So during the Raleigh leg of my NC trip, I snapped photos of the wonderful Alex + Renee on their wedding day. So many of my favorite people were in attendance – the night was definitely a highlight of the trip.
Here are a few shots from the day. (Attendees, you should be receiving a link to the rest of the photos.)
(Sorry Anne. I still think this the cutest picture ever.)
END!
I’m really into film right now. I’m finally getting the hang of my Yashica Mat (which I’ve only had since Christmas), though I’m realizing that horrible eyesight + manual focus = lots of out-of-focus photos. Might be time for me to get hip and invest in some glasses.
Here are some photos from recent adventures (and my new wonderful studio apartment!!! I’ll write more about that later).
This is Brandom, one of my closest bros who now happens to live across the hall from me. He’s petting his firstborn son, Howard Borden.
This is a rather unexpected double-exposure of Aaron’s parents at Baker Beach + my friend Kara at her baby shower.
Dudes at Baker Beach.
Another unexpected double-exposure (Yashica Mats aren’t supposed to take doubles) while adventuring at Land’s End.
A happy Bob at Land’s End.
Scenic Fourloko at Land’s End.
Brandom posing in front of my beeeeeeautiful apartment view.
Moi.
Moi in color.
Books in need of a bookshelf.
A view of my new room!
Me + Howard. (Photo by Brandom)
Sitting on my fire escape. Word cannot describe how much I love this place.
Life is good.
Ok, that’s all for now. More updates soon.
xo,
hp
A few more shots from the Yashica Mat…
Last weekend was primarily centered around family-related stuff. For one, Aaron’s family was in town for the weekend, and in addition to that, I was planning to meet my sister on Friday night, for the first time ever. (Background story on that here.)
We made plans to meet at Minibar, in my neighborhood. I headed over, ordered a greyhound, found my perch and buried myself deep into my mobile phone while I waited for her to arrive. I was still buried when I heard “Helena? Is that you?”
So right off the bat, my sister is f*cking gorgeous and amazing. She looks so much like my dad. We gave each other a big hug, sat right down and got to catching up. I really had no idea how I’d react, but it wasn’t a teary emotional event at all. We had already gotten through all of that through our online correspondence. At this point, we were just in disbelief and general excitement that we were actually together in real life.
We spent the rest of the night drinking girly drinks (because that’s what sisters do) and talking about EVERYTHING. It’s pretty bizarre how much you can have in common with someone you just met.
So, in summary, my sister is awesome and I actually know her in real life now. 2011 is great so far.
Next up was adventure time with Aaron’s parents, Bob and Roberta (the Bobs, if you will).
I love the Bobs. They are perched up in Portland, but both lived (and actually met) in San Francisco. From time to time they get homesick enough to come down for a visit.
We explored Baker Beach…
ate pork buns on Clement…
wandered through museums…
and climbed around Land’s End, among other things.
That’s all for now. More updates soon!
hp
Last night I went to Oakland in a green jumpsuit. That is all.
[^ photo by Mick Frederick]
In fact, I’ve had one my entire life. I just had no idea.
Long story short:
It was almost four years ago. I was on tour with American Aquarium. We were playing a show at The Evening Muse in Charlotte, NC, with Jeremy Fisher and the North Labrea All-Star Conquistadors (to be specific). I was turning 20 at midnight.
(photo from that night)
I was sitting at the merch table, blogging away (writing this one, actually), and I check my MySpace inbox to find a message from a Brandi Price – my older sister. At this point, I’d never heard anything about a sister. Needless to say, this came as a little surprise.
My dad had died a few weeks ago, and apparently in the sorting through of his estate it was discovered that he in fact had another child. The estate lawyer contacted her and provided her with information that eventually led to her finding me on MySpace. She unfortunately never met my dad, and had no idea who he was until receiving the news that he was dead.
All of this was a bit emotionally taxing, if you will, but man, it’s an exciting feeling to discover you have another sibling! Interacting with her was amazing – she has an eerily similar sense of humor and even writing style to me – I sometimes felt like I was writing to myself. Genetics at work, I suppose.
Brandi and I obviously had a lot of catching up to do. The next six months were filled with long letters back and forth, ranging from lining up our pasts to talking about boyfriends. It was awesome. And then… she disappeared. Her messages stopped coming, and eventually she deleted her MySpace account completely, without a word.
I’ve spent the last two and some years incessantly searching the depths of the internet for her (how can someone related to me be so hard to find online?), I had pretty much given up on finding her again.
Then, Saturday morning, I check my inbox to see an email from Brandi Price.
Guess what? She lives an hour and a half from San Francisco, and we’re grabbing a drink on Friday. I finally get to meet my freaking sister.
23 years late, but it’ll do. 
Hi all! As I mentioned in my last blog, I’ve made a plan to get healthy again, and will be keeping the interwebs posted as a means of accountability/reason to keep it up.
…and by the way, it’s actually working.
This has been my process so far:
Results: *
* No, I’m not intending to sound like an infomercial, and no, I am not obsessed with my measurements. I didn’t even own a scale until a week ago. I just like seeing and tracking data, especially as motivator for change.
More Notes: I eat a lot, and continued to eat a lot this week – just of protein and vegetables instead of noodles and sandwiches. I am way less hungry, have no sharp jumps in blood sugar (crazy shaky hunger attacks and random sleepy/dizzy spells = gone), and am actually spending significantly less money on food than normal (more grocery shopping/cooking at home).
Holy shit. This is actually working.
I also just ordered some workout equipment to use at home, in addition to going to the gym. I’m not really prone to building muscle, but I’m going to try to put some muscle-y pounds on these bones.
More updates to come!
hp
A coworker recently told me (endearingly) that I am a habitual planner. Funny, I had never sit down to think about it, but I’ll be damned if I am not, in fact, a habitual, borderline-obsessive planner. I make resolution after resolution throughout the year, related to health, productivity, work, life, you name it. I don’t necessarily carry all of these plans out, but I just keep on planning anyway.
Reasons could be:
Now don’t confuse the dissatisfaction with lack of appreciation or optimism – believe me, I appreciate every good and mediocre and awful experience I’ve ever had in my lifetime. Rather, I just don’t like to sit around. I feel like there’s always something new or better that can be done, and I have a need to pursue it.
So in the last year I’ve made AT LEAST 3 major plans around getting healthy, ranging from running every day (if you know me well, you know that I’ve never run in my life, but I actually did this for a while), going to the gym every day (also did this for a while), going on a whole-grains/fish/vegetable diet, going vegan, then going 90% vegan…. the list goes on.
Well, I have a new plan, and I think it’s finally time for me to not half-ass it and actually make this work.
I recently stumbled upon this blog post in Gizmodo, essentially an excerpt from Tim Ferriss’ Four-Hour-Body, describing what he calls “the slow-carb diet.” By that night, I had the book and was 200 pages in.
In a nutshell, the slow-carb diet is as follows:
I really don’t find this diet to be daunting. I love vegetables, legumes, and proteins, and can think of plenty of ways to cook them. And for whatever I feel like I’m missing out on, I can just eat it on my break-day.
So last night, Aaron and I went shopping at Trader Joe’s, bought a ton of cheap veggies and beans and lentils and meat, grabbed a scale and tape measure from the neighboring hardware store, and headed home to get started. I’ll be measuring my progress (literally) every week, & posting updates on the blog as a means to keep myself motivated.
My goal is to lose 20 pounds of fat, and gain 5 or so pounds of muscle, leaving me with a 15-pound loss total. I know 20 pounds sounds like a shitton, but I’m 5’9″. The changes on me aren’t THAT drastic. For instance, I lost almost 40 pounds from 2007 to 2008 and it didn’t look like I lost a human or anything. Either way, I’m looking forward for getting back into the healthy-zone.
Helena at biggest, 2007: 157 pounds
Helena at healthiest, 2008: 130 pounds
Helena at medium, now: 143 pounds
That’s all for now from the healthy train. I’ll have updates for you next week!
hp
YAY!
Seriously guys, I’ve been wanting a new site forever. The other one looked fine and all, but it was extremely limiting in a variety of ways:
1) I couldn’t post a blog without a photo to accompany it. That’s silly. What if I just want to post a word or two (like this post, for instance)?
2) With the old design you could only browse one post at a time, and in a way, this made me feel like every post I made had to be some epic production. Maybe this was possible when I was touring or traveling, but these days, not so much. I now need something better suited to casual scrolling.
3) I had no leeway with the design. I couldn’t add a sidebar, nothing. Also silly.
4) It was a free WordPress template that anyone could copy and use for themselves. I’d rather have something a bit different.
So I’ve slowly been working on this new design, on and off, for probably 10 months now. I would have loved for it to happen sooner, but I am teaching myself HTML and CSS as I go, and that, in combination with being busy with life in general, made the learning/researching/coding an exhausting and timely process. I still have a ton of kinks to work out, but I think it’s ready enough to make live and just go with it until I read some more tutorials and stare at the code long enough to figure it out (or until I get a headache and back off again).
ALSO – I’ve gone back and added a ton of epic old stories from touring and traveling – I had never posted them online other than in my old email list and on my MySpace blog (throwback). Feel free to browse through them by clicking on “travel stories” or “tour stories.”
Again, YAY! Happy 2011.
xo,
hp
Ooooh 2010.
2010 has been a very unique year for me. It’s probably the most stable my life has been in at least five years – staying put in one city, stable income, relationship, 9-5 schedule – quite an adjustment for me. That said, it’s still been a year full of big changes, developments, preferences formed, lessons learned.
Most of the big changes came in March. I was working a job that, despite sounding pretty cool, made me quite miserable. I felt incredibly overworked and undervalued, and spent a good bit of early 2010 quietly hunting for jobs, though quiet jobs hunts never seem to be too productive. Fortunately (though it didn’t seem that fortunate at the time), I got fired. I immediately tweeted that I needed a job, and within five days, got hired by an incredible communications firm, where I still work today.
Around the same time, I met Aaron. Upon meeting him I was pretty sure he’d end up being my boyfriend. Sure enough, still is.
I’ve gone through a series of quarter-life crises over my photography, professional life, etc., but I continue to meet and work with folks that bring out the best in me and value what I bring to the table. As 2010 comes to a close, I’m surrounded by people who value and appreciate me, and that is the best gift I could possibly fathom receiving.
2010 largely set the stage for 2011, and I’m prepared to have an even better year-in-summary 12 months from now. So that said, 2010, you were good to me, but I’m ready to put you to rest. Move along now.
Anyway. Here are some photo-highlights from 2010. As I was sorting through my year in photos today, I noticed that this year in retrospect felt significantly shorter than 2009 – largely because I didn’t actually take many photos or write blogs this year. Frankly, that sucks. So in 2011 I vow to start taking more photos and blogging again, if anything, for the sake of my own sustained memories – that’s why I started this blog in the first place.
So, for those of you who read this from time to time, hi, and thanks for reading.
Happy new year!
hp
2010 recap photos:
Visiting North Carolina.
Having visitors from North Carolina.
Photogging SF music makers.
SFMOMA times.
Underground times.
Above ground times.
Dolores babies.
Road trips to Santa Cruz.
..and then driving until you reach Hermosa Beach by morning.
The first of many photo adventures with Aaron.
Lake Tahoe.
Wondercon.
Megavisits.
Road trips to Portland.
SF photo adventures.
Getting a Minolta for my birthday, and immediately becoming obsessed w/ film.
Visits from Yogi & Party Boy.
Exploring California.
Heading back to North Cack to shoot Hopscotch Music Festival, visit family & friends, and intro Aaron to the dirty south.
Baker Beach times.
Business meetings in LA…
Visits from Erin & JT.
Riding holiday trains through Niles Canyon.
Getting a Yashica Mat for Xmas, and shooting medium format for the first time (something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time).
END!
