The latter part of the year hasn’t been too great, as far as taking pictures went. Schoolwork sucked my time and energy, and in the meantime I’m a little lost in my worries as to what I’m going to do after college, haha. Its okay, I’ve got a few ideas for the coming year and hopefully I can get them done!

But besides that, I’m thankful for my great friends and family, and my health. Happy holidays!

This has been my background since the summer – “DO SHIT”. I quite like it, and I thought I’d share. Even in the midst of all of this, it gives me a little slap on the wrist every time I see it and motivates me to get on my toes and do something, start something. Not just listen to what my teachers and peers tell me to do, but instead give myself a mission.

I think the original phrase I heard from some photographer was “DO (CRAZY) SHIT” , but I wanted to make it even simpler. There’s no point of coming up with ideas and end up not doing anything at all because it doesn’t pass the bar of being “crazy”. Just do shit, and if you do enough, some of it probably will be crazy. If not, at least you know you’ve done shit.

Here it is, feel free to download and share:

Haha stumbled across this, so funny.

In NYC it’s been raining a lot recently. Cooling down from the heat is great, but it’s hard to get to anywhere without owning an umbrella.

A quick, spontaneous shoot I did with my friend Daniela, who I’ve done a lot of photo stuff with back in high school. She’s even modeled for me underwater in a pool, so a tiny bit of rain? No problem. Had a good chat catchup up with her afterwards.

The whole trip was more like an adventure than a vacation, like my family trips always are. We were constantly traveling in planes, trains, busses, and vans going from one place to the next, which was fantastic, but it was also really tiring, especially in a foreign country where we couldn’t even speak the local language. We had a backpack stolen, got food poisoning, and got altitude sickness – hence, adventure. But hey, it was fun.

BUT despite all of those incidents, I loved visiting Peru, and it may be my number one country I want to return to. It was my first time in South America, and it did not disappoint my expectations. Unlike many other developing countries, Peru and its people still firmly held onto much of its culture and many of its traditions without being washed away by western influence. Once you’re out of the industrial cities, most of the land in sight is either used to farm or feed animals such as llamas, alpaca, and sheep. Out there, people are dressed in their traditional clothes, doing hard work weaving clothes and working the land.

We visited four cities in Peru – Lima, Cusco, Puno, and Arequipa. Most of the time we had a guided tour to take us around historical sights, and I just snapped away in the mean time.

Other than the thieves who stole our backpack, the people in peru were very friendly and kind. Unfortunately I couldn’t speak spanish, but I was able to get smiles out of people with just the few words of “hello”, “good morning”, “I don’t understand Spanish”, “I’m sorry”, and a bunch of silly gestures haha. I wish I could’ve spoken Spanish and actually talk to the local people and get to know them better – next time.

I’ll put up the photos from Rio de Janeiro soon!