California Adventure

This is Part 3 of my 3 part series from the Land of Disney.  To view parts one and two click here and here.

Now "most" people have been to Disneyland, but many still haven't seen Disney's California Adventure. I had the pleasure of working at both parks about 10 years ago and got to see it how it was originally made. Over the last five years or so the park has seen some major expansions starting with the A Bug's Land, a west coast version of Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and finalizing most recently with Cars Land.

The park started off as a part of the day experience. Not really enough to grab a family for the day. But now, its a full fledged park and a pretty darn good one now too. And I liked it great back then too. Whenever you come out to visit the mouse house, I recommend visit across the entryway.

The following photos are from my adventures.

Check out my other galleries over on my page on smugmug

My First Work as a Pro

I failed big time!!

I've been looking at making some type of income from my photography and the easiest way is by submitting my pictures to a stock photography agency. I read an article awhile back on which agencies are pulling the most customers these days and Shutterstock was at the top of the list.

I've been wanting to do anything to work my way towards being a professional photographer, and since failure is the best experience anybody can get, I decided to submit the required 10 pictures. Thankfully it only took a day to find out whether I can make the cut. out of 10 pictures eight of them failed for composition:

and three of them failed for lighting and white balance issues:

The part that I can take away was that the last two under the white balance rejection passed for workable pictures, but I need to learn how to set my white balance properly. The only other part I can take away is that I should just get the damn building releases so I can work to my strong suits as opposed to just getting whichever I can find out of a set. I'm glad I finally did it. I now have some pro experience. We return you to your previously scheduled program, The IT Crowd.

What is Film?

I realized as I was writing part 2 of my development guide is how can anybody understand the process unless they actually know what they are working with.

Film is a major medium that is used in photographic still cameras and movie cameras. While many people have declared film as being a dead media, the majority don't even realize it is still vastly used in professional, amateur, and fine art work.

There are several different types of film that are still used and some that aren't.  These types include black and white, color (c41 process), color reversal/positive/slide (E6 Process) and infrared. Infrared film comes in black and white now, and used to come in color. Color infrared film is no longer available for general use, but can probably still be found on EBay or some obscure web sites, and newer cameras can be converted to it if need be.

The process of recording the image is kind of interesting, at least it was for me. The film has a coating of a silver halide gelatin mixture. The ISO of the film is how big and how dense the silver crystals are on the film, making it more or less susceptible to light. When you hit the shutter release on your camera, the shutter opens exposing light to the surface of your film. This image is called a latent image. Once the film has been developed, it is called the recorded image or a negative. The negative is then placed either into a flatbed scanner or into an enlarger which prints the image onto special photosensitive paper.

That was kinda boring huh. Hopefully that was understandable. There isn't too much to it, but there are some factors that you have to watch out for. Black and white film is fairly susceptible to blue light, so they tend to mix together if you have multiple blue objects near each other. The other major factor is the rate of reciprocity failure. This is an issue with trying to develop the colors correctly because the film has an odd quirk to it. One that comes to mind is Fujifilm Velvia RVP 50 that has some odd color shifts if you have an exposure longer than 30 seconds.

If you have any questions, ask them in the comment section and I will answer them. Thanks! :-)

Well if you are all still awake, I will have my last post from my last Disneyland trip, which is from Disney's California Adventure. Parts 1 and 2 are available here and here. You can check out some of my older work on my page at Smugmug here.

Disneyland at Dusk

Welcome back for Part 2 from my trip to Disneyland a few weeks back. Part one of my trip can be viewed here. I didn't really have too much time, so I wasn't able to get the whole western half of the park like the Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Adventure Land or Frontier Land, but I was able to get some of the great sights of Main Street USA, and parts of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland.

Unfortunatley, these pictures don't do the place any justice, but they will jog your memory and bring back thoughts from the good ol days. They do that for me at least. Enjoy!

Plant Life at the Land of Disney

A couple weeks ago, I took a trip to Disneyland. Mostly everybody I know has been there at some point or another, but for others, I want to bring the Magic Kingdom to them until I they have a chance to go.

I used to work there about 10 years ago and new about the lengths the horticulture department go to make sure the visual plant experience is up to par with the structures and immaculate attraction design. They would go in EVERY night just to pull out the worse looking plants and replace them with fresh looking ones. Pretty amazing lengths to go through just to let every single adult and child experience and have the time of their life. The experience seemed to be the most important part which places outside of Las Vegas seem to forget these days.

Parts Two and Three are shots of Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure, with some shots of the all new Cars Land. I'll post the next one on Sunday probably. Until then, you can check out my older pictures here.

Claremont Village

Well, I'm in the process of writing a suplement to my Film Development series as well as part 2. In the meantime here is the set of pictures I took at Claremont Village in Claremont, CA. It's home of one of the best record stores still open, Rhino Records, and was the background to the movie My Girl 2. That one sure was a winner. Anyways, let me know what you think.

Balboa Peninsula

Well, now that the festivities have concluded It's back to business as usual. A couple of weeks ago, a few days after Father's Day, I took a little drive down to Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach, California. I was supposed to go in the evening but I was bored off my rocker and dropped on down in the late afternoon.

If any of you are in the area, there is an incredible body boarding spot called The Wedge. Its a place where crazy .....  err, I mean very good body boarders and surfers go for some awesome waves while being only a foot above the sand on the water. An incredible experience that one must see, even if you don't like us spongers.

Special thanks to the Joker for the excellent idea. I'll go down at night next time like you suggested.

Independance Day, Don't Go Towards the Light!!

As many of you know, yesterday was Independance Day in America. Just a little known fact. Maybe a few of you  knew.

I always wondered what expats do when it comes to major holidays for their home countries. Does anybody go out and celebrate? Drunk and running starkers through the city square, hoping nobody saw? Well for all of my expat readers and for the non expats who want to see some fireworks, I have for you all Yashmat United's 4th of July Extravemaganza!!!!

Woo!! Oh yeah!! Timmy Time!! What the H?!

I took a long trip and a very short drive down the freeway to, still a little iffy, The Happiest Place on Earth, or to the masses, AKA Disneyland for their Annual Fireworks display. I'm an uber cheapo and have reluctantly waited to purchase a $600 annual pass so I opted for the sidewalk treatment. I was practically underneath them. As I glared into the heavens, while wiping away some rainman amazement drool, I happened to snap a couple of shots. 43 to be exact.

Here is the spot where I was able to capture my moments for the year.

I hope I have some good ones.

Developing Film, Part 1

I got a great comment from Joker last night

          "So weird how shooting with film is only for the hardcore these days..."

Shooting film is such a fun experience that it doesn't need to be only for us crazy people. So here is a  3 part guide on how to develop your film. Its probably the most fun part of 
shooting film in general. I'm going to go through the process and I will have a list of what you need to do this.

This part is on probably the hardest part of the process which is loading your film tank with the roll of film you just shot. There are two different types of developing tanks, and then there are many sizes of those two types. Steel tanks and Plastic Tanks. Steel tanks are incredibly sturdy, they last damn near forever, and they are slightly more difficult to load the reels. Plastic tanks are less durable but are fairly easy to load. I've used both and I prefer my plastic Paterson tank to the steel ones my school used.

I use a dual reel paterson tank. My film is bigger than yours.

You might want to buy a junk roll of film so you can practice how to load your film before you use an actual roll. Its much harder when you get in the dark room and trying to load the film the first time anyways. The more experience you have the better you can do. I guess that last sentence was from the desk of Captain Obvious.

Ok, so you need to find the darkest room you can find. I use a small closet. You need to make sure there is very little light and if there are any leaks, they need to be covered. Shove a towel under the door, use some tape, whatever you can do. If even the smallest amount of light reaches your film, it will fog and that will be bad.

My bottle opener. Its seen the end of many beers. Also purchased at the 99 cent store.

take a can opener and open the flat end of your film canister and use the push tab to push out the film spindle. The end of the film has a small tab that needs to be cut off. When that is cut off you can slide it under the two tabs on each side of the reel.

A little blurry, but you can clearly see the two tabs and the film going beneath them.

You should hear or feal the film catch onto the ball bearings just behind the tabs. These reels are ratchet like, so you want to hold onto the left side and turn the right side forwards and backwards until the film has been fully loaded. Some of the issues you should worry about are creasing, tearing and sticking. The film only sticks if you didn't fully dry the reel beforehand. if you feel it start to crease or tear, then just do your best to try and get it in, but dont overly force it in. The shiny side of the film must be up, not the tan/whitish/pinkish side.

Depending on which length of roll you use, it will feel different when it is fully loaded. The 24 shot roll will end and have about a quarter of the reel uncovered. A 36 shot roll will end just inside of the tabs. If your roll ends really far outside the tabs, then you need to unload the reel.

Normal reel.

Reel after being liberated from its other side.

To unload the reel you want to hold the left side and turn the right side forward until you feel the click and pull both sides apart. Then just dump the film on the table and start again with either side. When you put the reel back together, make sure the grooves are set in the right place without it being forced together.

See the tabs on the inside of the middle section?

Match them with the corresponding grooves. This reel can be used for 3 different sizes of film.

Once you get the reel loaded while in the dark, you want to put the pieces back together. inside the tanks. The funnel piece keeps the light from touching the film so you can get to that point without the lid when you can turn the lights on.

I usually set all the pieces out on a table in order so its easy for me to put everything back together without fumbling around too much.

Part 2, I will jump into the actual process with times and chemicals you use and when to use them.

What you need:

Paterson Film Tank.     Single or Double

It beats my why the double tank is less expensive than the single, but thats the reason why I got one. and it came with 2 reels, not just 1.

I'm sorry if this guide was confusing, it was my first time at writing instructions like this. If you have any questions, I shall try to clarify.

Check out my most recent set of pictures from Venice Beach