Arm Akimbo

What do you do to meet potential suitors when the ratio of women to men at work is high, everyone is way older than you anyway, and whenever you leave the house, you are mostly found shopping for plums, tripods and Chobani?  In my case, your mother encourages you to try speed dating and you are already ahead of her.

It was a month ago when I registered for this 20s to 30s singles mixer event thing similar to speed dating but not really.  The event details read "dress to impress" and all I could think about was finding a freakum dress to wear (but not too freakum, excuse me). I was too excited about getting dressed up to be too nervous about doing something so far out of my comfort zone.

It all went down two weeks ago.  No romantic connections made, but I made a couple of friends and won two drawings: free admission to another event and $20! The most luck I've ever had was in elementary school cake walks...so this was a pleasant surprise.

♥

Now for self-taught lessons in photography.  No lighting, highlight or contrast changes have been made by my minimal editing resources.  Only the first one below with two overexposed images juxtaposed followed by two crops (which takes away crispness, but still better images than before).

The light engulfs me

The top photo was a first attempt on a makeshift tripod around 7 pm.  A little too much light. Second and third attempts with changed camera angles gave me the combo below lol.  Then I balanced the camera on a car facing an open space--success!  See, people take great photos; cameras can make it easier but can never do all the work. Later, pretending to know anything about white balance and ISO beyond their names, I tried manual settings when indoors at night (probably the worst combination for taking clear, crisp photos).  I remember increasing the light sensitivity (bigger ISO) and changing the white balance to tungsten--not as successful.

Car as tripod #1

Car as tripod #2
It's amazing how a person uses the same camera
to capture the light-floods above
and then these two pieces of clarity

Deep into the night at 10 pm

dress by Phoebe Couture
clutch by Michael Kors
spiky heels by Guess
(hidden) black earrings by Ruche
chunky bangles from my momma
twist-out by me

Natural light is the best light. That's what I've learned. Also, I love to put one arm on my hip.