Marcus Jamal Hopson

Marcus Jamal Hopson AKA Hopsin quit rap and moved to Australia. Hopson was apart of a record label called Funk Volume. He was the cofounder and an artist. There are other people apart of FV too. Such as SwizZz, Jarren Benton, Dizzy Wright, Dj Hoppa, and Dame. Although, SwizZz is my favorite rapper off of FV I'm still very sad that Hop decided to quit. FV will never be the same without Hopsin.

Christmas Play Rant

In school we are doing a God awful play. I am going to to admit that no one who is in the play actually likes it. The play is about winter in the place I live, and it is not clever at all. None of the kids, including myself, put any energy or emotions in the lines we rehearse, and I do not blame them because we have this teacher that is ALWAYS over exaggerating by the way we rehearse our lines. This is all my opinion, so any students who happen to stubble upon this, I suggest you respect this. Because anything you say will not change my opinion, nor faze me.

Other Photographers

My mom has this friend that is interested in "shooting" me. as in taking photos of me. I do not really want to do it because like I said in another blog I do not want to be infront the camera. I much rather be behind it. My mom said that it would be a wonderful experience for me. Plus he could help me out with photography, and give me ideas. I am kind of excited for getting pictures taken of me, but more excited to actually talk to a professional photographer.

Interests

We are all born finding things appealing to the eye, and we are all born with different hand writing. Or we find things that taste gross and find stuff that taste like God made it just for you to eat, and you need to have it everyday. We are all born with different interests and we are all born different, overall. Then you find someone with the same interests, and YOU begin to be interested in that person. Or you find someone that is totally against your interests and you tend to not like that person. I am stating the obvious, but I just thought about this whole "interest" stuff and thought I would write about it.. because I find it interesting.

Canon EOS Rebel

I think my camera is the best thing I have ever seen, and yes I am being totally dramatic. It is really nice though, and it came with a lot of the equipment. Which was great because now I look all certified and professional. I am still practicing and I have not captured any photographs that are "social media worthy". I am getting the hang of everything though, and I am more than proud to say that I am a Canon owner. *inserts winky face emoji*

Heartache

I had a fantastic dream last night that felt so real. I couldn't believe how lucid and realistic it was. It was wonderful. Then I woke up and I've never felt so depressed in my life. I started coming to conclusions that reality is depression. Facing the truth is depression. I turned my bedroom lights on and looked at the bracelets he gave me. I have this shirt that smells like his cologne and it gives me butterflies. Almost as if he was going to kiss me and hug me. I have these photos on my phone of us. Every time I look at them I cannot stop cheesing.. It's ridiculous.. How much heartache there is. I loved this guy so much, that I'd kill for one last kiss from him. I'd kill to hear "I love you" come out of his mouth. It's almost as if I crave it. I was addicted to him and his love.. I still am. I just hope every one knows It takes seconds to say hello. But forever to say good bye.. Moving on is easy. It's what you leave behind that makes it hard. (Made up story)

Kylie Jenner's Lips

Kylie Jenner, related to Kim Kardashian is a 17 year old girl. She is gorgeous and all, but her lips are beginning to look insane. Kylie Jenner's lips have been a trending topic for quite a while now because experts say she has been getting lip injections. Not only is she getting lip injections, but you could tell that she tries to make the illusion of her lips being bigger with lip liner and lipstick. I think it's quite funny because you could absolutely tell that she has been doing something to her lips to make them look bigger.

Camera

My mom for sure ordered me a camera, and it should be here today. But that would be in a perfect world. I'm sorry I haven't really been posting anything about photography. If I'm being completely honest, the stuff gets boring sometimes. I guess I just haven't found what kind of photography I'm interested in yet. The pictures I take are all over the places, from sports to nature. I've also been getting new editing apps. They are all pretty much the same. What I am really starting to get interested in is Adobe Photoshop CC. I need to start begging if I want that. Although, it would be a good Christmas present.

Dizzy Wright

La'Reonte Wright is an American rapper, and is better known by his stage name Dizzy Wright. In December, 2011 he signed to rapper, Hopsin's independent record label Funk Volume. He was born, November 26, 1990. Wright has three albums, and of course is featured in a lot of different songs. Wright is one of the popular people off of Funk Volume. Obviously, because his music, and I guess because of his apparence too. One of my favorite songs by Dizzy is I Need Answers. Overall I think Dizzy Wright is a very successful rapper and has a calming voice if you're ever going through some stress.

Makeup

When I was younger I used to be obsessed with makeup. I would watch my cousin put makeup on all the time, and watch her do her hair. All that kind of girly stuff. I would always get into my moms makeup and pour all of it in the sink. When I was 9 I started wearing eyeliner, and I would watch makeup tutorials on Youtube. I finally mastered the winged eyeliner look when I was about 10. As I moved up to my teenage years I started wearing eyeshadow and foundation. Eventually, I started getting better. Now, I don't wear makeup everyday like I used to, but every time I put my makeup on I usually wear a natural look with winged eyeliner, and contour just a little bit.

LeBron James

 For all of you out there who do not know who LeBron James is. He is a 29 year old professional basketball player with the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Here is one of my favorite photos of him (I did not edit it). I like this photo because there is so many things going on, but it is still focusing on the big picture. It is one of those clever photos that you need to really focus on to notice certain things. Not only do I love the photo, but I love LeBron. Ball is life, son. 

Tumblr Text posts!

Here is one of the most random photos in the world. Tumblr Text posts are famous on every social media. I'd say they're most famous on, of course, Tumblr, and Instagram. Text posts are mostly famous for being funny, and making absolute no sense at all. I'll tell you it was super hard finding a text post photo that was appropriate. Not only are text post funny, but there are a lot of famous ones out there that give you chills, and make you want to be a better person, I guess. A lot of people on tumblr are very weird and aggressively happy. Anyways, whoever might be reading this, I hope this photo made you laugh, and maybe you want to look at more text posts. If you do, I suggest maybe following a text post account on Instagram, or simply find your way to Tumblr.

Stephen Curry

Here's a photo that I took and edited a while ago.
The guy in the back shooting the ball is not
Steph Curry. Although, he is a basketball player, as you could see. Steph Curry is one of the many people he idolizes on the NBA.

I've made a lot of photos related to basketball and sports, because that's what people are interested in. I use to hate anything to do with sports. But now that I've been hanging out with a lot more active people, I'm bound to at least start getting interested in watching them.

This is a pretty simple photo to edit. I used an iPhone 5c to take the photo, and the app I used was Picsart. All I really do is pick a blur effect then erase the blur to the original to the things I really want people to focus on. First, I had to find a photo of Steph Curry to fit the photo. Then, I made the opacity really low to give it that disappearing or fading effect. With the quote I just picked a font, and made it the colors of Golden State Warriors, the team Steph Curry is on.

This photo sounds pretty simple to make. It was really frustrating to me. I had to restart on the photo about three times because I kept on messing up. Even then It's still not the best. I think the thing that matters is that when it was done, the person I made it for was more than happy. That just made me want to do more better things for other people.

SwizZz

      Here is a photo of one of my absolute favorite rappers. His name is Justin Ritter or best known by his stage name SwizZz. This is a really random post, but I want to talk about him. SwizZz is 28 years old. His birthday is September, 28 1987. He is apart of a record label called Funk Volume. There are other members apart of Funk Volume too, such as Dizzy Wright (artist), Jarren Benton (artist), DJ Hoppa (DJ/music producer), Damien Ritter (co-founder), and the most recognized rapper off of Funk Volume Hopsin (co-founder/rapper).


     All of the rappers on FV are unique in their own ways, and all have a different majority of fans. I like SwizZz because he has a unique flow, and his punchlines, or the final phrase of a joke, song, or story, are probably some of the best in hip-hops history. Although SwizZz does have some singles out there, he has not released an album. When he does, it will be called Rock, Paper, SwizZzors.

Photography

I talk a lot about my family on my blog because they're a huge impact on my life and photography. My mom broke my camera, and I wasn't very upset because she claims that she'll buy me a new camera which never works out. Either way I'm totally fine with it because I still have my phone that I could take and edit photos with. I have an iPhone 5c and the quality of the photos I take with it are surprising good. I say surprisingly good because it's a little phone that could take photos like an ok camera.

Taking photos with an iPhone is pretty good, but you could do things to the photo to make it look like it has higher quality. For example you could probably download any simple free editing app and it'll have brightness, contrast, hue, all that good stuff. What you would be looking for is the sharpness. If you turn the sharpness up more it'll kind of look like you took the photo with and actual camera. Also you could turn the brightness up and make it look all pretty. Whatever looks good to you.

In my opinion editing photos is super fun. Just transforming photos to make them look prettier, or uglier is amazing. You could literally do whatever you want to the photo and no matter what at least someone is going to like it. Even making someone not really your photo is awesome because you're making that person feel an emotion from something you created. Thats the kind of stuff you could benefit from hate.

I've never really had to deal with hate on the photos I take and edit. I just get input from people that I don't really like. They're just telling the truth about the photo. So I can't say anything bad about it. I honestly don't know how I'd react to hate. I'd probably be a little offended at first. Then shake it all off, or at least vent to people. I think if you let hate get to you then that would mean that the person that's hating on you wins, and you don't.

I've been getting comments lately that really help, and motivate me to become more interested in photography. I appreciate it so much. It makes me excited to see what other things I could do with photography. I also just love having other peoples opinion on the things I do. I want to discover other photographers so I could be inspired by them and think of more photo ideas.

Friday

Today is finally Friday and I'm having a pretty great morning so far. My parents are out of town again. I don't like it when they leave because I hate being alone. I'm not really alone because I have friends that would come over and keep me compony and sleep over, but I just hate the fact that I'm not with my parents.

Yesterday I found out that my order for my new camera has declined. I was super depressed about that because I was really looking forward to that. I haven't told my mom yet because she already has a lot of things to take care of so I'll just wait. My mom also has my old camera. I can't wait till she comes home, and shows me the photos that she took.

I'm really happy that I'm getting my mom interested in photography. She's always artistic so I'm sure she'll come home withs some beautiful photos. I love seeing her succeed in things such as photography, art, and any hobby that she loves, just like she loves seeing me succeed in my hobbies.

When I think about it I don't really have any other hobbies other than photography. I do go walking with some friends, but that isn't nearly as fun as photography. Just like how some friends would prefer playing basketball than hanging out with me. Which I'm totally fine with.

Negative

Today is the first day of the second quarter. It didn't really start off great. I'm in my second period class and we completely have nothing to do. On the other hand, my mom ordered me a new camera, but I just checked my email and it said the order declined because we put some information in wrong. It's not a good morning, but hopefully I'll get my stuff together and the day will end well.

Finally

I'm going to try my hardest to upload a picture on this blog on Monday. It has been such a long week, and I can't wait to just relax with my camera on the weekend. I feel so accomplished because this is my 40th paragraph that I have written on this blog. I can't wait to get more into this. Everything feels like it's starting to come together, and I can not wait to experience more with this blog.

Sports

I'm kind of getting into action photography. Sports would probably be the best example. Like in one of my previous blogs I photographed and edited a photo of a ball making its way through a hoop. And it made the hoop do a swish. I really liked that type of action, although it took forever to capture. It was all worth it because now that I look at the photo now, it looks really good.

Love

I've been wanting to do a really girly photo about love. I want to make it all pink with hearts everywhere. I don't think i'll ever get enough of girly photos. I just adore them. In my opinion I think they look fascinating. I could honestly stare at girly photos with a bunch of bright colors all day because I think they look so happy. And that makes me happy.

P.E.

I did an irresponsible thing and decided to leave my camera at my friends house. I'm not worried about it because I know she's responsible and won't touch or break it, but I really wanted to take photos tomorrow in P.E. I have no idea why, but I always come up with the best ideas in that class. My P.E. teacher also always admires my photography, so I guess that's a plus.

Happiness, Stress, and Random

I honestly can't wait till I get to start editing photos. I just went out for a walk and I have so many great ideas. A lot have to do with the ocean and sky. The place I live is super beautiful. The sun rise and sun sets are gorgeous, even photos taken with a phone would come out great, so just think what I could capture with my camera. I haven't really seen anything positive this week. Until today because I got to hang out with my friends, and they made me happy again.

All this week consisted of was stress. I was really sick the beginning of the week, and of course it happened to be the end of the quarter this coming Friday. I should have known better to get my work in and get all caught up. I'm going to make a promise to this blog right now that I will turn my work in on time and not be all behind. Because honestly, doing stuff at the last minuet is not fun at all. I'm grateful to have generous teachers that will allow me to get most of my work done.

There are many downfalls to not getting your work done, but for this paragraph I'm going to be talking about what I learned from it. I don't know why, but I also put myself in tough situations like this. Where you have to do a lot of homework in one night, and it will leave you brain dead the next day. Now that I'm growing up I'm becoming more independent. I'm not relying on my mom to help me stuff, and she doesn't have to tell me to do chores anymore because I already know I should do them or else I'll get yelled at. When I do the chores without her yelling at me she's proud of me. I just want my teachers to feel the same way, proud. I'm not saying that my teachers yell at me or anything I'm just trying to put it in a situation that people could relate to.

Cameras

I'd say when the iPhones started to come out that's when I started getting interested in photography. I really wanted an iPhone just because it had a camera on it. I thought that it was amazing that a little screen could take photos and you could just put that screen in your pocket and take it anywhere. Once I got an iPhone I started getting applications on it. There was this one app thats call Instagram. Instagram is a social media where you could post pictures. You basically pick a photo you want to up load and it gives you the choice to edit the photo. They have all sorts of things you could do to make your photo look more unique. Such as filters, cropping, sharpening, brightness. All of the basic things to either make your photo look clearer or representable.

Instagram lead to so much more. I discovered accounts that would show you tutorials on how to edit a photo and life saver apps that make your photos look flawless. Eventually, I started to want a camera. I even told people that it was on my bucket list. My parents always promised that they would get me one to shut me up about wanting one, but they never got around to it. One day I just walked into my ELA teacher's classroom, and she straight up gave me a camera. It was honestly one the happiest days of my life. She basically made my dreams come true. The camera she gave me was a Sony. Finally owning a camera is exactly what I thought it felt like. I feel more important in a way, and I finally have and interesting hobby.

Receiving the Sony has lead me to wanting a better more professional camera. I've been looking at this Canon on a shopping site called Amazon , and my mom literally said that she could make the purchase tomorrow. I don't know if she's doing the same thing to make me shut up, but I feel very excited and confident that she wasn't just bluffing. I could only just get the camera, or I could get the whole set. Which would cost way more, about $600.00 more. It took a lot of convincing, but I did it.

I basically just told my mom the whole history about my photography life, and how much passion I have for it. I don't know how to explain it, but it's sort of a burning sensation talking about it. Because this is going to be my future. Just like how some people get excited talking about how they want to join the NBA or be a model or even just a house wife just like I get excited talking about being a photographer.

One of my favorite young photographers is Isabella Madrid. She's 14 years old and she already has so much experience using a camera and editing photos. She is one of my biggest inspirations, and I want to be just like her when it comes to photography. She does self-portrait photography, and she has some breathtaking beauty. Sometime she also posts a before and after photo which is another kind of thing I want to get into with this blog.

Some of my future plans with this blog is DIY's, Before and after pictures, I'll recommend apps so if you ever come across a photo that you're inspired by, you'll know exactly the app that I used, and maybe you could take and edit a photo similar to mine. I'll do all of this when I am all caught up in school which will be soon.

Work

I have a lot of photos on my camera that I need to import on my laptop. So I could put on my phone to edit. I'm very frustrated on how I should edit my photos. I know necsessarly you don't have to edit photos, but thats the kind of things I like to do. I'm also really focused on getting my blogs caught up so I could edit and upload more photos, but when I think about it, uploading more photos could actually help me out with this blog. I also think it's just time consuming at this point.

I'm going to admit that I'm not the best student at getting their work done. Come to think about it, I'm  probably the worst. I'm very ashamed to say that my grade is a F in ELA. I'm thinking to myself "where did I let myself slip", because blogging about something I love shouldn't be hard at all. I really do love photography with all of my heart, and I have so much passion for it. I feel so accomplished when I get done taking and editing a photo. The feedback I get is amazing. I have a lot of people motivating me, but theres just something about this that I'm missing.

Photography

These last two weeks I haven't been taking any photos because I'm not motivated to. There's nothing out there thats been inspiring me lately. It's not that I'm not interested in photography anymore it's just that my parents have been gone and they're the ones who help me with this whole thing.

I really want to start getting into photography again and my mom finally came back. She's one of the main people who motivates me. She also inspires me big time because she sees the world in a much different and artistic way. She helps me see the happy side of everything. Something I like about her is when she looks up at the clouds she says they look painted on. She's very bubbly and I think we all need that one bubbly parent.

On the other hand, my dad is strict. I feel like he motivates me too much. He's my step dad so he's still trying to figure the whole teenage girl system. He's strict but he has his happy days. He loves to see me do what I like to do, like taking pictures of nature. I'll ask him to drive me out of town, and he'll do that. No matter what time it is he'll take me and my camera out for rides. One of the problems with him is that he's not interested in the same type of photography as I am. Which is sorta okay because he points out some really cool things about nature. But not photo worthy.

My brother is in a boarding school, and I miss him more than anything. I feel like he'd help me out a lot with this whole blog stuff. He's possibly the smartest person I know. I don't really look up to him in the real world, but when it comes to school I want to be just like hime. He's become very organized and independent. He gets good grades all the time and he's very interested in playing the guitar. So I assume that he would be making me taking and editing pictures of his guitars. Which I don't mind because it's something different and new.

I have three brothers and all of them fish in the summers. My oldest brother fishes in the summers and winters. He's also on a T.V. show called The Deadliest Catch. I want to take pictures of the water for him, because thats what he loves the most. Is being on the water and catching fish or crab.

I have one sister, and she's the oldest out of us all. She's a really down to earth girl. She likes all sorts of weird things. She's sort of a hippy. I'd probably take a picture of a sun set for her and edit it to make look all trippy and illusiony. That's another type of photography I'm into. I'm not sure what it's called, I just feel like people could really see the emotion and art in photos like that. Plus it looks super amazing and cool.

Lame

Today, I didn't take any photos because I wasn't inspired by anything. I did look at a bunch of photographers photos to try to get inspired. None of them really made me want to take pictures, but I did admire how beautiful some pictures were. It made me wish that I could take and edit a photo as beautiful as other photographers could. I called my brother for some motivation and encouragement, but he didn't answer his phone which was the downfall of the day. Tomorrow, I will take and edit some photos for sure.

Basketball #2

I took this photo today in P.E. The app I used was Picsart, and It was super frustrating editing this. Theres a lot of things I could have done better, it also took forever to take the picture too. My favorite thing about this photo is the way the hoops net is formed and the quote. Other than all the flaws I bet this photo could pass as decent.

Basketball #1

I took this photo today in our school gym. The app I used to edit this was Picsart . The word "Sea parrots" is in the photo because that is the name of our high school basketball team. In my opinion I think this is the best picture I have ever took/edited. I had incredible feedback from my friends and I surprised one of my teachers, because he saw me playing on my phone and wasn't aware with what I was doing. Then after I showed him the complete photo and he was impressed that a little device such as an iPhone 4c could make something so appealing.

Today around 12:20 a.m. I was taking a lunch break. While I was on my lunch break I took this photo, imported it on to my laptop through a memory card, then imported it to my phone to edit it. The application I used to edit this photo was Picsart.   I recommend this app to people who are just starting photography because it's a super simple app, and it makes your photos look amazing. The main thing I appreciate about this photo is how the colors are. I showed a couple of people this photo, and their input was exactly what I wanted. One of my friends even said, "It looks like it should be in a magazine." which was a huge compliment.

On the trip I took I captured pictures of an Orthodox Cathedral and they turned out beautiful, in my opinion. Ever since I got my camera I feel like I’ve been getting more interested in photography. It’s a pretty spectacular feeling having something to count on in this present day, and in the future.

Photography isn’t as easy as it looks. Over the past 10 days, on a vacation I took, I’ve been taking photos of nature. It's really hard to focus on what you want the camera to. When you take the photo it might not be the certain way you want it, and you want it to be perfect, so you either take the photo again or just move on.

Those difficult days when you’re taking photos aren’t the best. The day will look gorgeous, you think of a spot that would look awesome to take pictures in, and that location doesn’t look like what you thought it would at all. Theres also days when your camera decides not to cooperate with you. I’m not a professional photographer yet and thats why i still have problems with using a camera.

Even though theres bad frustrating days, there are also beautiful fun days with photography. Which is almost every time you go out taking photos. I would  usually take 10 photos, praying that at least one of them is going to turn out right, but on good days its almost as if every photo i take turns out beautiful. I think I wouldn’t have captured good photos without my dads help.

My dad really motivates me when it comes to photography. He drives me to the places I want to take photos. He helps me catch the most simple pretty things. he also helps me out a lot with this blog. It really shows me how much he wants me to follow my dreams with becoming a photographer.

Although, my dad is one of my biggest motivators, I have my mom and my brother on my side too. My mom gives me incredible feed back. She makes me feel like I actually have a chance with my photography. My brother helps me stay motivated when I want to give up. he’s also taking a class about cameras and photography so he said he could help me out when he comes back from boarding school.

My brother is actually one of the reasons why i got into photography. He fishes on a boat and he’ll come back with photos of the water that look professionally taken. Its surprising because he uses an iPhone 4s as a camera. I love the way he explains the photos he takes too. For example, he’ll say something like, “The water looks like glass in this photo.” and of course everything looks better in person so he’ll put as much detail in the photo he’s explaining and end the conversation like, “You should have been there.”

In my opinion, I think everything looks better in person. I don’t think a camera could capture what the human eye could. The place I live is ridiculously beautiful. The sun rises, and sun sets are perfect. Even the clouds look beautiful. Living in Alaska is defiantly one of the advantages when it comes to photography.

          I haven't really been taking any photos lately due to medical problems. Although, I have been talking to some of my moms friends about modeling. My moms best friend is a really popular and a known person at the place we're at. She always calls her other photographer friends when I'm around because she wants me to model. I don't really think she understands I'd rather be the person behind the camera. Anyways, I really appreciate that she would do stuff like that for me, and I can't wait to be in a location where there is more nature so I can finally take more photos.

         Yesterday I bought my own laptop which is a MacBook Pro. It was more than $1,400, but it was so worth it. The main reason I wanted this laptop was so that I could upload photos on Social media. The first photo I uploaded was a picture of my mom. I really love my new laptop.

         On Tuesday I got my first camera from my ELA teacher. Having a camera feels like my first step to success. I am very thankful that she would give something to me that I've been waiting on for years. It's very rewarding, and I love my camera more than anything. Having a camera makes you notice every artistic and creative thing.
         On Wednesday I was playing around with my camera and trying to discover new things about it. I was taking pictures of simple things around my room. I was messing around with the different filters and, was focusing on different types of stuff. My parents were both very excited that I received a camera too. They knew how much I wanted one because I wouldn't go a day without talking about it.
        Thursday was the most excitement because my dad and I went for a little ride so that I could practice using my camera. I was actually very surprised about how beautiful my pictures were turning out. I couldn't get much of the sun because the clouds kept getting in the way, but I did get some beautiful pictures of plants and things like that. I couldn't wait to get a new laptop so I could actually download a couple of my pictures.
         Tomorrow's Friday and I am leaving. Since we live on a small island we don't have a mall or any place to buy new electronics, I figured when my parents and I head out to the city I could buy a new lap top out there. I am more than excited so I can photoshop and edit my photos just to give them a little extra kick, and make them look more eye catching. I am way too stoked to start my photography rage.

10 Things You Don't Know About Me

1. My name is Lydia, and I live in Alaska.
2. I'm a mellow person, yet I can be very hyper at times.
3. One of my biggest joys is making other people happy.
4. Some of my hobbies include drawing, walking around the town I live in, and photography.
5. My biggest interest is photography.
6. I'm blogging about photography because I think it's amazing how a photo someone captured can make you feel different emotions.
7. I do not have a camera, although I will get one soon.
8. The way I became interested in photography was a social network called Instagram.
9. Water, Underwater, black and white, nature, and self portraits are the kinds of photography I'm interested in.
10. When I get my camera I want my photos to be spectacular and different. I want people to have strong feelings about the photos I take.