Venice, The Menace Part 1

I took many photos on this shoot so I split em up into separate groups. Once again, My thanks go out to Susie with all the bad ass ideas.

Here is a general map of where the photos were taken for this set. I'll probably run the next set on Friday so stay tuned for that.

And you can check out my older slideshow photos here

Old Town Garden Grove

Sorry for being a day late. I was being really lazy yesterday.

This weeks adventures took me to Old Town Garden Grove. It was a nice, short 15 minute bus drive down the street from where I live. While Southern California has many cities, some seem to have better downtown districts than others. It might be that some of these cities like Anaheim, Fullerton, and Santa Ana have literally been in existence since the 1800s. Garden Grove was nowhere near as spectacular as Santa Ana or Fullerton, but you have to make do with what you have. Lucky for me, I am an expert at making do with what I have.

You can view where these photos were shot Here

I hope you enjoy.

A Quick Look Back at Spring

I've recently been working my images using Adobe Lightroom. I had heard people talking about how good a program it was and how fast it was to edit your pictures in it. I scoffed at them mostly because I shoot film. Why do I need a program that cheats for me? Now that I'm using it, I don't see an end in the foreseeable future. These are all pictures that were shot in Black and White film, scanned in at least at 1200dpi. Most of you casual readers have seen many of these, but I did throw in a couple of new ones, like the picture of my cat and the garden from Stone Brewery.

I have a set that I shot at Old Town Garden Grove last week that'll go up on Friday and I have two sets from Venice Beach that will go up next week.

You can check the Garden Grove pictures out a little early Here.

Laziness?

I think so!! This rant/thought is not intended to be toward any casual photographers. IE Instagram, smartphone cameras, or people who don't go as full out as I do (which happens to be most everybody).

As many know by now, I am an avid film user. Its how I learned and its how I can focus on subjects. I held out a rediculous amount of time from buying a digital because I thought it would make me lazy. It turns out, after two months of shooting digital, I kind of have become slightly lazy. Not the kind of lazy where the only exercise I get is getting up to grab another beer (that was last summer) or pushing the buttons on the TV remote, This kind of laziness is where I shoot a butload of pictures without really caring about what I shoot.

My percentage of usable shots has gone up from 1:4 to 1:3. Thats a pretty good jump. The laziness hasn't affected that part of my work. Where it has messed with me is the frequency I've been planning and thinking before shooting.

Planning is an important step for us overactive people. I've been getting pretty darn good at it while buying off of Ebay. Planning works its best magic by keeping me grounded to what I'm working on, what I am looking for, and how easy it is for me to reach my goal. If you've been reading along the last month or so, you can see how well I plan my writing out because it is real shit most of the time. Spelling mistakes, and horrible grammer. Everything to make every english teacher I've ever had cringe and hope to god that it ends. Why oh Why, does it keep on happening?

Thinking, even more, is crucial. Photography is quite similar to a contact sport like hockey (the only real sport coincidentally). Every moment is fast and crucial. You never know when that right portrait jumps in front of you, the winning touchdown is caught, or you just happen to walk in front of the most beautiful house you have ever seen. My mind moves at an extraordinary pace. Plus, when I was born, they forgot to install a shutoff switch. Once I move up to 4x5 sheet sized film, in the next month or so, my critical thinking will need to reach a level I never fathomed. Setting up the right composition. waiting for people to either get in the frame or to leave it. measuring the correct sunlight in every single shadow.

Christ... Who am I kidding. Life will be just the same. I just need a meter and some chemicals and welcome home my black and white film and my trusty Lubitel 2. Yeah, that sounds like what I want to do.

/rant

Oh by the way, check out my lovely pictures I made at Huntington Central Park. Part 1 and Part 2

ps.. as one last thought, well more of a self admission. My shots are not shit. They are quite good. I prefer my black and white photos shot on medium/120 format Ilford HP5+ film and developed by my hands using Xtol in my Paterson 2 reel tank. The only part I hate about the summertime is buying my own chemicals or waiting till August.

Huntington Central Park: World of Color

A map where all of these pictures were taken here

Huntington Central Park Landscapes

Check out my other pictures at Smugmug

First off, I would like to thank Susie over at Relentless Writing for giving me the awesome inspiration for this weeks and next weeks posts. This past weekend, I took another trip down to Huntington Central Park in Huntington Beach, CA. I used to go to this park with my Mom when I was a little kid. In fact, I used to go to this incredible mud park there. I got a picture there in this set. If you have kids, you need to do them a service and take them to that wonderful mud park and let them be a kid for one day. Its opening for summer in about a week or two.

This park is huge!! There are two halves to it and its really hard to do both in one day, so I went two days this weekend. This first set is mostly all of the landscape shots. The next set that will be out on Saturday are of the animals and the plants I was lucky and fast enough to get.

If you would like to know where the pictures were taken, I have a map of them here




let me know what you  think in the comments below. Thanks!! :-)

Downtown: Fullerton Part 2

Please visit Part 1 if you haven't seen it yet.

I got some very nice comments from Part 1 that I would like to expand on a bit. I'm a frequent reader of photo expert Ken Rockwell. After reading and rereading some of his tutorials he kind of helped me into a few realizations that I'm thinking about expanding n later on this week or early next week.

I am a huge fan of saturated colors. I think it brings out the 3-D in a picture and it makes the image look less dull. I wish the sky and flowers came out on my camera how they are when I see them. But then again, there are times when I'm looking at the sky and I only see white and when I go to edit them, I add a slight vignette to the image and the blue just slaps me right in the face. Are the colors too saturated, or do you think that adds to the image? Maybe when I talk more about it I will put up some comparisons that I have from my last few shoots.

Now for some shameless and free plugging for a company I love.

Fairly soon, one of our local breweries, here in Orange County, Bootleggers Brewery, will be opening up their brand new tasting room in Fullerton. I walked past it the other night and it looks Amazing!! Its fairly ironic where they are located because they are right across the street from the police station. Whenever you plan on getting out here to So Cal or the next time you hit up Disneyland, you should look em up. There website is http://www.bootleggersbrewery.com/. Its good stuff yo!!

Here is the map for this set

Here is part 2 of this weeks set of pictures from Downtown Fullerton.




Leave a comment and let me know what ya think. Thanks!!

Where can you process your film?

Check out my latest photo entry from Downtown Fullerton

Unfortunately since the overabundance of digital photography the majority of shops have dropped developing film except for color negatives. You can't even drop off your black and whites off at Walmart or Walgreens anymore which is kinda stupid since black and white film is more abundant and shot more than color film.

I Still Shoot Film posted a detailed list of shops that process film in the US. These places will develop:

Standard Black and White

C41 aka Color Negative

E6 aka Transparency aka Color Positive aka Slide Film.

I would think they have options for scanning and throwing em on a CD or just develop the negatives and not print them.

You can check out the list of film labs Here.

Also, you can check out my photos over at Smugmug

Part 2 from Fullerton tomorrow and my next set on Thursday.

Downtown: Fullerton Part 1

Wow, this was a really busy week. I took three trips to Downtown Fullerton to collect all of these shots. I have 30 total. So, I split them up into two slideshows. I started off by the Amtrak/Metrolink station, worked my way to city hall, back on over to Harbor Blvd and back to my car.

If you're interested in where these places are, I mapped out where the pictures were taken here.

 To view my previous pictures Click Here Part 2 will be out on Tuesday

Windows 8

Check out my picture gallery over at Smugmug

I’m in a difficult place being both a photographer and a network administrator. Many people in this day and age still swear by using Apple for their photo editing and other artistic work they have. And I can agree with them to a certain degree. Well, I use Windows for my daily rituals. Not because I can’t afford an Apple... Well, I actually can’t afford an Apple at the moment, but that’s a different story, its just that I use the tools I have available and Microsoft is where I am right now.

It’s that time again. Upgrading the operating system time. I remember about two or three years ago when I started using Windows 7 on my desktop. It was fairly different than any other version of windows out to that moment in time. Windows 8 will soon be released to the masses this fall. I am going to attempt to give my take on this beast.

I installed the Release Preview version, which is basically the build right before the actual version that will be for retail with new computers and off the shelves at Tigerdirect or Newegg.


Start Menu -

Probably the most drastic change that has come to Windows since the GUI desktop back in the late 80s and early 90s. there is a basic screen that you can configure with your most used applications or with some premade Microsoft templates, such as Mail, Calendar, Photos, Music, and a few others. You can delete the presets if you chose, which I did, and then add more of the programs that you use everyday. Think of this more as a newer version of the quicklaunch bar.

If you right click on that screen, you can select All Programs, and then you get a list of everything you have on your programs menu, as if you clicked All Programs on the Start menu on Windows XP. This menu is such a change, that I think even casual computer users will have to get aquanted with the new menu, not to mention older people and the technologically helpless.

Desktop -

This option will only be available on desktops and laptops, but not on tablet devices using the OS. It just looks like the old windows 7 desktop, obviously minus the start menu. All of my widgets showed up when I upgraded. Even the taskbar hasn’t changed much.


Programs -

All of my programs that were installed on windows 7 have been ported over here with very little to worry about. There will be problems with some programs so be ready and expect issues with some of your more useful applications.I was using Macdrive so I could have a Mac formatted hard drive on my PC. That one no longer works, as far as I can tell. But all the good ones like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom all work just handy dandy.

Here are a couple screens I pulled off my laptop.

New Settings screen

Toolbar, hit the little gear at the bottom to get to the settings screen and the power controls.

New Start Menu. Kinda flashy but hard to get used to. Can be accessed with the Windows button or buy hovering mouse in lower left corner.

My desktop. It looks the same as windows 7 minus the start button.

I don't really want to get too much more technical, but Windows 8 has some other new optimizations, such as support for USB 3, a stronger support for multiple monitors, and its support for new types of tablet devices.

For me, i don't really see too much of a change, because I’ve always had an easy time switching to newer technologies. But there will be a learning curve for some less computer inclined, so watch out for that.

I barely scratched the surface, but If you want to read more on what is new to Windows 8 Click Here, and you can download the Release Preview here.

What are your thoughts, positive or negative. Have you tried it out yet or do you think you will upgrade when it comes out?

Trip of the Week Part 2: Uptown Whittier

If you haven't checked out Part 1 Click Here

Ever since school let out for the semester two weeks ago, I've been ridiculously bored. I'm trying to get out to more places to shoot, but I seem to only want to shoot buildings. Mostly nice looking ones. I get a few not nice looking ones too, which some were featured in Part 1.

I actually work near Uptown Whittier so it wasn't a killer drive. I prefer taking Public Transportation, but that wasn't a practical option, since I only had a five minute drive.

Uptown Whittier is a fairly big place and its only walk-able for part of it. I wasn't sure if I had to pay any parking meters or not, and I wasn't willing to drive around and park everywhere, so, I just parked on the main drag and hoofed it from there. I went and looked at a few of the houses in the residential area. There were very beautiful homes, but unfortunately, I was only able to catch one of them in the slide show. The others were being blocked by phone poles and trees and they didn't come out so hot.

The majority of the sights were clothing stores, a movie theater and several restaurants. I wasn't too impressed with what they had to do, but the buildings looked great.

There is a camera shop down there for anybody, who like me, likes to shoot film, or you can check out Freestyle Photo, whose warehouse is just about a mile or two away on Norwalk Blvd and Florence Ave.

I have no idea where I'm going to go for next week. Been thinking about Garden Grove, or maybe I should start my school series since I live near at least six colleges.

Trip of the Week Part 1: Orange, CA

Orange, California. Home of Chapman College, The Block/Outlets in Orange, and many other places ironically located in the city. As soon as I hit the city, it seemed like I was transported into one of those towns in a tv show on the USA Network that are taped in Canada. Like most old time city centers, the majority of it is located on two streets that intersect.

One of the specialties down there are antique shops. I must have seen about 10 of them. If you're looking for a nice place to walk around and maybe take in a few of the local bars, this is the place to go.


I would recommend The Bruery Provisions. Its a tasting room for one of Orange Counties local breweries and a great place to check out our Local Flavors. I would have taken a picture of it, but I wasn't near it when I realized where it was.

Watch for Part 2, from Whittier, which will probably drop on Wednesday morning. Thanks for reading!!