Annular not Annual

Sunday was an important event if you are an avid fan of astronomy. We had an annular eclipse that spanned from South Eastern Asia all the way to the Midwestern United States.  This was a first time occasion for me. So, like a retard, I stood outside looking right at the sun to see if I could see it with my naked eye, not to mention the few times I took a peek through my SLR lens. Eh... in the long run, it was more fun to watch than my personal health was worth so I took the risk.

Up above, I put together a little slideshow from the few pictures I managed to take after I got a bit smarter and set up my tripod. It wasn't really that dark, I just had my aperture stepped down to F32 which was the slowest I could go and my shutter speed was at 1/4000. I didn't have any special lenses or sunglasses so that was the best I could do. You can actually see the whole circle of the moon even though we didn't get the whole ring of fire apocalypse view here in LA.

What was your experience watching this eclipse and have you seen any better ones?

Check out my photos on Flickr and DeviantArt

Website Planning: Hosting

Check out my photos on Flickr and DeviantArt

I started this series before and my first post that this is replacing was utter crap. So, as my 2nd attempt I hope it shall be better.

As you all know, I am a photographer and the most important tool in any photographers arsenal is their portfolio. Now of days you can still keep your physical portfolio for job interviews, but how do you get to the actual Interview? Let's skip past all of the cold calls and luck, Its by having a good digital portfolio.

There are several options these days for making and keeping a portfolio online. A few are free and others take time, skill, and a web savy programming guy to keep. On this post, I am just going to mention a few of your options and the series of posts that follow, I will describe the process I am going through for making my website.

The easiest options available are through free services such as DeviantArt and Flickr. Both sites have a strong presence and have an extensive amount of forums where you can ask any kind of question imaginable and get a decent answer. Both of these sites offer extended services for an extra price such as detailed statistics extended space for storing more images and videos. DeviantArt also offers the ability to order your prints with the commision going to you, and the ability to make a custom portfolio with your own web address.

A couple other free services that are fairly easy to setup is by signing up with free blogging services such as wordpress.com and Blogger.com. They only take minutes to setup, choose your color scheme/template and to get rollin. With either of these options, you can mesh it with Flickr and make a set/slideshow on Flickr and then post it on your blog. Its a bit harder to go this route because there is a bit more you have to worry about custimization wise, but if you are more of a computer oriented person, It should come more naturally to you.

And the last option is to do what I am doing which is building my own site from scratch. This is the hardest  of the options because you have to know some programming. At the moment, I know I am going to be building my main site using Flash, but I have to check and see what my options are for having a mobile site.

If you are looking at building up your portfolio check out some of these links:

Sign up for DeviantArt

Sign up for Flickr

making a portfolio site using wordpress

making a portfolio using Blogger

Great resource if you want to build your own site

What are some of your experiences with starting your web site, and have you found any success

Beerfest, Studio and Stock; This Week in a Nutshell

The first slideshow above was from the Orange County Beer fest which took place at Irvine Lake. It wasn't as fun as my first beerfest last year. I need to learn how to do street style photography because I was still too nervous about shooting random people doing whatever.

The second set was from my class this week. I was able to hit the studio on Tuesday and Wednesday and it was one of the most fun times I've had at school. I already learned what I did wrong and that I need a fill flash to fix the dark shadows on the toy cars. I'll definitely remember when I decide to take a lighting class.

So I've been looking for ways of officially getting in the photography business and it doesn't seem to easy. I just got my digital camera but I'm still lacking lights, a backdrop, a serious fill flash and a couple of other things so I can do product shots or portraits. While I was doing my research I came across a great post talking about stock photography.

I read a little about it aver the last year and some of the places that I had checked out were a little strict. I would have to submit at least a thousand images that are all good quality, they would have to be vetted by the stock company, and I would still have to provide 100 to 300 images per month to stay active. Wow!! That is a lot of pictures. I think I will be trying out this other agency called Shutterstock. I only have to submit 10 initial pictures and there isn't a quota to remain active.

I wonder how hard it is to get my pictures sold once I get my images on there.

OC Beer Fest Time

This weekend I'm going to the Orange County Beerfest at Irvine Lake. On the website for the event, there were at least 50 different vendors that will have their beer for tasting. If it is anything like last year, it will be an incredible experience.

If anybody is interested in going, it starts tomorrow/Saturday May 5th at 2pm.

Pictures on Monday.

http://orangecountybeerfest.com/

My First Digital

After about two months of solid research, I finally picked up my first DSLR. I went with a used Canon EOS 10D. I was looking at the 20D but circumstances out of my control prevented me from getting that. I got it in the mail yesterday and it looks almost Brand New, or as close as a used camera can get for an 8 or 9 year old item.

I wasn't all too worried about the amount of megapixels as I was about the cost. More people care about how many megapixels they have or how high the ISO can go, but I could care less. 6MP gets me sharp enough prints if I ever decide to print them out as long as they are exposed correctly. With the ISO levels, mine goes to  up to 3200 but I think 1600 will be enough for when I shoot concerts. It's fairly heavy, especially compared to my film slr.

 I could have easily have gone with a Rebel T1 or T2, but I wanted a dedicated PC flash port for when I jump into lighting instead of a hot shoe sync. With my 10D i can use both a hotshoe attatchment and the PC terminal at the same time for double the fun, and extreme blinding lights.

What model of digital camera was your first?

On to the Next

I've been thinking lately about what it takes to do long term projects and how to not get bored after a certain amount of time. I have the issue because my attention span is about 30 seconds. And I have been kind of getting bored taking pictures in Downtown LA and Hollywood. Maybe its because I have a limited amount of places I can shoot with my portfolio project.

Maybe I wont have any problems because my next project wont be like that. Maybe it will be more like a pilgrimmage. There is most definatly a starting  and ending point where my current project doesn't have that. Yeah, thats the key.

Here's my set from my Hollywood shots thus far

Last Trip to Hollywood for a bit

Hopefully...

I went a couple of weeks ago. The whole trip was planned to a 'T' a few days before hand. I hate going down there without a plan because I usually spend more time than I want to walking around. I'm trying to learn how to be lazy while I'm out. Its not easy when you like looking at stuff. Like the last few times I parked at the Metro Green Line Station which always works out to my advantage.

My itinerary for the day was:
The Wiltern
Pantages
Hollywood Palladium
Las Angeles Theater
Angels Flight
Tower Theater
and the Mayan

My favorite spot of this trip was most definately Angels Flight. I had heard about it several years ago when it reopened but forgot about it until I had seen an advertisement for it on the subway. It's the shortest railway in America and its priced expensively at 50 cents. I wish it were longer than 2 minutes cause I had a blast. heir

I also had a tiny excursion to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire at the Santa Fe Dam in Irwindale. Tis an adventure all must attempt before thy return to the pit of despair, aka Monday morning. I caught the end of The Merry Wives of Windsor who are funny as hell.

Now on with this weeks set of shots.

Give me shout out on what you think.