Day 41

41/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

This is my friend Rachel, and she is a goober.  
I love Rachel. She is like, 7 foot 11 inches tall and silly as a goose. We met when she awkwardly poked her head into my dorm room and butted in on our conversation, and we've been friends ever since. If you know anything about Rachel, you know that she tends to be on the awkward side. She embraces it though, and it's one of the most endearing parts about her personality. 


She is leaving to study abroad in the Netherlands today, so I had to get a shot of her before she left. She's notorious for sleeping in and for having some intense nap sessions, so I was pumped that she actually got up early and walked through the foggy abyss so that I could take her picture. I call her my ogress (because she's a giant when compared to me), so naturally I wanted to shoot her in nature. When we started off, we tried some more serious poses, and they looked good, but they didn't look like Rachel. It was when she started doing weird stuff, like eating the trees (above) or making faces, that she came alive. Those were the best photos by far, and I'm stoked on how they turned out. Rachel truly is comfortable with being awkward, and I love that about her. 


I set up a flash for this portrait, but my batteries were pretty much dead, so it only fired once out of every 3 frames or so. It didn't fire on this frame, so it was all natural light. Luckily it was cloudy and foggy, so the light was good and I got away with it. Nothing fancy about this one. 


After the shoot we talked for a little bit and said our goodbyes. We figured it out, and I probably won't see her until Day 180 or so, it is very depressing. As we walked away, we both looked back, and we yelled a conversation across the park. In true awkward Rachel fashion, her parting words to me were "when do you get internet", and I answered "hopefully on Monday", and then we went our separate ways.


I wish her all the best, and hopefully she'll come back with some great stories and a funky accent!