Largemouth up under that rock

My friend Michael loooooves fishing! I mean, I love fish in general, but this kid is literally obsessed! We're both fisheries majors at Purdue and work together at Purdue's Aquaculture research lab. I asked him to take me on one of his fishing adventures and here are the results!

This was a pond that Mikey <3's cuz it has his largemouth in it!

Sunrise Ohio

While we were in Ohio for Ben's gokart race and we stayed at his roommate's house. Their back yard was amazingly gorgeous, even in the evening! We were forced to get up extra early the next morning, 5am. I walked down stairs and looked outside. We saw an amazing view of the trees and fog. We were so high up you could even see electrical towers in the distance. The fog added a sweet effect as well! I'd have to say these turned out really good for my first sunrise pictures! This was also random by the way. I never really intended to take these pictures, I saw and I clicked!

Go Karts

So this weekend I decided to surprise my friend (now my bf) Ben at his gokart race in Ohio. I went through all the trouble in calling his parents and friends to make sure everything was planned out. I had this planned for 3 weeks. Well my friend Michael and I show up there and he was pretty surprised. Although he knew something was going on, he was still happy to see us there. Ben is an amazing driver, but stupid shit always goes wrong. Saturday was a little rough, but Sunday was better. He could have been in the top 5 if some dirt bag knew how to drive! For the race before the last race he started 9th (out of 27) and an idiot knocked off his bumper and he was black flagged (DQ in a sense). So that set him back at the end to start the next race. His fastest laps compared to those who placed in the top 5. You can tell when a driver knows what hes doing and when he doesn't. I used to think it was easy as pie, but being around all the drivers you begin to understand that there is more to it than just steering! There is the physical energy and pain, mental thoughts, decisions. It requires a lot more than what people think.

This was my first time taking any sort of racing pictures so they're not the best. I am working on getting the right settings with different lighting. I thought these came out pretty good for my first time. I used my Nikon D80 with the Nikkor 18-135mm lens

Dance/Waterfall/Grain Elevator

I was really bored one day and decided to mess around with lipstick and my roomies mirror. So this is what I came up with. I am still improving my mirror and flash abilities, but theyve come a long way... I took roughly 300 pictures and came up with 2 that I actually like... The 2 middle pictures are of a little place called potholes. It was fun! We walked around barefoot in the water! Not many people knew about this place, so it was peaceful! And the last picture is of some sort of grain elevator/silos and the awesome sky. Again with the "pretty uglies". lol But it was raining that day and somehow the sun decided to peak out. There was a crazy awesome rainbow too!

Old Orchard in the UP

I am up in the UP of Michigan for summer school. We are basically in BFE nowhere near civilization. My friend and I were driving around and kind of got lost. We came across a old orchard with a small house near by. So the "shack" had a huge no tresspassing sign outside of it..oops! lol I didn't listen, thank God that no one was around! Inside was a sweet old Maytag stove in a kitchen and a old gross matress in another room. My friend didn't want me to go up the stairs because it was such a old fallen-apart house. He was lookin out for me :) Anyway I am very pleased with these pictures! I hope I can find some more crazy abandoned houses! Comment plz!

Beautiful Uglies

I never thought something so ugly as a power plant can turn out so pretty! With the sunset so perfect and the lighting amazing, I was able to take gorgeous pictures to show the beauty of the icky things in life. If you look hard enough you can find something beautiful about everything even the most unexpected places. These tracks were right outside of the Wade Power Plant (also pictured) near Purdue University. The flower was also taken near the power plant. This was my first sunset shoot. I was quite pleased. I realized that I like to go and scope things out and then come back to take pictures all completly prepared. Some of my friends that take pictures always carry all their equipment around. I will carry my camera but not everything. I know thats not being prepared and I wouldn't be ready for something that came up suddenly but I like scoping and coming back later. Perhaps I will change the better I get :P Hope you like! Please comment!

Getting Lost

My friend Nickie and I decided to drive around and try to get lost. Well it worked! We totally got lost! We ended up 40 minutes away without even knowing it. It took us a couple minutes like 20, to find a city! We were kind of freaked out because some of the houses didn't look too friendly... Well anyway. This (first two pictures) barn we saw while we were driving. It was out in the boonedocks right on a paved but reaaalllyyy messed up rocky road. I kinda just pulled off the road a bit to take these. Kinda dangerous but we didn't see a car for miles! Then the flower is from nothing but a gorgeous Magnolia tree. The last three pictures are of a hmm i think it was a old boat house. This barn was on a gravel road following the Wabash River. We definitely didn't see any signs of inhabitats for probably a half an hour. All in all, this experience was awesome. It was a gorgeous day and we felt adventurous. I can't wait til next time! :)

Crew formal!

Kelly and Mike

Kelly and Mike

Kelly and Mike's photo shoot