Summer

The Film Photography Club (FPC) hosted an event called "Pic Nic"a little pun on "picnic." The idea was simple: just spend some time together, hang out, and enjoy the Secret Garden at ASU. I went during spring break and ended up being the first one there. Not many people showed uponly two or three of usbut honestly, that made the whole thing feel even more intimate and fun.

We had a picnic blanket, played cards, brought some fruit, and spent the afternoon taking photographs. Although most people used film cameras, I brought my digital camera with me. The sun was out, the grass was green, and everything around us felt colorful and vibrant. There were also a few props like bubbles and oranges, which ended up becoming some of my favorite little details from the shoot.

Since it was spring, there were also a lot of flowers around the garden. One of them caught my eye, and I wanted to photograph it in a way that made it stand out from everything around it. I shot it through the surrounding foliage, using the leaves to naturally frame the flower and make it the main subject of the photograph. I really liked how something as simple as changing the way I looked at the scene could turn it into a much more intentional composition.

It was actually my first time in the Secret Garden, and I didn't even know there was an orange tree there. There were oranges scattered around the grass, and I came across one that I thought looked surprisingly good against the green. I photographed it almost like a little still life. The combination of the green grass and the orange immediately stood out to me because of how complementary the colors were. It ended up being one of those simple photographs that I could genuinely see myself using as a wallpaper someday. In fact, that photograph actually ended up in my website's wallpaper section.

The whole atmosphere reminded me of a warm, colorful film photograph, which is where the name "Summer Picnic" came from. It wasn't necessarily summer, but the way everything looked and felt gave me that feeling.

I tried to recreate that aesthetic in Lightroom, and I'm honestly really happy with how the photographs turned out. The final images felt very close to what I had originally imagined when I pictured the Summer Picnic aesthetic.

Overall, this was a really fun shoot. I went into it wanting to create something with a strong film-inspired look, and this event ended up giving me exactly the kind of environment I needed. I'm really satisfied with how the photographs came togetherand, more importantly, with how closely the final result matched the feeling I had in my head when I started.