Spring in Boston | Photo Adventure

My lovely friend, Jay, and I took an adventure through Cambridgeside back in March. I - being more stressed out than I've ever been whilst preparing for my move/the end of school/the impending surgery - completely forgot that I had even taken these pictures. (Sorry, Jay.) 

There's nothing better than shooting a beautiful person in a beautiful city with some beautiful weather. We can pretend that the wind WASN'T going a million miles an hour this whole time, even though it almost blew both me and my camera into the ocean. We can also pretend that I can swim.

Boston Tattoo Company | Artist Portraits

Between school and freelance illustration work, I don't have a ton of time for photography anymore (even though it'll always be my first love in the art world). However, this week, I got to dive into a really fun project with some of my favorite people in Boston.

Boston Tattoo Company - my former workplace and current frequent hangout spot - asked me to shoot some portraits of their artists. All of these guys are SO talented, on top of being unfairly photogenic. I've linked each photo to their respective instagrams, so show their profiles some love.

On Surviving Winter | Snowpocalypse 2015

Being a native Californian, I'm eternally unprepared for winter and at the risk of sounding overdramatic, I am surprised I made it through this year in one piece. Boston was hit by blizzards at least once, if not twice, a week for over a month. We broke six feet of snow and set the record for most snowfall in one winter in the history of the city. It was a miserable, brutal series of months and maybe someday, we'll look back and laugh at Snowpocalypse 2k15. Speaking for myself, I'm still trying to shake off the PTSD. I'll be afraid to leave the house without my heavy-duty, dual layer coat for at least another month.

But for all of the bad, I was lucky enough to have some wonderful people trapped with me in the nightmare hellscape. My brothers and good friend were brave enough to venture from Southern California to visit me, plus I acquired a core group of folks I loved enough to get repeatedly snowed in with. I'm talking three days at a time, people. After that, I'm confident that we could make it through an actual apocalypse together.

Maybe it's just the hint of sun on the horizon, but I've come out of winter feeling rather lucky.

Cool Air | Exploring Boston

Sometimes I forget that it's important to spend time alone and after yet another stressful week, I took my day off as an opportunity to go on a solo adventure. I’ve spent the last year resolutely becoming a workaholic and I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t seen much of the city I’ve come to call home so I wandered downtown.  

Unfortunately it was raining and I discovered belatedly that my umbrella was broken so I holed up in a coffee shop and read a little Lovecraft.

On the way back, I had a chat with an older man on the subway who was going through a midlife crisis. He saw my tattoos and wanted to share his excitement because he was about to get his first. I listened to him talk for a few stops and he decided to share a piece of life advice with me. 

The most important thing he’d learned, he told me, was not to put all of your energy into something you aren’t passionate about because someday you’ll find yourself retiring from a job you never wanted in the first place and wondering where your last thirty years went. He finished the conversation with a sad smile, quoted Joseph Campbell (“follow your bliss”) and got off the train.

It was a short conversation but it was exactly what I needed to hear at this point in my life. For the first time in awhile, I feel like I’m pointing my energy in the right directions.

Bicycle Adventures

I've spent a year adjusting to life on the east coast and while the culture shock isn't quite gone, I've passed the point where unfamiliar things surprise me. I made it through the frozen hell that is winter, adopted Dunkin Donuts as a staple of life, and didn't bat an eye at the man I saw running the marathon in a kilt and sandals. The one thing I've yet to acclimate to, however, is cycling.

Few things scare me more than the idea of riding a bike in traffic and in Somerville, it seems to be practically culturally unacceptable to get around any other way. Luckily (I guess), my persistent friend is both very patient with me and stubborn enough to talk me into getting onto a bike in the first place. 

Yesterday, she somehow managed to get me downtown and we rode to the esplanade.

I have a love/hate relationship with this hat.

I don't know if bicycles and I will ever be friends but either way, they make for some good pictures.

Boston Exploration

Last year, I transplanted myself from the eternal summers of Southern California into the actual Winterfell that is New England. Winter just kept coming and coming and "unprepared" proved to be a severe understatement. To be honest I'm not convinced it's ever going to end but even the sun gets tired of hibernating once and awhile. On the first sunny day Boston had seen in months, my friend Mike and I decided to go on a photographic adventure from Cambridge to downtown via a bike path near the Charles.

Mike wanted to test out his newly acquired, pocket sized film camera and obliged me in taking a few shots of me on my 7D as well.

 I wanted to test out the lens I recently bought off my boss (thanks Nick) and didn't think far enough ahead to realize that while the lens does close ups beautifully, it isn't meant for landscapes. I should have brought one of my other lenses along for the ride but at least I've learned for next time.

We're climbers so, naturally, that meant hanging off of bridges and out of trees.

In just over a week, I'll have lived in Boston for a year. It's still surreal to me that a city like this exists at all, let alone that I'm a part of it. A series of happy accidents coupled with incredible luck have led me to the people and places I have in my life right now and I'm grateful. Everything is pretty beautiful.