National Orange Show’s Wine and Food Under the Stars, 2011

“Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.”

-- Aristophanes

Another project from that documentary class was doing some coverage for the 24^th Annual Wine and Food Under the Stars fundraiser event at the National Orange Show grounds in San Bernardino.  Of course, this was back in Oct 2011 when I was in that class so these photographs are a bit dated but I’m catching up.  And I liked these.  I liked a lot more of the 200 or so photos I took but this is a good sample of the better ones.  And if you ever go to this event, it is a lot of fun and the food is great.  Not to mention the wine (and beer).  Enjoy.

IE Drive By Photography

The next thing of note that I shot was the beach at Oceanside, CA.  But I had blogged about that already.  Here is the Oceanside Post.  On January 31, 2011, I was compelled to drive and shoot.  I know there must be a program out there for this but I haven’t found it yet.  So I drive and shoot.  The Inland Empire is an awesome place to do that too.  I shot this primarily in Rialto and Fontana on Foothill Blvd (old route 66).  I was using my Canon PowerShot S5 IS on these photos.

The People

Back in February of this year, I was on a roll.  I was drive by shooting any and everything.  Most of those photos do not amount to much unless you are me.  Then it becomes a study of how well I can “drive by” shoot.  One of the things I do a lot when shooting like this is capture people.  They are just random people on the street.  I have volumes of photos to put up here.  I have photographs of models, events, flowers, scenery, family, and more.  However, these people deserve a little attention too.  These shots are not “composed” per se.  I photographed them on the fly, captured moments in time for no particular reason other than to capture the moment in time.  I shot all seven photos using my Canon PowerShot S5 IS.  I have literally a thousand photos like this from February – I am just sharing these seven.  For now.

Old man Jenkins on a walk.  No, I do not know the gentleman’s name.  Just a random capture. 

Fontana police.  This is where I would make an unflattering remark but I will refrain.

This is just a strange coincidence.  I do know this man.  Simply by chance, I caught him walking down the street.  No I won’t tell you his name.  I will tell you that he too is a veteran.

Just another random dude.  I like that edge light action going though.

I was in LA at night around city hall.  This is just a snapshot of life.

As to is this – a snapshot of life.  How contrasting there lives are.

Finally, she’s just getting into her truck.  Or maybe getting out – I do not recall.

Thanks for stopping by.

Entry 16: Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards

I was all over the place this month (parts of Southern California actually).  I took a few hundred photos mostly of places I would like to shoot with models for my model pages.  I do that because it is fun and good therapy.  But I need to find something to do with my camera that pays money because I am not independently wealthy though.  I am not dependently wealthy either.  Yeah, so I took a bunch of photos and I will show you some but I am going to show you something else in this posting.  I took these back in late August 2010 after I had finish doing that celebrity gifting gig.  Well, let me just get the photos up – these were ‘drive by’ photos on Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards of people.  I like doing these kinds of shots – snapshots of life if you will.  And I was playing with Photoshop too.

Nothing special here except for smudging the license plate.  I shot all of these with my Canon PowerShot S5 IS.  You cannot get one of these cameras anymore.  Well, you cannot get one new.  You can get a Canon PowerShot SX30 IS.  More mega pixels, greater optical zoom, better video, and so on.  No hot shoe for an external flash though.  Still, if I had more money, I would add it to my point and shoot collection.  Oh, just because I was hiding under a rock for some time I know that there may be one other person doing the same who just came out and started reading something and it was this blog.  The “IS” at the end of those camera names stands for “image stabilization”.  For us shaky hands people in the world.

I did no Photoshop here either.  I just liked how I captured this moment in time.  Wait a second.  I did do “Photoshop” on every photo – the watermark.  Outside of that, nothing else was done to this photograph.  Do you know any of these people?  Neither do I but they have been forever immortalized here on my blog.

In this shot, I layered the picture.  It’s all the same photo but I cut out the two guys and then pasted them over the original photo that I rasterized (I think) and watermarked.  You see the watermark is underneath the waiter.  I just started doing the watermark that way but I think it looks cool.  It looks like how they do some magazine covers.

Here an elderly couple is crossing the street while I am waiting at the light.  I catch them between the cars and snap them up.  Same deal, I copied the couple from the original shot then layered them on top of the original shot.  I did something to the original shot (color/contrast/saturation) but I do not remember what.  That is not important.  What is important that you can do all sorts of stuff with Photoshop, you just have to take the timer to learn the software’s capabilities.  Same on the watermark, I layered it between my cut out and the main photograph.

This is my homage to the artist Romare Bearden. I left the original photo alone.  I rasterized, or something, my cutouts.  This time the cutouts were on the bottom and the original photograph on top.  The original photo has “holes” it in so you can see the changed photo beneath it.  It looks collage like, though it is a kind of reverse collage.  Just the same, it is collage looking in the Bearden fashion, kind of.  This is my favorite shot of the bunch.

In this shot, the whole photo got the effect.  It looks cool (at least to me it does).  I like the girl on her phone – she is oblivious to the world around her.  Like my ten-year-old when she is on her phone.

I did not alter this shot save for scribbling over the license plate and the watermark.  It is the same photo as the one before but I panned out (wide angle?) for this shot.  I photographed different people because I cannot stop the goings and comings of anyone but you still see the girl on her phone.  It is as if the world outside of her smart phone does not exist.

This last photograph is like the one up close with cell phone girl.  I did the effect to the whole photo – no cutouts.  I think the effect is colored pencils.  It’s cool, I like it.

Well, that is it for this round, ladies and gents.  We will try this again soon.  And thank you again for being my best blog buddy, Anita!

Entry 09: Photographer for artist album cover (Los Angeles)

This is a photography blog.  I keep saying that for my own benefit I think.  Just the same, you run across stuff you just want to share with the world.  However, before I do that:

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."

Abraham Lincoln

Happy New Year to all of you!

Ok, I saw this on Craigslist last month, copied it, and saved it.  I didn’t know where I was going to use it or do with it but it made laugh so hard I almost wet my pants.  It also made me really pissed off after thinking about it because I’m trying to use my camera to earn income too.  So many people out there put little to no value on the trade/art form or whatever the title you want to label you want to paste on photography.  Too many of us are willing to work for free too.  It is a tough nut to crack but we have to deal with those that do not get it and that makes it tougher.  I know I am preaching to the choir so here it is just as I copied it:

Photographer for artist album cover (Los Angeles)

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Date: 2010-11-28, 7:10PM PST

Reply to: gigs-ya2dd-2084472746@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

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It's always funny with the people who have no money to always want the best people to do their work for them and also tell the photographers just how long the shoot will take!! How about loading in and out, setting up and breaking down equipment how about outfit changes, downloading Material to computer to check lighting!! Sounds a lot like a 10 hour day to me for what?! Oh yeah nothing!! Split album income, what are the chances of seeing that money!! Ziltch!! F#%*ing Losers!!! Contact an art school!! That's about all the free anything you deserve!

Done with these idiots! 

•Location: Los Angeles

•it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

•Compensation: You get what you pay for!

This is a photography blog though so here are some photos.  I love it when I have a camera in my hands with my finger on the trigger:

This was nothing special, just a basic shot with my Canon PowerShot A540 on Aug 1, 2010, in the waiting room at the Chevy dealership waiting to get the car fixed.  I shot it from my lap so as not to alert anyone.  No flash and shot in basic Program AE setting (party mode! – a popular setting for me).  I forgot about the photo.  Later after I downloaded the images (I wanted to so say, “after I developed the film”), I looked at the shot for some time.  I thought it was really a cool looking photograph.  It is surreal.  Woman to my left and man to my right.  None of us socializing because we do not do that anymore.  I mean, I was not feeling like talking either.  I think everyone in there was wondering how they were going to pay for the bill.  There is the box of donuts, the coffee station, the flat screen and more stuff.  It is Americana.

This shot was taken in Fort Worth on Jul 18, 2008 with my Canon PowerShot S5 IS.  I think I mentioned once or twice that I am a loyal Canon-nite.  It is one of the angels on the Bass Performing Arts building in downtown Cow Town.  I lived in Texas for 4 and half years.  My longest stay in any one place since I was I was born.  Really.  I find it difficult to comprehend myself but I was a resident at that address longer than any other.  Wow.  Ok, the angel – just a cool picture, man!  I was set on “shutter speed priority” at 1/1600 shutter speed, black & white, at 24.5mm focal length, normal stuff.  It’s a bad ass shot though!

Did I mention that I am an Army veteran of 20 years?  I was in the first Gulf War in 1990/1991 (Desert Shield/Storm).  I was in the war on terror, Operation Iraqi Freedom from February 2003 through February 2004 in Iraq.  Did I mention any of this before?  That is neither here nor there really.  I just cannot forget so I take photos of things like this.  I even did a photography class assignment on memorials for veterans (yeah, I took photo 101 in the fall of 2009 at Tarrant County College – best thing I ever did concerning photography – I was shocked just how much I didn’t know).  I will have to show some of those photos one day.  This one was not a part of that series.  I shot this with my Canon EOS Rebel XS on May 31, 2010 (you can get a good deal at Adorama).  I was using the Aperture-Priority AE mode (my favorite) at F-stop 3.5 (which did not render any real shallow depth of field because I was so far back).  The focal length was 18mm and shot in monochrome (well, black & white is for other cameras, not DSLRs).  What I really need is a good wide-angle lens like the Canon EF 28 1.8 USM so I can really F-stop something – you feel on that, right?

I know, all that talk about Canon this and Canon that and here I am using my BlackBerry Bold 9000 to take a photo.  Well, Canon does not make a smart phone.  Hey, now that is an idea.  I digress: I was making breakfast for my oldest and I and had this idea on Mar 16, 2010.  So I lined up the eggs and took this shot.  No flash.  Cool isn’t it?  I think so.

And a little homage to my first digital camera, my Canon PowerShot A60.  Did I mention that I am an Army veteran…  Yeah.  I took this shot on Jan 31, 2004 in a warehouse on Camp DOHA in Kuwait.  We had just convoyed back from Iraq (Camp Victory/BIAP) to Kuwait and were in the process of cleaning equipment (including vehicles) to get it prepared for the return trip to the states.  That cleaning process took several days and inspections by Dept of Agriculture trained customs assigned soldiers.  Or something like that.  We all were focused on getting back to Fort Huachuca, AZ, back home.  This picture brings up a lot of memories.  This shot was taken late at night after a day of cleaning and stuff.  I took it without the flash at 5.4mm focal length in the ‘landscape’ shooting mode.  If you look at the details, you may see something interesting and other things that do not mean an anything.  It does not seem that long ago.

Well that is it for my 2010 entries.  Welcome 2011.  And thank you Anita for all the kind words and for following my photographic journey.  Thank you too, Aimz, for following my photographic journey.  And Happy New Year to everybody, again.