Soon to be Jet Lagged.

Well, its been a while since I've posted and ALOT has happened.

I've spend the last few weeks in PA being the best man at Shelby's wedding, and spending an awesome 7 days with Amber!! But, now it's the 14th of August, and that means my flight to China is tomorrow!!!!

I must say im getting rather excited, it still seems a little surreal to me that I'll be leaving the country for a whole year tomorrow... Of course I won't be in China until Thursday... Lousy 13 Hour 45 Minute flights.

My itenerary is as follows... I board Delta airlines flight 5160 at Cleveland airport at 1:10 and land at JFK airport at 2:57. I then have about an Hour and a Half to find my terminal and take some photos before boarding air china flight 982 at 4:30pm. I will land in Beijing around 6pm Thursday. (that's about 5am Thursday for you Texas folks) so, I loose a whole day in the process. At least it will be that much closer to my birthday when I land eh?

After I land and get my luggage Shelby, Amanda, and I are to be picked up by a van sent from the Hostel we are going to be staying at. You can check it out here www.leohostel.com looks like a pretty nice place. I'll probably try and write a quick e-mail or blog sometime after we get there so everyone knows we are all ok.

We will then go to the train station and buy our tickets to Zibo, which is where we will be living. Chances are we will end up staying in Beijing for a few days (including my birthday which is the 17th of August for those not in the know!) which is rather exciting because Shelby and Amanda have nothing but good things to say about Beijing! I'll of course be taking a million pictures at all three of the airports ill be in (esspecially Beijing), and around Beijing. I will eventually be posting them on Flickr and here(if I can access it). But, dont expect to see them for a few weeks depending on how quickly we get settled and over Jet lag.

I'm not nervous like I thought I would be, just excited, the only thing im worried about is flights and connections and such, but so far the weather looks good and there are no delays so I'm not too too worried about it. I am going to miss my family and friends and esspecially Amber (I love you baby!) a hell of alot, but ill be talking with them on Skype so it won't be total isolation. Anyways I gotta run and get things together so I'll post soon from China soon!!

-Johnny

Dragonflies, Target, and Horses

So, its been a while. I have been working too much, but I have been keeping my flickr up to date (kinda) so check it out. Ill put a few highlight photos up here though, starting with my most recent photo.

A dragonfly...


Lance from work...


Barbed Wire and prison horses!

Final Student Teaching.

Ok so I posted the rest of what I will be editing and uploading of the student teaching batch. I really like the one I linked above for somereason. It will probably be everyone elses least favorite. Oh lack of self confidence, how I love thee. Anyways, you can see the rest of em on Flickr as per usual. I think from now on I will be limiting my blogger post to only a few pictures at a time and links to their respective Flickr sets for those that wish to see the rest of them the reason fo this is that ive noticed the post that have a million pictures in them tend to really bog down the load time on this blog. So, thats how it will go from now on. I have a Million and 1 pictures to edit and upload, some on my computer and some on my camera still. As I mentioned before I have over 400 quilt photos... I think ive finished about 11. heh. On top of that I have about 100 photos I took of my dad golfing yesterday. and also about 40 other miscellanious shots including shots from Target ( I sense a series coming on there...) and also animals (prison horses, my dog, and deer). And random shots of Huntsville at sunrise. Look for some of those to come soon. I am going to continue to plug away at the quilts, where I do intened to edit more of the 400 of those... but I will save my mind by randomly editing some of the ones from the above mentioned sets that I am doing for fun (the quilt shots im hoping to acctually turn some what of a profit on.

In other wierd news, yesterday I got a call on my cell phone, the number was private. I answer it and some guy tells me I won 2 tickets to the MOMA in New York. I tell the guy I live in Texas and I dont see how I could possibly get to New York to make use of such a prize, but thanks anyways, and he says "Ohh thats too bad, sorry to bother you." so before he hangs up I ask him how I was entered into a such a contest in the first place, and he says they find artist on the internet and offer them this prize... he then appologized again and we hung up shortly after. Seemed very wierd to me. But oh well. If more comes of this ill probably write about it.

Look for a few quilts and maybe some other fun stuff in the not too distant future!
-Johnny

Been a while...

So, It's been a while since I posted here. There are several reasons for this, the main one being work. I was working at both the Theater and at Target for a bit, so I was pretty tired and such, so when I was at home and I didnt want to do anything but either play WoW or sleep. But, I am done at the theater now, so hopefully I will get back in the swing of updates. My sleep schedule is still a little out of whack though.

So, whats new? Well I took over 400 some odd photos as the Airing of the Quilts here in Huntsville for my mom's quilt guild. I tried to get every stingle quilt there, but I know I missed at least a few. It took several hours to take the photos, the wind was crazy, and the sky overcast, so the lighting is not the best, so I imagine it will take several more hours to go through and edit the photos. I plan on making a CD to sell to the guild members and maybe make a little extra cash. Ill also post the best ones on Flickr and here.

I finished the Folk Fest Photos, and you can see one at the top of this post and the rest at Flickr. I'd have posted more here, but im feeling a little lazy and tired.

I have to go over to Target today, on my day off, to make sure I get next monday and thursday off... why? Because the city of huntsville felt the need to give me two different Jury Summons on those days, with only about a weeks notice, and since im technically not a student any more, I have no excuse. Bastards.

Anyways, thats all for now, I'll post more later!

Student Teaching 2

More photos from student teaching. There is going to be one more batch of these before I have em all posted... I also need to put up the rest of the Folk Festival photos at some point... heh I also took some photos at the culminating cerimonies for student teaching, which was a waist of time. I only took a few photos then I left early.

Student Teaching 1

Well today was my last day for student teaching, so brought in my camera to show it off to Jenny (my mentor teacher) and to take a few photos, so this is the first group ive uploaded. I have several more I will be making minor touches to and uploading that will in all likely hood appear in a later blog. As usual all of these can also be seen at my Flickr. There are also more folk festival photos I will eventually get around to uploading.

In other news I've offically brought my blog back online. I look it down for about a week or so because a few of the kids in my 3rd period were trying to use some of the things I was typing to (quote nate) "give me this buisness". BUT I am done student teaching now so I dont have to worry about that. Most of the kids in that class will have already forgotten about me and my ramblings by the begining of class tomorrow. And if they are persistant and start leaving inappropriate or annoying comments, ill simply delete them. Those of my students who are acctually here to look at new artwork, and want to comment with out being lame are welcome to do so.

So the photos I took today... I took photos during 2nd and 4th period, I was conveniently away during most of 3rd, but even if I was there, there is no way I would have taken out my 700 dollar camera during the class anyways. It probably would have been covered in clay or something.

The kids are begining to work with clay, doing figurative sculptures. Jenny waited until I was gone to start that seeing as my area of expertise lies mostly within the 2 dimensional realm. I had alot of fun with student teaching, and I'll miss both Jenny and the kids (most of em anyways). But, I am glad to have it done!!

Next stop, China, but first more photos:

Fruits

So, this is the newest "Photomation" I call it "Fruits" because it was a drawing that was based off of an image from a photo book called Fruits which features photos of Japanese teenagers dressed in thier wackey extreme out of control fashion. I maintain that this is because they watch too much anime. And everyone knows that anime rots your brain. And your teeth sometimes.

Anyways, Im going to post the non Photomation version as well below...