In my opinion, everyone has something they’re really passionate about. For what I’d like to think is the general majority of the population, it’s going to be their careers. I am still a student in college, finding my mold, where I fit in on this little Earth of ours. Yes, I’m a design student, and I enjoy most every bit of it! But something that really gets me going is Photography. And is seen in most aspects of my life. Especially my most recent, and first non-work road trip.
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For the past couple of months, I’ve been really set on planning a roadtrip of some sort with some friends. After many weeks of talking about it and hyping it up, we (my 3 roommates for next year) finally sat down together and planned one out for our Spring Break, which was to happen the following week. After hours of deliberation and indecisions, we came up with New Orleans because of the food (and a little bit of Bourbon St.) and that Michael and I had already been there before as 20 year olds, so Bourbon St. wasn’t able to be as explored. I personally wanted to do something more “Spring Break”ish because of the Illinois winters, so I really pushed to go to Florida to have some warm weather and beach time (since Louisiana doesn’t really have beaches). St. Petersburg became the best choice because we have another friend who was there because her parents have moved there, and also to check out the Salvador Dalí museum. So it was set. Four friends, New Orleans, St. Petersburg, and a lot of driving.
The quote of “so passionate” stems from this trip.
Throughout this trip, there were many things which were very repetitive. For example: Arguably the top two songs that played on the radio we heard were Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” and Bruno Mars’s “Locked Out of Heaven.” Sleeping in the car – I was the driver, by personal choice (the others offered many times, just so everyone does know) even with times of all three sleeping in sync. Many hugs.
Many “Denise/Nathalie, why are you so perfect/cute?” And last, but not all, “Daryl, you’re so passionate.” Every time I would take out my camera to do some photography one to all three of my friends would shout, “So passionate” since we were on vacation and that photography is one of my jobs on campus, yet, I was still itching for the decisive moment, an image that will spark a memory down the road, a little souvenir of our travels. I was even taking some video (yes, even with all three of them sleeping whilst I was driving) with ambitions to create a video montage of this trip with some motion pictures. In turn, this caused me to generally stray behind the 3 of them to capture some moments.
Funny story: there was even a point in our drive, in the wee (future pun alert) hours of the morning, slowly driving into the winter storm – which I was very thankful to have the energy and might to drive through the early bits rather than the heart of the storm – where I would really need to utilize the bathroom but it wouldn’t be for miles, especially driving at a slower-than-normal-highway-speed of 30-45 mph. So I would stop on the side of the road when there wouldn’t be any drivers anywhere near for quite some time, and my friends would half-wake up, notice me getting out of the car, and they thought I was “being passionate” (taking photos) in the middle of the snow storm we were driving through.
Anyways, back to the image making. I think I’ve covered a lot of the basic stories from our trip.
OH! Before the images, I made a spreadsheet to be able to chug out some fun facts:
From Champaign to New Orleans, New Orleans to St. Petersburg, and then St. Petersburg to Champaign (see map above), the dist. we travelled was 2600 miles exactly.
I took 1100 photos and videos.
We made 15 total bathroom and gas stops.
For the driving, I (total) drank 4 Five-Hour Energy Shots, 4 Monster Rehabs (the 10 calorie lemonade-ice tea flavored one), 2 Dr. Peppers, and 2 cups of coffee. Probably not healthy, but kind of fun since I don’t typically drink these types of drinks.
112 gallons of gas for fuel for the car, at 23 miles per gallon, costing $405
Many foods were eaten: jambalaya, gumbo, po boys, beignets, oysters, lobster, crab, shrimp, fried ice cream, fried snickers bar.
I had a “Hand Grenade” for the first time.
Of the 164.5 hours total of this road trip, 42 hours (~25.5%) was spent in the car on the long distance driving (again, see photo above)
The moment of truth, The slideshow!
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I’m sorry the slideshow is so small! I’m trying to see what I can do about the theme and all that, in a couple days the photos will all be on my Facebook page. So be sure to be following that!
I was most pleased to be able to do some panoramic, stitched images of New Orleans and St. Petersburg.
New Orleans, able to be printed out at 20″x60″
St. Petersburg during the day, as viewed from the pier, 60″x85″
St. Petersburg, at night, viewed from Vinoy, 30″x50″
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If you’d like to relieve my checkbook a little bit from my trip, all of these photos are for sale! Contact me (in person, Facebook, or daryl.quitalig@gmail.com) to inquire about sizes and pricing.
Hope you enjoyed!
Ma vie 