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With the words "fun, friendship, and possibly glory" we started our day, or rather our morning. I had been wanting to try out this idea I've been playing around with, namely going to bed early friday night (I know it sounds lame but just you wait) and then waking up at 4:30 in the morning on Saturday instead. I call it an alternative friday night, and the whole point of it is to enjoy a single day from beginning to end, and more importantly, to watch the new day be born.
The time just before and after sunrise is a special time, and when shared with special people in a special place, it might be just that thing you need to refresh your body and mind. In my case, my roommate Richard, his girlfriend Devon, and Pholksinger Josh were along for the ride. Adventure bags ® packed, we left our dorms just before five in the morning headed for Lake Herrick on the southeast side UGA's campus. We had been having some wierd weather and I was amazed to see fog and mist blanketing everything. Since we were heading for the woods and a lake, I couldn't help but start to get excited. The hour or so of darkness we enjoyed in the forest was amazing in ways that are hard to explain, and since I couldn't properly expose pictures then, I'll have to start off with this picture I took, moments before the night switched to day.
This shot is taken from the dock which we made our home base for practically the whole day. You could effectively use the word "nesting" to describe how it went down. In our adventure bags we had everything you could need for a hippie day outside. iPods, music, balls, a frisbee, paper/pen, food/water, Devon's bike, and of course my camera. The adventure bag basically serves as a bag of goodies to play with. I spent a good 20 minutes on the dock rocking out to the Allman Brothers, juggling as Richard took pictures of me doing it. As I said in the last blog entry, the subject does half the work, and I would have to say I did a good job. Well all I did was juggle but...
This last picture gives a little bit better perspective as to exactly where it was that we spent the day. You can also tell that not much time had past based on the negligible change in lighting and the still apparent reflections off the water that disappeared later in the day.
These photos are really interesting. I know they look abnormal but it isn't as a result of heavy picture editing. In actuality, both of these pictures were originally exposed upside down, reflected off the water. The water was so calm that it is almost immpossible to tell from looking, but once I flipped them rightside up, I noticed that the inverted light makes for some striking images. I shot a ton, but these were my two favorites.
This next set of images are the best from the day. Not to get your hopes up but I think they speak for themselves. I've organized them in a way to give a little bit of insight into how I arrived at the final product (the last 2 images).
These are two examples of the MANY single images I shot around 10:40 that morning. 
Here are 16 of the better images, laid out side by side. I really like making collages, especially when the colors and subject matter play so well into the composition. Using powerpoint to resize and layer these 16 pictures, I arrived at two different but similar images that I will consider final products, at least for the time being.
I would be really curious to know not only which one of the two people like better. I know which one I think is best but I won't say.
One of the advantages to a day revolving around the outdoors and photography is that you never miss a beat. You're always ready to shoot and being prepared results in more good images than almost anything else. So far all these images have been posted in chronological order throughout the day but I am going to take a short break from that to post a few portraits of my fellow day trippers.
What I find really strong about these images is how the background almost appears to be in black and white, while it is clear that Josh himself is portrayed in living color. No editing though. Thats just how they turned out.
As you can see, these glasses really were popular. They belong to Josh, but Richard wore them for a while, and I took tons of pictures through them. I wish I had a pair of my own.
We didn't spraypaint that wall but somehow it seemed right to take a picture there since we did stumble onto it. Devon was the only girl with us so it was her job to stand there while I shot a series of photos.
Here you can see my three companions all in one frame. Quite an interesting group we made.
A day outside just wouldn't be right without some excersize, and along with excersize comes action shots. If I wasn't worried about boring you then I would post the full sequences, but with that in mind, I decided to leave them out because of the already formidable number of images already in this blog entry.
Out of all the things I did during the 12 of so hours we spent at Lake Herrick, spraypainting Devon's car was probably the most fun. She has an '86 Toyota Tercel that doesn't like to start all the time, so being the person that she is, she decided to turn it into a work of art. I had never made anything with spraypaint before, but I had never sculpted anything until last week so I gave it my best and what you see is what I came up with. I only had 5 colors (including a similar white and silver) but I am still really proud of this first effort. Hopefully there will be more murals to come. 
In the end, we definately achieced glory, just as we set out to do. If the pictures don't convince you then I have nothing else to say, but those of you who know us know that we did. I offer up a big thank-you to Josh, Richard, and Devon for agreeing to wake up early on a Saturday for what may have been my best single day of 2008 so far. I think we'll be doing this more often and remember: G is for Glory.
My girlfriend Alisa and I
Jessie and his sister
Getting Down:
Alisa had an amazing dress on
The truth is that I wasn't really fixated on photography during the weekend because it was after all my formal. I was with all of my brothers and my beautiful girlfriend and in the end, I didn't even bring my D70 to the dance itself. With the exception of the last 3 pictures, every one of these photos was taken in the two hours leading up to the actual event. If only I had been able to have my cake and eat it to... I can only imagine what the photos from the actual formal would have looked like!
The initiated members of my pledge class
Band of Brothers
