Scenic Love

Watching: Awkward. I'm so obsessed with that show.. it really bring out the 16 year old in me!! I love well written, quirky teen shows like Degrassi and Awkward is right up that same alley! I'm definitely binge watching it .. I just started the show last week and am already on season 3. I'm also loving The Goldbergs. It's soo funny and makes me howl just as much as Modern Family does! Also, is it just me but is Vampire Diaries just as good if not better than the first season right now?! I felt that it started getting stupid but this season is giving off a fresh new start and I'm loving it!

Listening to: What Now by Rihanna and Wanted by Hunter Hayes. While I do paperwork at the office, I'm listening to these songs on repeat. Both such beautiful and emotional songs and I just love them both so much!

Thinking about: Travel and buying a house. These two topics are ones that are consuming my brain right now. I want to just travel the whole world and take photos of everything I see in so many new & exciting places. This is a very real & serious goal of mine. Taking photos whether it's here in town or somewhere else pumps my blood like you wouldn't believe. I also would love to have my own backyard this summer to lay out in after work, during the day etc etc so buying a house before the summer would be divine. Not sure how realistic this is though.. lol

Loving: Reading! But I'll talk about that more in the next paragraph. lol! Something I really am loving though right now is cooking. I made a huge fail of a meal tonight though but besides that I've been getting creative with meals. I've also realized that I do not cook healthy at all (lots and lots of butter)! I made a delish porkchop dish the other day with cream of chicken soup & broccoli smothered over top.. it was so good.

Reading: A house in the Sky! It's about the Calgary Freelance Reporter who got kidnapped in Somalia. Seriously such an intense, eye-opening & tragic book that I recommend to anyone interested in travel and/or current world affairs. I normally don't care about stuff going on in the world (not because I'm not interested but because I'm afraid) but I picked this book up because it's a memoir about something tragic and those are usually my favorite types of books. I'm about half way through but I  loved the first half of the novel when she spoke of her travel excursions. It's just now starting to become dark. I also just finished "the Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman which was really interesting and had a very strong ending.

Making me happy: That the Holidays are right around the corner! I'm excited for Christmas for ONCE this year. I can't wait to just spend the holidays with my family and to eat good food! Super exciting. 

This post was inspired by Danielle at Sometimes Sweet.

Industrial

I have a feeling this is going to be the start of a beautiful relationship with Industrial photos.
Ever since I discovered the National Geographic website, I have been beyond inspired to take different types of photos that I would never have thought to snap before.

However, I'm still editing photos because I find with my camera it's hard to take a perfect photo unedited. Ugh! One day, I will have a better camera, one day.

I've also decided it's my dream to just take photos of the world from anywhere and everywhere which is why I need to make it my mission to travel at LEAST once a year to somewhere new. I just need to take photos of beautiful things, it's seriously the most exhilarating, heart pounding, most amazing feeling for me. When I took these photos, I'm pretty sure I was driving in a forbidden place and the rush of it was out of this world. And these photos aren't even that good! Haha. I just love it so much.

Trains

What a stressful day today was!!
Work felt like it lasted 4 million years and then I went to the grocery store afterwards and I'm pretty sure the rest of the city was there too. Let's just say some photography therapy was needed.

I took a drive to a place I've never been before and to be honest, I'm not even sure I was allowed to be there. I'm kicking myself now because I didn't see any "no trespassing" signs where I was (even though I know further up there would have been) and I missed out on a great photo opportunity. It was very industrial where I was and I did manage to snap a few good pics.

I feel bad because National Geographic says not to edit your photos but sometimes I just love the way you can boost the appeal of a photo with just a few little editing tricks. For example, the photos above were so "blah" before I added some contrast to them.

I'll be uploading some unedited photos from today on Sunday to the National Geographic website and hopefully some people will like my unedited photos better than I do. I guess I just have to learn to embrace the natural look of a photo or perhaps fiddle with my camera settings a bit harder to capture a prettier photo unedited.

Enjoy your Thursday! I don't know about you, but I cannot wait until the weekend!!

Christmas is Almost Here!

Such a small, sad little photo but it's the best one I got when decorating today.
I can't believe Christmas is almost here and for the first time in years, I'm actually excited and not stressed. I'm really looking forward to just eating delicious food, spending time with family and seeing my friends who have all basically moved away.

So I discovered the National Geographic website. It's probably my favorite thing ever. I love how it encourages photographers to upload photos 100% unedited because they want to see our pictures and not those of a photo editing tool. So much truth. I'm usually a very heavy editor so I like the idea of trying to capture photos without needing to edit them and I'm going to make that a new project of mine.

National Geographic also encourages photographers to participate in their "assignments" so I feel that's something I'm going to attempt to join in on. Right now, their assignment is "Imagine if..." so I'll try to get creative with that.

Yay for online photo communities!!