Patrick Jumps

Posted on Sep 21, 2011 in photography

I have 3 brothers – Bill, Danny and Patrick.  We are all pretty close and we all live together here in San Diego so you can imagine the good times that we have.  My brother Bill used to be heavily into Martial Arts and was actually a Black Belt and expert at fighting.  He took a picture in the 80’s which my brother Patrick wanted to emulate.  It is a pretty dramatic picture, I guess you should judge for yourself which person would fill you more with terror if you came at them.

This is the original picture of Bill

The new picture of Patrick

The Lady in Red

Posted on Sep 20, 2011 in photography

I took an interesting shot I liked this weekend.  The picture of course if of Tu and she is sitting on a red couch wearing a beautiful red dress. I liked the shot a lot because it seemed dramatic to me and I liked the colors and contrast.   Las Vegas can be an interesting place to photograph if you are looking for dramatic scenes.  There are lots of them.

Everything Vegas

Posted on Sep 19, 2011 in Travel

Just got back from Las Vegas after celebrating Tu’s birthday weekend there. The trip was quite fun, we stayed at Mandarin Oriental (which I would recommend) and did most of the “Vegasy” things that one would expect.  We did a little gambling – didn’t lose our money which was good.  We did some eating – good noodles, sushi and dim sum.  We did some watching of the Chargers – they did lose.  And visited some of the beautiful hotels and attractions – like the one pictured below.  Vegas was filled with people drinking on the streets.  In fact it seemed like everyone had these big long cups filled with some kind of drink in them.  I am not sure how people can drink so early in the morning and keep drinking all day – that must get kind of tiring.  I took the picture below by setting the camera on the ledge outside of the Bellagio during the light show.  The camera was set at f22 with a 10 second exposure and ISO about 320.

Tu’s Birthday

Posted on Sep 16, 2011 in Family

Today is Tu’s birthday.  She turned 30 today, but to me she will always be Tu.  Get it?  That’s a joke.  Well we are on our way to the airport to go to Las Vegas.  This should be a nice weekend.  Will she gamble away our life savings?  Will she play the $500 dollar slot machines.  Odds are that she won’t because she does not like gambling.  Happy Birthday Tu!

Book of Love

Posted on Sep 16, 2011 in photography

Who wrote the book of love?  Well, no on has that answer but my sister did complete 2 top hit cookbooks in the last 18 months.  The cookbook is so unique combining both interesting pictorials of her food and family and recipes on how to cook the tastiest gluten free deserts you could ever eat.   Erin McKenna started her bakeshop in 2005 and when she started it, we had no idea how successful it would become.  It went from being a New York phenomenon to a national one and she has built locations in 3 states (soon to be 4) and the business is booming.  We are all really proud of her.

I took a picture of her latest cookbook.  The book she wrote comes straight from the heart, and it’s good for it too.

A visit to the Desert

Posted on Sep 15, 2011 in photography

San Diego has many different macro-climates – the ocean, the mountains and the deserts.  The good thing is that you can generally get to all three with a 2 hour drive of wherever you are at.  One moment you can be surfing and the next moment in the mountains skiing.

I went to Borrego Springs which is a national park here in San Diego figuring that the post holiday crowds would be gone and it would be easy to take pictures with no one in them.  Boy was I right.  The place was absolutely deserted (no pun intended).  There was nobody there except for a few rangers.  I decided to take a hike on Palm Canyon Trail.  The first couple of signs on the trail warned me to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes and mountain lions.  I was definitely scared a bit as I hiked over rocks and dry creek beds.  Well, I ended up hiking for awhile and after finding myself drenched with sweat and getting more worried about rattlers by the moment, I turned back.

On the way into the park, I noticed these pretty awesome cloud formations and I took a few shots of the tremendous clouds forming over the desert horizon.

Not 1 but Tu

Posted on Sep 13, 2011 in photography

I was having some fun tonight taking pictures of Tu again tonight.  It was late and she wasn’t exactly in the mood to take pictures but she let me.  It took about 5 minutes and I managed to duplicate her sitting next to herself on the couch.  It’s amazing some of the things you can do with digital cameras and photoshop.

Learning persistence and patience

Posted on Sep 12, 2011 in photography

Photography really helps you understand a lot about yourself. I like to think I am very persistent person, but I am positive that I am not very patient.  That shows I think in a lot of the raw photos that I take.  I tend to take hundreds of pictures in a very short period of time and never stop for breaks when I am shooting something – that is my persistence showing.  But also, many of those photo’s are poorly composed and not crystal clear focus – that is my lack of patience showing.  Luckily in this digital age my lack of patience is forgiven as I just delete any of the photos that are not good – and there are many.  I would say about 50% of my photos are discarded right off the bat, and another 25% deleted after a second go through.  I focus on fine tuning the rest of those photos with PhotoShop and some remarkable software from NIK Software (a company based here in San Diego).

I took the shot below in Vinh Long Vietnam.  For about 5 days straight I was trying to capture a good shot outside of Tu’s home there.  Each day I ended up with an array of non-inspiring shots that didn’t really convey anything about the neighborhood.  On the last day, I finally captured a photo I liked.  Three girls on bikes were sharing a bike ride home during an outright monsoon.  I mean it was pouring rain like you have never seen.  The girls were laughing.  What you do not see before this photo is what setup that shot.  The girls were cycling by and they noticed a crazy white guy standing in the middle of the rain taking pictures. First off they probably rarely so white people in this town, and secondly they probably never saw anybody taking photos in the pouring rain.  You would think based on this photo that they were having a laugh at the cow, but it was in fact me.  This photo is a good example of you can get a good photo but it will oftentimes take a lot of patience and persistence.  In this case it took me about 4 days.