It’s Springing up Spring Everywhere
It’s March here in San Diego and springtime is springing up everywhere that you look. Now I must admit we don’t have the terrible winters that you might get back east so Spring does not mean the first flowers poking up through the melting snow or anything like that. Well for us SpringTime is just that beautiful time of year when the weather is perfect and flowers are springing up in all directions. I visited the Carlsbad Flower Gardens today and it was in full bloom. Beautiful spring day in San Diego.
4 Geno’s are better than 1
What is better than 1 Geno? The answer is simple – 4 Geno’s. For good boys eating all their food groups at the same time. Camille helped me set up this fun shot and we had a great time taking it. As usual Geno was a fantastic model and subject.
When we were young
When you come from a large family you tend to have lots of photographs of your childhood. My dad always had cameras and film equipment to capture holidays and memorable moments. While he was persistent he wasn’t necessarily a great photographer. He was truly a point and shoot guy that would probably do very well in the digital age but the age of film that point and shoot mentality just meant a lot of unusable photographs.
Last month I started a very ambitious project to archive the best family photos by having them scanned in digitally so that we could share them and use them for whatever they needed. The first step involved going through tens and thousands of photographs sitting in my mom’s closet to determine what was even usable. That process took at least 20 hours and I ended up throwing about 10,000 photos directly into the trash either because they were duplicates or because there was nothing in the photograph that was remotely part of the family. You see my dad was the kind of guy that would take pictures of anything – the mailman, the grocer, the fuller brush man passing through the neighborhood. I mean there were so many pictures of people that really had nothing to do with us and had no real need to be in our archive. After trashing about 10,000 photos I was left with probably around 10,000 photos that were remotely useable. The next step was deciding what was important enough to scan and pay the 20 cents to have it digitally archived. That process was really arduous and took about 3 full days to complete. I ended up with about 2,000 photos that I felt were archive worthy.
So the scanning company took my 2,000 photos and sent them off to India to be scanned in my cheap labor no doubt. It took about 4 weeks but they finally scanned all of the images in and then sent me a proof sheet to approve them. I just ended up approving them all since I really didn’t want to make those $1 an hour employees feel bad about the work they had done. I am sure that there is some sort of mechanism there in India where they only get paid on what gets approved by the buyer. I wanted nothing to do with scrimping someone of their payday so I just approved them all.
This week the CD arrived and I had a huge number of digital photos of my family that are actually pretty good. I would say at least 1,500 of them are pretty good. Over the next 3 weeks I will be compiling galleries for each person in the family so that they can have all their baby pictures and see themselves when they were young. That was the whole point of this project – to help my brothers, sisters, mom and dad remember the times when they were young.
The Fendley’s
I spent Thursday afternoon up in the beautiful town of Encinitas at the home of the Fendley’s. We were taking family pictures for a special project that they are working on. It was a great day and as usual I always find myself having the most fun taking pictures when I am taking pictures of people that I know and love. It is so much easier to be able to take pictures when you know the people and everyone is comfortable. When you do, you can take the most personal pictures of them in a comfortable and non threatening setting. I think that the only really good pictures you take are when you are connecting with the person you are taking a picture of. I can usually tell when I see a picture if the photographer is really connecting with the person that they are shooting. If they are not, the pictures look uncomfortable – like when you see someone wearing a sweater or shirt that looks just a little ill-fitting. I think with the Fendley’s I am able to capture great moments because they are so great in front of the camera, but they are so connected with the moment. This makes every moment real and genuine so the pictures turn out great. It was a great day and I can’t wait to post all of the pictures in the next few days.
Isabela is still cute-ing it up
Look at this girl – is she not the cutest little thing you have laid your eyes upon? Well, that is Isabela and she keeps insisting on cute-ing it up until people can’t take it anymore. As she gets older by the day, she learns new techniques, faces and hand movements to make herself even more adorable than she was before. She has just begun adding in cute sounds and baby words into the mix to “take it to the next level of cuteness”.
This clever little girl knows how to work the crowd and will pull out an arsenal of cute activities if it means winning them over. For example, she has discovered the innocently extending her middle finger while sleeping or doing certain activities will create the ultimate ironic situation which will cause people to be bowled over by the cute factor. I mean a baby extending the middle finger while gently rubbing her eyes. Come on – that is genius. You have to hand it to Isabela she is cute-ing it up to a level we have never seen before.
The Trip
I found it buried under a bunch of other books on the shelf next to my bed. The tattered copy of the 1990 South American Handbook was in my hands and it was bringing back memories of good times right after college when I just wanted to travel and explore the world.
As I opened the book, I noticed the sticky notes that were pinned on the pages of interesting cities, sites and countries. The notes were placed there by Bill my brother and myself. I had just returned from a long trip to Central America and he brought up the idea of the two of us taking a car trip from the top to the bottom of South America. He was ready for something different and new and I was itching to continue my travels. The book was our planing guide for the great adventure. The marked pages were places and things that we could drive to and see while we spent time touring through each country. As I turned the pages and saw the scribbled notes it brought back all the great memories I have of the time – the anticipation and the wonders of what such a trip would hold in store for us.
The trip never happened. For probably a dozen reasons all of them good ones – we just never made it happen. And as I turned the pages of the book it now it made me a little sad. What memories had I missed with my brother? What adventures should we have had together that we did not? Each crinkled note and page of that book now represented regrets of a trip not taken. While we talked about the trip together, we created dramatic visions in our own heads of taking a rugged jeep through desolate mountain ranges and coming upon small villages of locals. We might spend the night with them and eat the local food. We might end up in interesting situations every day. When we finished the trip we would have endless stories of our adventures. We would have memories.
As I looked at the maps (now falling out of the book), I realized an important lesson. We never regret the trips we take- just the one’s we don’t. I am sure everyone has experienced this regret at some point because I always hear people say that they wish they had traveled more while they still had the chance. Bill and I didn’t go on that trip, and we probably won’t ever have the chance now. I’ll keep the memories of planning the trip in my head because in my mind, I felt like we did make that trip in someway if only in our imaginations. I’ll keep the book too. I am sure I will open it up again someday and wonder about what it would be like – the trip we never took.
Fly
I use photoshop a lot to color correct photos and to accentuate the subject. I am not great at photoshop but I think I can make a picture look better with it. I took a few photos of Charlie today as he was being tossed up in the air by his father and older brother. At times some of the photos made him appear to be sky high. I found one photo which looked like he was flying to the heavens and upon looking at it, it kind of looked fake because it appeared he was so high.. Well he was at least 15 feet off the ground when this picture was taken and I took it while he was ascending upward. Rest assured, this photo is not enhanced in anyway to make it look like he is flying. This is the actual picture of how high he was.
Yes Sir!
I was at the USD basketball game awhile ago and about 25% of the bleachers were filled with new Marine recruits from Camp Pendleton. I guess they let the guys out for a little fun that night. I took a picture of a group of Marines standing at attention and I couldn’t help but notice that they all looked very similar. Now it might be something to do with the great chow they feed the guys or perhaps the regulation eye glasses that they make them wear. One thing is for certain these guys are certainly disciplined.
