Being a Babe in Other Countries (I thought "Maya's Travels" was too boring)

Hello there!!! 

I've been absent for far too long, though I did warn you this would happen. Oh my god, I've been having the most amazing trip in Europe! I'm actually still currently in Italy, but I decided to try this iPad app for posting something because I needed to post something before I got home. I edited these all on my moms ipad/my phone and I have no idea if this will work or not, but hopefully it will :) 

So far in Europe I've been to Vienna, Copenhagen, London, Lecce, and Rome. (Aka Austria, Denmark, England, and Italy) I've used up two disposable cameras, met up with some blogger friends (I'm going to make a separate post all about this once I develop my disposies), written pages and pages in my journal, ripped down some posters, met a million really cool people, WENT TO THE HARRY POTTER STUDIO TOUR, swam in the ocean in three different countries, and publicly cried in a restaurant. I think this has been a successful trip so far. I narrowed the pictures I had down to some of my favorites for the time being as sort of a preview to my future posts when I get home :))))))) 

This is from Denmark, we went to see the little mermaid and the the little merman and went to a castle. There were chalk drawings and a price of chalk so I drew a butt. 

This is from the same day at the castle, I've worn this outfit approximately one billion and one times but http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UxxajLWwzqY 

Also the cactuses at the Bottom are ones I painted. I'll post pictures when I get home. (They're will be a journal post in your future, get pumped (or not))  

In which I'm trying to do my normal aka "really crabby" face and my brothers made me laugh so I flipped them off in front of cactus plants. 

WHEN I FUCKING WENT TO HARRY POTTER LAND AND CRIED AND ALMOST PEED MY PANTS. 

All the Umbridge stuff reminded me of Hollie. 

Room goals??

My dad took this photo I  think, but it was a delicious merengue with whip cream and strawberries that our English friends made for us. I drew some strawberries in my journal and collaged them around this. 

The clouds as we flew from Vienna to Denmark. I took approximately 109 (that is a random number I just chose) photos of the clouds. I'm pretty sure the people on the plane thought I was from a place where there were no clouds because I seemed so shocked that clouds could be a thing (I was). 

Me wearing my new dress on a train in Denmark. The background image is one of the 307 (again, this is a random number) cloud photos I took 

One of my more feeble edits lol. Get ready to see LOTS of shoe pictures cuz I took, I think, 564 (I think you know what this means) 

LOOK AT THOSE COL0URZ

Me being cute in a fountain in Lecce. The background are the sheets my mom's friend had at her house that I am now on a mission to find because they're perfect????

SO MANY PRETTY COOUDS. This was from the car driving to Rome. Look at those sun rays <3

Miniature of the Harry potter castle. Look for my tears on this spot. I pretty much died multiple times when I saw all this.

Night time #shenanigans (aka being moody and eating pizza and hangin with da fam) 

Me being moody and my brother being blurry. I made him take this picture. He would probably want me to say he thought/thinks it looks stupid. I think it looks rad AF so I'm going with it. 

Ahhhh! I can't wait to post more soon <3

Xx

Maya 

Interview with Emmanuella

Recently, I've been on Facebook a lot, stalking my friend Emmanuella who I met at the Rookie meet-up last summer, drooling at her AMAZING photographic skills! I finally decided to just blog about her because she is so freaking talented and deserves way more recognition. I interviewed her and fell in love with her even more omg she is such a rad babe!! 

Her Flickr is amazing and basically everything she points her camera at turns into a masterpiece. SHE IS SO TALENTED. AUGH. 

1. How do you find inspiration/where did you get your ideas for your shoots?

I find a lot of my inspiration from fashion magazines and movies. My ideas are fully mine but my photo shoots are my inspired take of song lyrics, movies, and sometimes my dreams. 

2. How long have you been taking photos? What got you interested in photography? 

I've been taking photos for 3 years now. Bands actually got my interested in photography. I would always go on Facebook and see bands post photos awesome photo shoots by photographers and I was like "hey! I could do that, that would be awesome!"

3. What photographers inspire you? 

 Natalie Kucken, Francesca Woodman, Dakota Gordon, Sandy Kim, Diane Arbus, Faith Silva, Petra Collins, Shelbie Dimond.

4. How did you learn to develop photos? How much do you think developing them adds to the photos?

 I leaned to develop my photos at my schools darkroom. I think developing them myself adds a lot to my photos and me as an artist. There is more emotion and feeling put into my photographs that way.

5. What do you like/dislike about developing your own black and white photos?

The only things I don't like about developing my own photos is that you have a possibility of the chemicals messing it up, like a lot of the time when I use metal reels, the film gets stuck together and chemical marks appear.

6. Do you do any other forms of art?

Other forms of art I create include film making. I love making films and I've been doing that for longer than my photography. I'm taking this awesome course right now in San Francisco which teaches us how to use a 16mm Bolex and create our own experimental films. I also have make official music videos for the independent SF label Dark Entries. 

7. What's your favourite things about photography as opposed to any other art form?

 My favorite things about photography is the still, unique, moment in time that you are able to capture and being able to tell a story through those still snapshots.

8. What would your dream job be/if you could live anywhere where would it be?

My dream job would be a fashion photographer and band photographer in New York. On the side, I'd work at a record label and continue making music videos.

9. What's your favourite movie? Song? Do these things influence your photos?

My favorite movie is the French movie Lost In New York. I don't have a favorite song but I do have a large obsession with minimal synth music. Bands such as Lust for Youth or Xeno & Oaklander. It greatly influences my work.

10. Do you have any last parting thoughts? Maybe advice for aspiring photographers?

My advice to other aspiring photographers such as myself is practice makes perfect! I go through stages where I feel like I'm going nowhere and my photos suck then I remind myself to keep trying and don't let others make me feel bad about myself or my photography.

Definitely check out her Flickr, she is so so sooo rad. 
<3 <3 <3
Maya

The livin' is easy

Hey guyssss,

I don't have a real post for you yet, but I figured before I leave for Europe I wanted to leave you with a little insight into what I've been doing with my life lately.

1.) I got an instagram! I've been posting sort of an insane amount...
@mayagoooo

Just a warning it's not all pretty pictures, there's also a lot of photos of me and my friends so just warning you if you don't wanna see that stuff.

2.) I finished my journal!
You guys remember this puppy, right?

well, I've filled every last page, just in time for summer!
Here are a few of my favourites from throughout the year:

 Left is the cover page for may with a disposable camera picture of my shrine that my printer printed out weird cuz it ran out of ink, with a weird and angsty play list I called "May Queen" written on top

Right is a bunch of doodles I did in my journal much more recently. Also BUTTS. 

 From the day I tried to watch Across The Universe and my disc had a scratch so I could only watch to "Because" and then I cried because I needed to see the end. 

 Left is an angry list of things that made sense when I was really upset

Right is from the day after the opening of the A Capella review when I lost my voice and wanted to kill

 A terribly scanned watercolour I did of Hollie

 Collage of some rad Meadham Kirchhoff designs

 Paul Rudd from Clueless (AKA the love of my life)

 Left is a picture of me from my solo in the A Capella review (which, btw is anything but A Capella, idk why it's called that; it's just the name of my choir class)

Right is a picture of my grandma when she was younger that I made a background for and a spiky gold halo out of toothpicks

 Another terribly scanned watercolour of what is supposed to be Tavi Gevinson but looks kind of like a frog.

The pictures printed out all weird cuz my printer was out of ink and then I wrote a playlist in the witches. 

3.) I started my new journal!

First page of my journal with some summer inspo!

Left is a coloured pencil drawing of Natalie. I took the photo I drew this from specifically because I knew I wanted to make it into an art piece. Her face has so many colours, it's awesome.  

Right is an acrylic painting on top of a photo of Hollie (I seem obsessed with her with how much I paint her, but I just like that she has so many colours in her face. Which is also why I like drawing Natalie. Here is the photo of Hollie I painted on top of.)

I screencapped a bunch of parts from The Graduate after I saw it at the Paramount with Natalie and Anna and Claire and Miranda for $5.00

 Some Girls lyrics and some eight year old pressed flowers that I found in my flower press in my craft box. 

4.) I'm now a contributor for The Pulp Zine!!!
I actually flipped out when I got a response to my "application" (AKA sending in my blog link and praying) and I'm super excited for this month! All the pulp girls are so so amazing and talented and I feel so luck to be a part of it all!
For my first post, I took and edited some photos of Leslie for the theme of the month "Sick" which I am SO excited to share! They go up on July 8th so look out for that here!

5.) My school did a "Who Needs Feminism" campaign and got amazing results!!! I'm so so so proud to have over 100 photos of people who need feminism in our community.
Remembering middle school assembly's where the principal literally told us that wearing certain clothes would "distract the boys" and "make our male teachers uncomfortable", here's what I said:

7.) Google Reader is going away tomorrow I think :'(((((
I really don't want to lose all you guys, so you should take five minutes and sign up for bloglovin', chances are I'm not the only blog you follow, and if you wanna keep up with all your blogs the best way is to start a Bloglovin' account. Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I think that's all for now, but I have an idea of a summer-y photoshoot I'd like to do before I leave so keep an eye out for that, also don't forget to check out The Pulp Zine on July 8th. Also you should look at it every day cuz it's so so rad and all the contributors are super awesome.

**EDIT: My post got published on the 6th actually! I think I wrote it down wrong...oops! Anyway, LOOK AT IT HERE!! I'm so exciitteeeddddddddd! Click on the pictures to see them bigger. <3 <3 <3**
xx
Maya