This week our photo is meant to tell a story about one of the seven deadly sins, and I chose envy. I took this photo on the Steven’s Creek Trail, and I’m pretty sure it’s a thistle, which reminded me of envy because of how pretty yet prickly it is. The bright purple flower bud peaking out from the green creates a pretty contrast, and to me that stem and bud represent envy if it were sort of personified? The green of the thistle also reminds me of the saying “green with envy”.

This week, the prompt was to tell a story using Film Noir. This photo is a bit old, but I thought it looked just like an alleyway a detective would run through or hide in. The dark, almost greyscale colors with the somewhat harsh lighting (especially the reflection in the puddle) really seemed to fit the prompt.

This week’s prompt was to take a long exposure photo at night to celebrate the new year. While I didn’t take this photo on New Years, I took it at night when I went to Mercy Bush Park with my friends, and I spent New Years with them too so it seemed fitting.

I tried to take a long exposure shot of them on the swings, but I think it was a bit too long since they’ve both basically disappeared. I would have taken more to try and get it right, but I had to use flash and it hurt their eyes so I just went with this one. You can still see a streak of light from one of them though. Overall while it’s pretty blurry and didn’t quite come out how I wanted, I think it captured the mood and feeling of spending time with my friends on New Years well.

This week’s prompt was to tell a story using silhouettes! I took this photo of three birds against the sky, and I loved how the bottom two are looking towards the top one. It feels like they’re having a conversation, or they’re listening to the top bird explain a mischievous plan. They’re crows (if I’m remembering correctly), so it would be in character.

This week’s theme was color without color. I technically used color, so I’m maybe stretching the prompt a bit, but I really liked how the color of the berries popped out against the grayscale background. It creates a contrast that wasn’t there before that really emphasizes the bright red of the berries, one of the only colorful things in the winter (if we didn’t live in California, at least).

I chose to tell the story of my mom for this prompt (or at least, a story about her). She loves robotics, and has made lots of robots over the years but this is one of the more recent projects. It’s called the robot choir, and the little robots will move as it plays music based on a sheet with colored bars you pass through a sensor. It’s made to be interactive so that people can write their own music and hear it played, and to teach those people (especially younger kids) about robots and how fun they can be. I think the charm of these little guys really expresses that <3

I wasn’t quite sure what to do for the prompt “your culture”. I wanted to explore trans culture, or more broadly queer culture, but I wasn’t sure how best to make that clear. In the end, I chose a photo of my two best friends and I, when we sat on a garage roof and watched the stars together. The light pollution was bad and we couldn’t actually see much, but it was really fun just sitting up there together. I’ve grown up with these friends and we’ve explored our identities and queer culture together, and they’re so dear to me. While this photo isn’t directly of my culture, I think it definitely represents it.

This week’s prompt was to tell the story of flowers! This photo was quite spontaneous. I walked out into my backyard to take a photo of a flower, and found there were a ton of California poppies taking over everything. They grew through this chair, and it looked almost post-apocalyptic. My family has a bad habit of never cleaning our yard, and it gets super overgrown like this, but I kind of love how messy it looks. These flowers felt like a bit of a fever dream at first, but I’m very proud of how the photo turned out!

This week’s prompt was stranger! This was another photo I took in Japan. At an intersection, we were practicing taking photos of moving subjects with blurred backgrounds, and I’m very proud of this one! It came out pretty clear, and while it’s a photo of a stranger, I feel like you could guess a lot of things about them from it. The expression on their face and the fact their helmet is still in the basket makes it seem like they’re in a rush somewhere, maybe a sports event since they have a towel in the basket too? There’s no way to know but I think it’s quite interesting to think about.

This week’s prompt was aging. I chose to photograph this old mural I found. The happy animals with bright colors remind me of childhood, but it’s very chipped and warn down. You can tell it’s been there for a long time, and the people who were children when it was painted have probably grown up. This mural had a sort of bittersweet and nostalgic feel, and I think it fits this prompt perfectly.

It was a bit hard to photograph something 2D like this, and I’m not entirely happy with the result but I still think it looks cool. I used rule of thirds to balance the bunny and cat, showing just a bit of the rainbow at the top and the flowers at the bottom. The photo was a bit dark when I took it so I did turn up the exposure in Photoshop, but I chose to leave it a little dim since I think it adds to the feeling.