Film on the Open Trail ...... To Nowhere!

This weekend, I'm going to be returning to the San Gabriel mountains to hike my favorite trail, The Bridge to Nowhere. In anticipation, I would like to share some film pictures I took on my hike in March. One of the main reasons I keep coming back to this spot is the unpredictability that you don't normally get, say at some of the other trails like over at Griffith park for an example or the Gaviotta Wind Tunnels.

This trip feels like It might be one of the more difficult times I will have up there since this is the middle of July. I have a few ways that i'll beat the heat. First off, I will be taking two 1 liter bottles of water, my trusty Noble Ale Works trucker hat, SPF 50 sunscreen, a killer slipknot handkerchief that I will be wetting and then tying around my neck to block the sun and keep me cool, and a nice sack lunch to enjoy on the bridge at 8:00-8:30 AM, if not earlier, while watching the bungee jumpers.

I'll be taking my trusty $20 Rebel Ti film camera with me again to catch as much interesting and odd as I can. But until then, I'll leave you with these pictures.

How Do You Fall? El Dorado Park Nature Trail

Welcome to Post # 2 of my current running series How Do You Fall? Ever since I regained my taken up free time last month, I've just been going everywhere. What madness is it to think that you'd already exhausted all of your local travel spots? Complete, simply put.

Last week, I took a trip back to a place I haven't visited since my beginning photo class last year, El Dorado Park. It is smooshed right in between the 605 Freeway and the San Gabriel River in Long Beach. This is one of those parks that really does it all. It is incredibly HUGE. Three city blocks to be exact. The main part of the park is what you would expect from most regional parks, a big road that goes around the entire thing, a road that snakes its way through the middle, a lake in the shape of a giant horseshoe, a massive lake where people bring their remote control boats to sail, and an archery range. I used to go shoot arrows over there, but it is a way bit too popular to go on a Saturday morning.

The next section directly south is the nature trail that I documented with my pictures below. Its one of those places where you can walk into the center of it and not realize you are in the middle of Southern California.

The last section is more or less similar to the main part of the park. The only differences are the mini train for the little kiddies to ride, a big airfield for remote control airplanes and couple of pretty decent size lakes. You can probably spend all day in the park and not see everything.

Here are the goods. Let me know what you guys think!

With this series, I started playing around with my camera settings and decided to start distinguishing myself from the average photographer. If you can tell what I'm doing differently drop a comment below. Lets just say that it is a theme that I've enjoyed over the past year since I started researching the photographer Paul Strand. It'll be a bit more prominent in the set that I shot this last weekend.

Thanks for dropping by! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Fullerton Arboretum

Well.... Another weekend, another day bored. I had been wanting to hit up the Cal State Fullerton Arboretum for the last month. When I went there the last time, all I had was my black and white film and my SLR. This time around, it was a bit harder finding anything to take pictures of, but I was able to find a few things.

The last shot with the dragonfly is one that I've been wanting to take for awhile now. Ever since, I'd seen the awesome shot that JayDee, over at the blog Jay Dee in Japan, took of an incredible looking red dragonfly. For some reason, those are probably  my favorite wild animal/insect ever.

Next weeks pictures are going to be from a roll of film that took me months and months to shoot, so it should be interesting since I have no clue what is on it except for the last 3 pictures. Thanks for checking out my pictures!! :-)