you flew 7 hours to stay here for a day, and then you're flying 7 hours back home?" ... "Err, yes? Is that a problem, Sir?" ... "Enjoy your stay." Oh and he didn't smile once. It was pretty intimidating.)

Luckily, the hotel was attached to the airport, so it would have taken us a grand total of 5 minutes to get in and out, however with both Dad and I fighting a losing battle with exhaustion, we decided to take a quick power nap (an hour) before heading out to the city. I woke up excited and energized, (HELLO, I'M IN LONDON!!!) and we left in a hurry to go watch the changing of the guards.

Now, apparently we were there on a national holiday (and a Saturday I might add) so going to see the changing of the guards was an experience I imagine to be similar to getting packed into a sardine container. Although... all the sardines around me were from different countries and speaking different languages - so I guess it was a variety pack of sardines. And while I didn't get to see the most of it, I did manage to hear the british (female) cop on horseback yell at me for touching the palace gate, and then mutter something resembling "damn americans" under her breath. I felt loved.

Eventually, we walked away from the palace and just started meandering around the city. We ended up on Bond Street, the 5th avenue of London. Not too far from there, we found Brown's Hotel, the spot where both Roosevelt's stayed for their honeymoon getaways, and where Dad made our high tea reservation. I couldn't believe it... high tea at Brown's Hotel... and then we walked inside, and my jaw dropped. It was simply gorgeous. Granted, I have a thing for beautiful hotels, but this just made me giddy. Soft window light, fireplaces, old fashioned parlor seats and tables that had little feet that turned out at the bottom, lace tablecloths and a smell that was refreshing, warm and just plain made me want to stay there. Perhaps my returning exhaustion was the real reason I wanted to stay there, but nevertheless, when Dad insisted it was time to leave, I took my time in order to savor every last second.

The rest of the day we spent walking around the town. We saw some guards and I took ridiculous-American-tourist snap shots with several of them. We witnessed a wedding in a courtyard, took a ride in a taxi (it reminded me of a hearse... black and surprisingly spacious inside with NO seat-belts), saw the largest bird I've ever seen - I'm positive it could have eaten me for dinner, experienced the night life in Piccadilly Circus, found as many hot chocolate joints as humanly possible (it was chilly!), split a pint with Dad and finally walked back through it all to find the train in order to return home. I nearly fell asleep on the train... I'm glad I managed to wait until I got into bed. And to be honest... that was the best night's sleep I've ever experienced.

The next day I flew home and I was back in class on Monday morning. It was as if the entire weekend had never happened. Was it all in my head? Well, Dad was there... and he insists we really took that trip. And I suppose my other proof is my passport, which now sports a London, England stamp dated November 2009. How cool.

The Infamous Contact Lens

This, believe it or not, is a contact lens. I was assigned to photograph something round, wet, and transparent - basically it's supposed to be the hardest project. We had a month to do it, yet I spent an hour in the lab and ended with this. I spent my month watching how my other classmates attempted to get good lighting. I took note of their lighting set ups and which ones worked well versus which ones didn't. And it allowed me to come up with my own lighting that also seemed to work well.

Out of Stock

This assignment was entertaining for me. We had to photograph "radiating energy" in a way that was captivating and interesting for middle school students. I decided that I wanted to photograph something with fluorescence, and luckily there was a vile of fluorescein from the Ophthalmic course sitting on a shelf in the lab, so I used that.

In the meantime, we also had to literally send this image to my professor's house. It's to show that we understand that to ship something, we need to have it finished prior to the due date. The image needs to arrive at his house the day before the critique.

I figured this was something that would end up on the cover of a textbook. Maybe it's not the most interesting photograph, but it's cool to look at none the less. I can't wait to see what my classmates are doing for this assignment!

I Really Don't Like Nature

We took a class field trip to Mendon Ponds. It's a HUGE park between Henrietta and Pittsford, NY. The assignment was to be there at sunrise (7:15am on a Sunday!) in order to photograph nature in beautiful light. We were lucky in that just after sunrise, the skies opened up, and the sun shined down on us.
I feel like now I've been initiated into Biomed; this is an annual field trip that's been a part of everyone's experience as a second year Biomeder since Michael took the job here. Now the catch with this project is that was that each of us picked a word out of a hat; and that was what we had to photograph. I picked "water," so all of my photographs from the day are water-based.

The Leaves Change

My class was given about three weeks to complete this assignment. And when we all handed in our posters, it was clear who did the project in advance, and who waited until the last minute. The students who started right away had beautiful green leaves in their images, while those who waited had leaves that were clearly changing with the season.

The point of the project was to learn how to use the scanners as cameras. You can take an 8x10 image of something at 1200 dpi, which allows for greater room to enlarge the final image. This poster is originally 16x20 (inches), and that large leaf on the left side takes up at least half of the overall poster... and it doesn't have a hint of grain.

The only criticism I received on the poster was the stylization of the in-situ photograph of the leaves. (I'm also aware that this has the incorrect species...)

Photographing Filament

This is a part of the forensic assignment, but I wanted this image to have it's own blurb. The image is supposed to show the metallic qualities of the filament. The photograph was pretty elementary for the most part. I back lit the light bulb and added some black felt on either side to create a black line. The filament was lacking a lot of contrast, so I added that back in to achieve the metallic qualities my professor was looking for.

Forensics

Here we had to take a photograph of our finger, as well as make a finger print. We then had to dust the finger print (a task that I found to be much harder than it seems- there's always too much dust!) and then take a photograph of it. I made my life easier and just made my finger print on a slide, and added the dust over top. Photographing it was easy, but I spent well over an hour trying to edit out all the extra dirt and dust from the slide.

Ew Mold!

I get it. I need to go to the grocery store. But I thought this image was cool... there are a ton of different species of mold on that single piece of bread. But the reason this picture is so fascinating to me is because I thought that the mold might fluoresce under a black light. To my disappointment, it didn't. But it was a cool experiment. Strangely, it smelled like alcohol...

Polar Opposites

I'm sure that all of you have seen a clear i-pod case before. This is what it looks like when you can see all the stress marks within the plastic. To do this, the subject is back lit, and then placed between to polarizing filters. The two filters block out all the light except for that coming though the subject. I think it looks pretty cool.

Double Bubble

For this assignment we had to photograph bubbles. One had to be brightfield, and the other had to be darkfield. The project was an exercise in subject control - those crazy bubbles kept POPPING, and they were constantly moving around. It created quite the challenge, but I found that keeping it to only a single layer of bubbles really made it easier to photograph.