Sabbatical

Hey guys,

Thanks for viewing all my photography.  This project has been great fun. 

I do however think that I need to take a break for a while.  I may still post a couple times a month but my posting will be significantly less.  If I do not start back up sooner, I would like to post again in the summer.

I will post links to some of what I have been up to instead of photographing.

I love you all!

Ashtray

An extension of
The Laramie Project

 I took some detail photographs in addition to the ones that I used for The Laramie Project.  Here is one of the details of the mail boxes.

Baseball

Well I said that I would post some more photographs of the mailboxes, so here they are.  The whole entryway is just fascinating.  I love the contrast of the poster with the baseball.  The poster represents an anarchist website, crimethinc.com and the baseball seems to represent the traditional American culture, American Dream and American lifestyles.

The Laramie Project

The Church with Red Doors

This church is known as the "church with red doors."  It has shown up in past photography and will show up again, I am sure.  It is not in The Laramie Project yet, maybe it should be.

Window decor

The Laramie Project

Not Quite Sure

The Laramie Project

The stairway down to the laundry room is pretty knarly. There are spots like this all over. It must be from someone dragging a dead body down the stairs. I like the way that the photo turned out it looks like these spots are being picked up with some sort of crazy sci-fi fluid remain detector.

Stairway to Heaven

The Laramie Project

This stairway really leads to a semi-hostel style apartment. The top of these starts come out at a door that leads to a hallway with mirrors and a kitchen. I am not sure if the kitchen has a door or not. The hallway also has several other rooms. You buy the rooms and share the kitchen. There is also permanent artwork installed in the hallway.
Regardless of whether you the living situation would b heaven or not, this stairway is beautiful enough to take you to heaven.

Pennzoil

The Laramie Project

This can of yuck has been sitting here for some time. It was in the same spot the last time we lived in this building.

Got Mail?

The Laramie Project

I love love love this entry to these apartment buildings. The old mailboxes seem to represent the people that have lived her but also the changing of people. The boxes house more than mail. One is used regularly as an ash try, another stored trash, and yet another a baseball.

There is a poster above that is addressing gender roles. The Crimethinc poster contrasts with the baseball representing the American norm. Love it! Maybe I will post the detail photos that I took at a later date.

What A Gas

The Laramie Project

Well I think that these are measuring some form of energy that we are using. The pattern that this gauges create is gorgeous.

I Miss Home

The Laramie Project

Well, not really. There are aspects of the time that I spent in Rapid City that I miss, but every time I go back they aren’t the same anyways. This path reminds me of some of the areas in Art Alley.

Bright Light

The Laramie Project

This photograph is of the light at the end of the hall.

Its All in the Details

The Laramie Project

The architecture in the building is fascinating throughout. This is one of the many wall corners. I love the details. I am not sure what these are called and doubt that many residents have noticed their existence, but someone had to design each of these. I would guess that they were carved by hand, considering how old he building is. This style appears in the stairways and in various apartments.
Our apartment has circular archways into the kitchen and dining room. The archways don’t come down in a straight line but create full circle. There are circular pieces of wood throughout. Out neighbors have one bedroom and three bathrooms. One of the bathrooms has been turned into a closet with wood over the tub and pipes sticking out in various directions. This detail is a great testament to the artistic architecture throughout the building.

Disgustingly Beautiful

The ceiling in the entryway to The Connor is disgustingly beautiful. It is old but has character, like my grandma. My grandma is crazy, racist and one of the most wonderful women I know. Not sure where that came from…

The Laramie Project

Wall Corner

One of many photographs from The Laramie Project.

An Alleyway

An alleyway…
From: The Laramie Project

Front Door? Back Door

The Laramie Project

I loved this doorway with the stairs and leading lines.  The amount of bikes in this back alley with beat up buildings has a sense of beauty that I cant quite explain.

I am not sure whether this is the front door or the back door.  My guess is that it is a back door to an apartment, but it is difficult to say.

The Laramie Project

One afternoon I decided that I should attempt a photography project.  The next 15 (or so) images will be from that project.  My guidelines were originally to take images around where I live, in downtown Laramie, WY.  Most of these images are from the Connor apartments in which I live.  The Connor is and old hotel and rumor has it, a brothel.  The architecture inside is gorgeous and certainly full of character.

I present to you, The Laramie Project

Dancing Starfish

 I love this guy.  He is too cute

Barnicles

These creatures create some of the most gorgeous textures on the rocks.

Sky and Ocean

Where does the sky end and the ocean begin?

Pirate Movie Scene

The sky in Washington was so gorgeous.  It gave everything a misty feel/look. 

Seaweed

adadsas

Driftwood in The Water

Here is a sweet piece of driftwood.

Ocean Shore

Felicia Follum Art & Design

Driftwood

I am still fascinated by the fact that these pieces of wood can kill people.  They are huge so that part makes sense, but they are huge.  Imagining how much water it would take still amazes me.

Rock Stacks on Ruby Beach

 

I had fun building these guys.  Jim built one too.  I took every other one and soaked it in water to create the dark stones.

The next series of images will be in grayscale.  Many of them will be from the summer.   I want to train my eye to see in black and white and learn to understand the inherent value of colors.  Many of these images will be from the summer.  Of course there will be new ones, but fewer since school has started.

Sunflower

I loved this sunflower. It was neat to see all of the bees swarming the flowers. This is one of my favorite images.

Felicia Follum Art & Design

Tall Sunflower

I really like how this sunflower looks so tall in the photograph.  The angle allowed me to catch the height that these flowers possessed.

Hibiscus

I was never one of the girls to have the hibiscus flowers all over my car and other possesions. After living in a place and seeing the flower I am becoming a huge fan of hibiscus flowers. This is a photograph of a flower in our front yard. The pedals are about the size of my four fingers and half of my palm. There are some larger (and smaller) hibiscus flowers in the area. It is neat to see a flower this size in you front yard.

Bells

I went to a flower camp with my mother-in-law a couple summers ago, and since then I always look for wild flowers. It was neat because we identified over 100 flower species in the Rocky Mountains. I didn’t realize how many of the same flowers would also be in the forest in WA state.

My favorite aspect of this photograph is the contrast of color. Not only the green and pink but also the pink and white.

~FF

Calla Lilly

This was the first time that I had ever seen a love Calla Lilly (not in a flower shop). I really liked this photograph with the old wood chair in the background. It gives it the old rustic feel but at the same time it has the Ocean Shores beach town feel.
This second image has a fun composition. I like the way the Calla Lilly frames the other flowers.
~FF

Lilies

The orange and blue complement each other well. It seems that there are two color combinations going on here complimentary (blue and orange) but also an analogous (blue, yellow and green) color scheme. There is also an interesting mix of warm foreground colors and cool background colors.

This photo also has the Ocean Shores beach town feel. The color of the wood in the background was very common throughout the town. The only thing missing is a couple buoys and sailor statues.

~FF

Waterfall

This image was taken in the Quinault Rainforest.

~FF

Fern

I love love love the texture in this image. The greens are gorgeous. Interesting fact: The ferns that look fernier have their seeds on the bottom. (My husband pointed this out.)

~FF

Mushrooms

These were interesting. It seems like they are designed to catch water or food in the cup on top. It was neat because they were about 3 feet from our tent. I am not sure if they grew over night or if we were just lucky yo not set the tent on top of them.

~FF

l plant

I am not quite sure what to say about this guy. Jim pointed him out to me for my photographing letters project. I think he is goofy. If you look closely their are spirals coming off the big spiral.

~FF

Spikey Plant

This plant is another example of the detail that went into creation. Who would have thought to put spikes all over the stem and the leaves? These plant had large pricklies growing out of the tops and bottoms of the leaves where the slugs were found on other plants.

~FF

Life & Death

Forest fires and rotting wood don’t seem like positive aspects of nature, but they are often the most gorgeous areas. When hiking through a burn area there are often gorgeous golden banner and fireweed. Fires help keep a forest healthy and show signs of new life. Dead trees often become covered with their own eco systems. This image is of a bright green plant popping through a fallen tree that has been rotting for some time.

~FF

Painted Leaves

A reoccurring theme throughout our trip to the ocean was the incredible amount of detail that can be seen in both large and small aspects of nature. The mountains are gorgeous, the trees are huge (the largest Redwood in the word), the tiny orchids and other wild flowers and these leaves.

I don’t know what these leaves have on, or in, them but they seem to be painted in extreme detail. It seems like a fungus or disease. It is incredible that a disease would be this gorgeous.

~FF

Giant Slug

I have grown up seeing slugs that are about a half inch long. These slugs would hang out in my grandmas garden or in our front yard. The slugs in Washington, both by our house in the dessert, and in the rain forest are mammoth in comparison. This was taken in a small rain forest in Ocean Shores.

Felicia Follum Art & Design

~FF

Spiders

I really like the black and white on the top image.
The shadow on the spider (in the bottom photograph) makes it extra scary to me.

These huge spiders were in the entrance way to a mens bathroom at the campground we stayed at. There were about 9 or 10 spiders in the doorway. I went to the bathroom around 2 in the morning and found these. That is when I decided to take some photographs. It was much more difficult than I expected. It may have been because it was the middle of the night.

~FF

Rock Stacks on Ruby Beach

Here is my version of the traditional (somewhat cliche) smooth rock stacks.
They were all the same value so I soaked every other one to make the dark/light contrast.
~FF

Ruby Beach - Rockscapes

The dark rocks create an interesting contrast with the background.

~FF

Ruby Beach

This beach looked like it was used to film a movie on. It reminds me of landscapes in Hook. The big rectangular rock formations were fascinating.

~FF

Beach # 4 - Anemone Crack

They were all over the place. And this wasn't even low tide.

~FF

Beach # 4 – more starfish

There were so stinking’ many of these creatures. They were everywhere. At one point we counted 22. I really like the way they follow the shape of the cracks on this picture.

~FF

Beach # 4 - Dancing Starfish

This guy was just too cute not to post.

~FF

Beach # 4 – anemones

More from the tide pool… It is crazy to me that animals can have colors this bight. There was a community in Lead, SD where one of the rules was that you had to have natural color houses. I always thought it would be funny to have a house that was a bright color just to make a statement (or a scene). Anyways, I think these colors would have worked well.

~FF