I have no words! Thank you so much to everyone who came out and showed their support during this event. The Black Lives Matter Rally turn out was incredible and about 2000 people joined the march from Crandall Library all the way to Crandall Park. As I was running around on the streets, capturing all of the action, it was cool to watch people walking on the sidewalk randomly join in and the numbers grew and grew. The emotion of the day flooded over me and I hope everyone of you who reads this can feel it too through my images (don’t forget to watch the short video above^ it really is worth the watch!). Black Lives MATTER! Let’s fix the system and treat EVERYONE with the love and respect they deserve as fellow human beings. Change is coming so lets all get ready for it!
Nashville 2020
About a month ago, my boyfriend (Aaron) and I drove close to 16 hours from upstate NY all the way to Nashville and spent a week with the boys from Witch Culture. For those of you who don’t know, Witch Culture is an alternative band based out of New York and Connecticut, but the majority of them were doing internships in Tennessee for the semester. Dan, Joe, and Ryan welcomed Aaron (who is also apart of their band) and I to stay with them during spring break. They also had another friend, Scott, staying there the same week as us and we all became a little family for the week. This also happened to be a week before the official quarantine started, at least in NY where I live. While we were in Tennessee, we experienced our last moments of freedom without social distancing, which made it our last hoorah without us really knowing it. I, of course, brought my camera ad filmed some footage for this YouTube video that you can check out above and took photos during most of the trip. Below are almost all of the photos I took, except for a few personal ones that I decided were unnecessary to include. Throughout the week I was able to do band photos for the boys and even a few tinder profile pictures for a couple of them ;) Here are the many portraits, adventures, candids, cityscapes, and photos of music that I captured. Please enjoy and don’t forget to check out Witch Culture for some pretty cool music ;)
Saying Goodbye
i’m finally ready to make this blog post. Meet Princess. And yes that’s actually her name. I named her when I was 5 and I even thought I was a princess at that age. Princess gave me the most loving 15 1/2 years of my life. During the last few months of her life, her back legs had become weaker and weaker, to the point where she couldn’t get around on her own anymore. It was such a hard family decision to put her down because other than having a hard time walking, she was still the same happy dog, plus the vet had confirmed that she wasn’t in any pain. She told us that it was caused by muscle loss, which was common in dogs her age. Unfortunately because of this, her quality of life wasn’t great.
We finally made the decision to put down my life long best friend on January 16th. This was one of the hardest decisions because I wasn’t ready to let my old friend go, but I knew it was the best for her. I wasn’t ready, but when are we ever? I decided that I wanted to give her the best last day. I spent the whole day with her and made her a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting! Well, my dad made the frosting ;) And before anyone yells at me for giving her chocolate, she has accidentally gotten into chocolate quite a few times before and has never gotten sick from it, so I figured why not since its the last time she will be able to.
She was sooo happy to get to eat this cake, but looked up at my parents before to make sure it was okay. She was always the sweetest and obeyed everything we said (except for a few instances). She destroyed her cake and later my mom (Collignon Photography) took some photos of my brother and I with her.
7:30pm approached way too quickly and we headed off to the vet. Our last moments with her were some of the most heart breaking i’d ever have to endure. When I finally left the room and she had already passed, I looked back into the window at her one last time. I still have this image engraved in the back of my mind. I looked back to see my perfect angel who had been with me my entire life, had given me countless laughs and moments of joy, laying there without a flaw. That will forever be the last time I saw her. When ever that thought crosses my mind, I start to tear up at the least. That was the moment I had to say goodbye to my world. From that moment on, I couldn’t look back and had to keep moving forward. Damn it hurts, but life keeps moving. Things change, shift, and move, and we have to move with it.
