Charlotte goes US

Ever since I was little I wanted to study abroad. To be more specific: in the United States. You shouldn't ask me why back then, because I would say: "because it's cool". Maybe it was because I saw some American movies, I listened to American music or because I ate American food? America was (and is) everywhere. But then I grew older and this simple idea of studying in the US, also grew bigger. Wouldn't it be great to really study over there? And even more important: to just have fun and enjoy one year full of meeting new people, the nice weather and get to know the real American culture? And that is why I signed up for the study photographics and journalism at Santa Barbara city college. Together with STS (an organiazation who used to do High school programms, but now have one for college), my parents and I did all the registration work and soon all of this will become reallity. On the sixteenth of july I will fly to the States to start my adventure. And this blog is to keep you posted!

[charlotteknegt]

Time to go Back...

So, after all this time in SB, it is time to go home. Time has flown by and I'm sad and happy at the same time. Sad because I'm going to miss this beautiful place and all the people I met. I will definitely miss playing basketball here, kayaking on the sea, seeing dolphins every now and then, having beautiful weather all the time and being close to all the cool places like LA, San Francisco, etc. But I'll value the things I learnt, about all different kinds of things, and the memories I made (quite some!). At the same time I will be happy to come home to see everybody again... And River! :)

For now, just enjoy some music, just because I can finally say these songs are suitable for my life ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o8nZ_dZOC0 (You have to see the whole clip of this one1 :) )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bnX-6sJZBw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V6lUCdRm3I (I know this one from the movie we saw on the Pier, so it is suitable :p)

[charlotteknegt]

About a week ago, I heard there is a park in SB where they have turtles. Of course I had to check this before I went home. And here they are! Cute :)

[charlotteknegt]

IBS Luncheon

Yesterday, we had a lunch with IBS to say goodbye to everyone and to receive our IBS-certificates. It was in a really nice restaurant in SB and there was nice food, which is always nice :P. The IBS-representatives (even from Sweden) where all there to give us our certificates. It was fun, but also sad to say goodbye to everyone.....!

Like in the last posts, I still wait for photos. I'm sorry I can't post them yet, but they'll come!

[charlotteknegt]

Ok, one last time!!!!  :(

[charlotteknegt]

Graduated!

The end of the year is getting REALLY close and since I  have earned a photojournalism certificate for the classes I took here over the year, I was invited to join graduation! Most people there have been at this school for 2 years, but there were some (IBS'ers) that have attended SBCC for a certificate. And I'm so glad I did a certificate, because it was so much fun to do this! We all had to buy those gowns and caps as you see in the movies and after a boring rehearsal in the morning the real graduation was in the end of the day. We all had to go up on stage, hand the readers a paper with our name, earned degree/certificate and what we will do next year, in order to get a case without diploma, because those will be ready in three weeks.... Of course I seriously filled out this form for the reader, but some people just wrote down they would work on being extra nice for their mum etc. It was funny.  

We had there 45 minutes before the ceremony to line up and get ready...

And when we sat down, it looked like this, really  professional!

When the ceremony started, she literally told us to took a selfie!

And after the ceremony! The stash around my neck says "student athlete", which you can't see, but I think is pretty cool :)

And what do we do when we're done with school? We go to Mexico, or Hawaii, or whatever summer paradise we can find :p!

It was really cool to be a part of the 2014 Graduates and it was the perfect place to see a lot of people for the last time :(!

More photo will follow, but I have to wait for school and Fanny to get them :)

[charlotteknegt]

Photo II Final

My last class to end was Photo II. We had a written and a practical exam. The practical was my last photo assignment in SB! We had to apply "all we learnt" this semester about night photography. Especially about the use of lights. I went to campus to shoot this, to be honest without much inspiration, since it was a really vague assignment, but here are some "fun" pictures I made at night:

And here is the one I used as my final:

[charlotteknegt]

Hiking!!!!!!

The last week I have been hiking twice (and I am sore!). The first time, on Wednesday, with Fanny, the second time was this morning with Sheryl. But times were great! It is so beautiful out here. With Fanny I stayed in SB (since we didn't had a car it was pretty hard to actually get to a hiking trail) and with Sheryl we went to Montecito, especially there it was beautiful We were surrounded by nature. Where in SB you will always still be able to see the city, in Montecito you'll be surrounded by mountains full of trees :p. But since I only had my phone with me on Wednesday (I also brought my camera, but forgot the memory card......), here are some photos from that great hike:

As I said, it is hard to get to a trail without a car. I found this one on the internet and since it is called Jesusita trail, I knew how to get there; it was where our holiday cabin was during winter break! The hike was pretty intense. It was 8 miles straight up. We understood from the internet that it would be a roundtrip, but at the end, when the trail stopped all of the sudden, we were lost. Luckily, after going the wrong way 3 times, we found a trail down and we ended up in the civilized part of SB again : ).

Almost at the beginning of our hike (at a path like this photo) we heard something scary. We heard "sssssssssssssssssssjjj", so of course we stopped to look what it was. Then we heard "ssssssssssssssssjjjjjhh" again and we saw something black move right next to us. Then we ran away... We had seen an evil snake.... For the next hour or so we jumped at every sound we heard in the leaves. Luckily, after being scared by dozens of lizards, we realized we wouldn't run into a snake again and it got easier to ignore the cute geckos :)

It's so pretty out here! The last photo is actually a panorama, but I believe you can't really see that. But that was our view after 2,5 hours of climbing up!

On top of the world :)

As I said we ended the hike down in SB again. To be specific, in front of the History museum of SB. They had this in front of the building; a whale! :O

It looks like some kind of dinosaur....

It was great to enjoy these hikes before I go home to flat Holland soon. More photos will follow, but I'm waiting for Fanny to send them to me :)

[charlotteknegt]

I had to color correct these images for my final assignment for color management. A beer, a glass of water and especially the snake is really interesting.... Anyway, this was the last time I had to do this. Another class is over after these short 16 weeks of the spring 2014 semester! I honestly do have learnt a lot from this one!

[charlotteknegt]

End of Ad Campaign

Something small and funny we had to end with for Graphic Design was to come up with a Guerilla Ad (or Gorilla as some of my classmates call it...). It is advertisement for a company in an active way, like flash mobs, or other weird but memorable actions. What I came up with for Fanbase was to give out free T-shirts to the suporters at game days and make them cheer really loud. This is what it would look like:

That would give some attention to Fanbase :)

And these would be stickers to distribute. They should be everywhere in Heiloo!! :D 

We finished Graphic Design last week with a presentation of our overall ad campaign. Unfortunately, I can't show you that, since it is interactive and I can't upload the kind of file to Tumblr. Just believe me that it looked cool ;). And yet again, another class that finished!

[charlotteknegt]

The day after we went to the beach we came back to do what we initially planned on doing: SUPing! It was super busy, a lot of SUP'ers, but that made it really fun! Besides people standing on surfboards, there were a lot of seals, again :D

[charlotteknegt]

Afternoon at the Beach!

Last week, it was crazy hot. Records for Santa Barbara were broken. It was the warmest May 15th ever! And what do you do with this weather if you live right next to the ocean? You go to the beach! :) That's what Fanny and I did :). Here are some photos!

I think this seal was also really hot :(

Our view, not too bad :)

Ok, the water was still pretty cold.... :)

But still nice with this warm weather :)

I have this underwater case for my camera. This is what the water looks like here in SB.........

And this is how the water sees us....

And of course swimming here means swimming with wildlife. Mostly Seals :)

[charlotteknegt]

250 berichten!

[charlotteknegt]

The last assignment I did for the school paper (ever...) was at the athletes spring signing day. It was for the SBCC athletes that are going to play for other schools next year. Here at City Colleges you are eligible to play sports for your school for two years. After that you have to look for advanced colleges where you hopefully can continue playing. Biggest part of the signing ceremony were my own teammates, which was really fun! 6 of them found new schools to go to and 5 of that group are even going to the same school!

[charlotteknegt]

Just like Photo II, it was time for a 10-print portfolio for Color Management. The assignment was really open, you could use any photo you wanted, as long as it was color corrected and enhanced good enough for printing. The down site for me was that the photos have to be shot in a Raw format (which is bigger than the standard Jpg format all cameras shoot in) in order to have enough file info to put through Photoshop. Since I didn't knew that before I came here in SB, I didn't had that much great and diverse images I could use. Altogether I still think my portfolio turned out OK.. :)

[charlotteknegt]

These are all photos you have seen before, but I wanted to show them to you as one piece; my Photo II portfolio! I have one more practicum due somewhere this week and then I'm done with the whole course. Time flew by so fast!!

[charlotteknegt]

Last weekend, I went trail riding with my teammate Sheryl and her family. It was her birthday and she invited me to come. I had never ever heard about this and it was only an hour away from my place! 

We went horseback riding for about 2 hours through the beautiful nature here. Without any experience, I was lucky to have the easiest horse, named Ghost (yes, I was the Ghostrider ;p, lame joke I know) that knew where he had to go. I only had to keep him from eating greens, which was everywhere around us...The first part of the trail was mainly climbing up onto the mountains and after a while we had this amazing view! I really enjoyed it, it was great! 

[charlotteknegt]

Friday a week ago, there was a ceremony for the students that got onto the President's Honor Roll. The president in this case is the school's and I believe the students who are eligible for this are the ones with a GPA of 3.0 and higher. And that are a LOT of students, in the flyer we got it said more than 4.000 names! Not everybody showed up though. I don't think more than half of all those names.

It was fun to see how this worked. It was super busy and after a few speeches we all had to come up the stage to say our name and our mayor. After that we received our certificate (well, an empty envelope that we could fill by picking up the real paper at the stand with our name..). Since Rebecca, my roommate, and I were standing in the back, it took a while until we got up that stage. Most people already left, which made it less awkward to stand up there :p. Yet again, it was something fun and special!