alpharon's posterous

June is done!  I've spent the past six months clicking my camera's shutter with a photo for each passing day.  It's interesting to see a little bit of evolution in style with each photograph.  When I first started Project 365, I really wasn't sure if I would even make it this far.  But now that I'm here, I'm even more motivated for the next six months to see the project through to completion!  Despite my long procrastination in getting my photos uploaded and this blog updated on the regular, I'm pleasantly surprised with what I have accomplished thus far.  For the most part, I've been very happy with the way my photos have turned out, but I know there is always room for improvement.  I will need to explore more ways to push myself and my photography to new heights going forward.  For now, check out the rest of the photos for the month of June and check out the slideshow at the end of the blog for a video recap of all the shots.  Enjoy the photos!

[167/365] :: South Swell.  I've never really been interested in landscape photography because I think that landscapes tend to be too static and too easy to compose and shoot.  That all changes when I take my time to find all the dynamic elements of my landscape and work to incorporate those elements into my composition.  It's hard to imagine getting more dynamic than a moving body of water.  Every wave you see in the ocean is going to be different.  Getting the compositioin and timing of this shot took some careful planning and patience.  I first observed the environment to determine where the best waves were breaking and where I should best position myself to make sure I could capture the wave in my photo.  Then I looked around to see what would make a good composition and took some sample shots to see what looked best.  Once I decided on the composition I wanted, it was just a matter of waiting for a good sized set wave to come in and take my photo as the wave peaked.  I was able to get everything I needed in this shot.  I edited it in post to give it a vintage look and feel reminiscent of old school surf photos I've seen before.

[168/365] :: Cakes in Cups.  These are the most decorative looking cupcakes I've ever seen.  My sister made them herself.  They were for a party the next day.  I was really tempted to start eating them to see if they tasted as great as they looked, but I exhibited some self-control and allowed myself only a few photographs before leaving them alone...until the party started.

[169/365] :: Tarty Pecans.  Remember that party I mentioned above?  Well, cupcakes weren't the only thing on the menu.  My other sister made a batch of pecan tarts for the party, too!  My sisters somehow got away with the baking gene because I certainly can't bake anything to save my life.  At least I can take photos and document their creations!

[170/365] :: Purple Fuzzies.  This was taken during one of our family walks to the park.  There are these bushes along the trails with these purple flowers sticking out of what looked like a spiked ball.  A closer look after taking the photo showed how delicate the whole thing was.  This could have passed for a nice macro shot with a little more sharpening and a closer crop on the main subject.  I'm starting to develop an interest in Macro photography, so I may have to look into getting a new lens to play with for that type of work.

[171/365] :: Another Day at the Office.  Dawn patrol surf sessions have been part of my normal routine for the past few years now.  It's the best way to start off my day, and I know that I'm going to have a better day because of it.  I often see the usual group of guys out in the water at these sessions.  After the session, the parking lot is usually filled with talk about who got the best wave and what time guys plan to be back in the water later that day.  One topic that rarely comes up is work.  It's where most of us head to directly after the session.  We spend our days sitting at our desk.  Keeping track of the swell development.  And setting up a plan on where the best place to surf would be that afternoon.  That's probably what the subject in this photo is going to do as soon as he gets to work.

[172/365] :: Spirals.  This is a shot of a cupcake holder we used to display the cupcakes at the party a few days ago.  It was a very hit or miss shot.  I used live view on my camera and lifted it as high as I could above my head to take a top-down photo.  I had to reshoot it a few times before settling on a composition that I liked.  Then I manually focused the lens to make sure that my focus was in the right place when I took the photo.  I was able to get the effect I wanted with the top spiral in focus and each spiral step on the display blurring away slightly as it gets further away from the top.  It made for an interesting photo.

[173/365] :: UFO.  I took this shot of a light chandelier at a local indoor mall.  The mall was brightly lit, but I used a fast shutter speed, large aperture, and exposed for the light to keep the background dark and have the light pop out.  The texture and geometric design of the light was what drew me to it and I'm glad that I was able to capture that in the photo.  I edited it with a little sepia tone to make the texture stand out a little more.  The photo makes me think of a UFO hovering in the night sky.

[174/365] :: Port Hole.  I used a long focal length to capture this shot of my son at the park.  I caught him looking at me through the port hole in the playground and snapped this shot before his attention left me.  This is a good example of getting the shot that is not necessarily the best shot.  If I had a moment to compose it better, I would have used a shorter focal length to shape out the port hole and show off some of the surrounding environment.   But I didn't have that moment.  I would have missed this look from my son with just one second of hesitation.  So I got the shot. 

[175/365] :: Glisten.  It's Christmas in June!  This is actually a detail of one of our Christmas decorations in the garage.  I noticed the little light reflections on it while I was working on a project in my garage and thought I could get a good detail shot of the decoration.  I was pleased that the shot contained a good balance between sharpness and out of focus bokeh elements.  I was able to capture exactly what I saw when it first caught my attention.   

[176/365] :: Hot Wax.  I like to clean the wax off my surfboards every few weeks and reapply new wax before taking them out for the next session.  I had black wax on this board because it was the only thing I had at the time.  I hate using this wax because the black gets on everything that touches the board and even stains clothing.  I had to get it off and change it out.  I let it sit out in the sun for a few minutes so the wax would get soft enough for me to scrape it off and buff out.  When I came back to check on the board, I found the wax liquified and oozing off the board.  I guess it got a lot hotter than usual because of the dark color.  Instead of scraping the wax off the board like I usually do, I simply had to take an old rag from the garage and wiped the wax off the board.

[177/365] :: Peacock.  I scored some tickets to the world famous San Diego Zoo from a coworker and took this opportunity to spend the day there with the family.  The zoo is always a great place to go to for photographers.  I made sure to bring my 135L lens with me on this trip for some wildlife photography.  I thought about bringing the 400L lens, but that might have been a too long for some of my needs.  It turns out that I made the right decision and it shows with this shot.  This female peacock perched up on a tree and seemed to pose for me as I was taking its photo.  I would have completely missed this shot with the 400L, but nailed it with the 135L.  The colors in the shot just popped instantly and the background behind the tree blurred away in the distance. 

[178/365] :: Poker Face. It's the final pose for the Poker Face song in Dance Central for the XBox Kinect.  Don't you see it?!?

[179/365] :: Zero Gravity.  We took a family trip to the San Diego County Fair with my sister and her fiance.  I've been looking forward to going to the fair for all kinds of glutonous foods and to take a few photos of some attractions that I had in mind.  This was a photo on my list.  I wanted to capture some attractions showing movement.  I knew that a slow exposure shot was the way to go to capture this particular attraction.  I wanted to make sure I got the movement of the light trails to show how fast the ride was spinning.  Unfortunately, I did not bring a tripod with me, so I had to improvise while shooting it handheld.  One thing I had going for me was Image Stablization on the 24-105L lens I was using.  I turned down the shutter speed to 1/6sec and set the aperture the f/8.0.  I shot this shot in a series to ensure that at least one of those frames didn't contain any camera movement that could have been caused by handholding the shot.  This was the best frame in the series and I was able to capture the movement just as I had intended. 

[180/365] :: Fight the Power Nap.  This is what I've been coming home to from the past few days.  He must be going through a growth spurt because he's been taking longer naps.  I remember tossing a turning a lot in my sleep when I was a little boy.  I never woke up in the same position that I started with.  My son is the same way.  He's always moving around in his sleep and sometimes gets himself into funny positions.  The other night, I caught him asleep kneeling next to his bed with his head on the mattress.  I caught him in this shot with his fist raised.  His eyes are just slightly open in this shot as he was going through some RPM.  He must have have been dreaming.  He woke up shortly after taking this shot.

[181/365] :: Back That App Up.  For the past six months this little silver drive has contained all the photographs I've taken for Project 365.  It's a 1TB Western Digital drive that I got on a SlickDeal and it's been working perfectly from day one.  I've got back up solutions in place, but I'd like to get another one just so I have a 1-to-1 redundant copy of the data on this drive.  Hopefully, another SlickDeal pops up so I can get even more peace of mind.

:: Project 365 - June Slideshow ::

I really have to post more frequently on this blog.  Project 365 is just a small part of my photography and I feel like I've got so much more to share with everyone.  This is going to be a big update to Project 365 with a lot of pictures to catch up on, so I'm just going to get right to it.

[37/365] :: Happy Birthday Emilia.  Everyone meet Emilia! (AKA: Auntie Mely, Auntie Sis, Mamma Mely, etc.)  I came prepared knowing that I would be getting good lighting for my pictures during the birthday party today.  I was intent on getting this portrait of Auntie Mely with the blurred out bokeh for the background.  My Sigma 85/1.4 was the perfect lens for this shot, so I had it mounted to my 7D for the majority of the day.  This was the first shot I took of her.  I ended up with a lot of great shots that day, but I chose this image because it's the one I had planned to shoot before even clicking the shutter button on my camera.

[38/365] :: Kukui Nuts.  In all honesty, this shot was forced.  It was getting late in the evening and I had not had an opportunity to take any pictures.  I was looking around the house for items to use and found the kakui nut and shell necklaces to use as my subjects for the picture.  This was the first day in Project 365 where I had to really force myself to just take the picture.  I think it ended up being a really sharp, clean image.  The subjects don't exactly call out to the viewer, but that's ok.  I can live with it.

[39/365] :: Pondering Escape.  There is shopping area by where I live that has this awesome pond filled with fat koi fish and turtles.  These guys look like they have it made and I'm not sure they'd ever want to escape this man made environment they all live in.  I had to have some real patience when photographing these animals because they were constantly swimming around looking for food on the surface of the water.  There was a lot of luck involved in snapping this image with only the turtle's head partially breaking through to the water's surface.  Most of my other shots had the fish creating ripples in the water and blurring out anything below the surface.  I was happy to get such a clear image and to capture the interaction between the pond's inhabitants.

[40/365] :: Light Vibrations.  This was very much an experimental shot.  I had no idea how it would turn out whe I was planning it.  I was sitting in the passenger seat of our car.  We were exiting the freeway and headed towards an off ramp.  I set the shutter speed to 5 seconds and held the camera as steady as I could on the car's dashboard.  This was the result of the vibrations from the car and the road.  I was able to capture all the light trails from the cars, streetlights, and road reflectors surrounding the vehicle.  I'm surprised that more than half the image turned out to be complete darkness.  It must have been a very dark night to be driving around.

[41/365] :: The Jewel.  This was my view in the morning from the parking lot near Scripps Pier in La Jolla.  It's looking out towards La Jolla Shores in the foreground and La Jolla Cove in the distance.  I was checking out the surf that morning to see if it was worth paddling out for a session in the water.  That wave might look a little deceiving since there isn't anything around to compare it's size to.  It was actually quite small out that morning and I decided not to get in the water.  I took this quick picture instead and really like how it turned out.  It would have taken me a very long time to clone out that strand of grass in the foreground, so I chose to just leave it since it doesn't really take away anything from the image.  The light was hitting everything right in this photo and I really like the clarity I got from it.  The skies are clean, the scenery is sharp, and the waves look fun.  It's just a classic San Diego morning.

[42/365] :: Board Topper.  Another year, another birthday.  I was happy to celebrate it with a small group of family and friends.  We had a really fun time just hanging out, having some drinks, and getting down with Dance Central on the Kinect.  I was blown away when my cake was brought in and I was able to look over all the details.  I got a kick out of a replica of my Firewire Surfboard on top of the cake.  The shells look like the perfect sea shells we all used to search for on the beach when we were kids.  The "sand" on the beach was actually brown sugar.  Everything on the cake was edible.  It also tasted really good!  Seeing it again in pictures gets me motivated to go out and surf.  I appreciated everything about it and was very thankful to share it with my family and friends that night.

[43/365] :: Dragon Parking.  I drove the fam out to downtown for a meet up with some friends to check out the San Diego Padres Fan Fest.  It was a beautiful day and we all decided to walk over and check out a Chinese festival happening just a few blocks away from the park.  As we were walking around, I wanted to see if I could practice some shots on street photography.  I kept an eye out for any interesting subjects to shoot.  We came across this dragon parked on the sidewalk during the Chinese festival.  I like the juxtaposition of the dragon and the "No Parking" street sign just behind it.   Juxtaposition was one of the first things I read about when researching street photography and I was happy to find it in this shot.  I ended up with some really good street photography shots that day, but I chose this image as proof of my learning and progression on the subject.  I will have to start a photoset just for street photography so I can have a place to upload the other photos to.

[44/365] :: Top of the Hill.  These kids are just too cool.  They've become so easy for me to photograph because they've been conditioned to seeing my camera pointed at them whenever we're all together.  HAHA!  I think a lot of it also has to do with me being able to anticipate their next move so I can quickly get in place for the next shot.  This quick 5 minute shoot started off with them staring through the windows of the playground playhouse.  They realized that their faces weren't showing, so they made their way up above the windows and gave me the poses you see in this shot.  It was almost effortless on my part as they did all the work for the shot.  I just sat there and clicked the shutter.

[45/365] :: VDay Moon.  We've been having some beautiful days in San Diego with some clear skies and warm weather.  I've been seeing a lot of the moon during the day, usually on my drive home from work.  Unfortunately, the sun will usually be setting before I can get my gear set up to get a day shot of the moon.  Today was different since I was able to leave work an hour earlier.  I had plenty of time to set up my 400L lens for this daytime moon shot.  I found it to be a little harder shot to take during the day than it is at night.  Nighttime moon shots are easy with their monochrome look.  Daytime moon shots have subtle changes to the blue sky all over the image that sometimes makes the image look unnatural.  I had to be careful to stealthly blend the whole sky together in post processing to make the image look clean and more natural.  I think it worked out for this shot.  The moon ended up being very sharp and well detailed.  I'll have to try this again on a full moon in the daytime to get the whole image.

After finishing up Project 365 for the month of January, I saw February as a fresh start to the project.  I realized that I was going to have to keep this project fresh in order to stay motivated and committed to completing it.  I think I'll be treating each month as a fresh start to keep it going forward.

Well, here are the pictures to start off February!

[032/365] :: Island Style. It's my birthday month and I was beginning to feel my age after coming back from vacationing in Hawaii.  I was missing it a lot...especially the food.  My coworkers had just happened to be having lunch at a small Hawaiian restaurant serving up some home cooked ono foods.  This is probably the closest I'd get to some delicious island food without having to get on a plane.  The spot is called Island Style Cafe and I would advise you to try it out if you're in the San Diego area.  I ALWAYS order their Korean Chicken plate (pictured), but I've tried everything on their menu and it's all delicious.  I want some now...

[033/365] :: Lens Tester.  Being a parent, my son is probably my most photographed subject.  I've got thousands of pictures of him and he hasn't even turned 2 yet!  Here he is helping me test out my new Sigma 85mm lens.  I've been waiting to acquire this lens to start some portrait photography projects that I've had planned for months.  For the time being, I've unleashed its potential on my son and he doesn't seem to mind at all.  We shot this while he was playing around in the kid's section of IKEA.  The environment is very well lit and I had no problem dialing in the proper exposure for the picture.  This was shot wide open at ƒ/1.4 to blur out the cluttered background behind him. 

[034/365] :: Texture.  With the purchase of the Sigma 85mm, I now have possesion of the Sigma Trinity at 30mm, 50mm, and 85mm.  All of them have a max aperture of ƒ/1.4 and perform just as good, if not better, than the Canon "L" counterparts I tested in the past.  For my daily walk around lens, I'll usually have the Sigma 30mm attached to my Canon 7D to give me a "normal" focal length to work with.  It provides me a focal length close to what I see with my own eyes.  I really like the texture of the pillow in this photo and wanted to see if the Sigma 30mm could capture it in the low light environment I was in.  This is the kind of picture quality that the fast aperture provides me.  I shot this wide open at 1/60s without having to bump up ISO.  I got the sharpness, quality, and performence I expect from these Sigma lenses demonstrated in this one shot.

[035/365] :: Cold Night. It really was a cold night.  We were sitting outside of Studio Diner waiting for a table when I snapped this shot.  We were being lit by multi-colored flourescent neon lights from the diner sign, streetlights on the sidewalk, headlights and breaklights from passing cars, and powerful signs from businesses accross the street.  It was a lighting nightmare and there was no way I could have fixed it.  The boys posed for me anyway and waited for me to take this shot.  I had to use a relatively high ISO 3200.  I did some noise correction in post processing and I selectively reduced the saturation on the warm colors to get this final image.  It might look a bit overprocessed, but I think I was able to get the COLD look I was looking for in this photograph.

[036/365] :: Tree Model.  Another picture of my son!  He is so used to having a camera pointed at him now.  We were taking a walk around our neighborhood when he suddenly decides to pose by every tree we pass by to take a picture.  It was pretty hillarious!  I'd snap a few shots at each tree and he would quickly run over to me to review the pictures.  If he didn't like them, he'd go back to the same tree and pose a little differently.  HAHA!  All this was done with no direction from me.  What a funny kid.  I should start "A Kid and His Trees" series.  There were some funny poses in this set, too.  But I decided to choose this shot because it really looked sincere.  His eyes are in perfect sharpness and they look directly at you.  They really drew me into the image.  I'll post the other shots when I have some time to process them and maybe revisit these trees again with him soon.

[TIP]

Viewing EXIF data :: I've been asked a few times about the camera settings used to take some of the shots I've posted in this blog.  I don't extract any of that EXIF data because I like to be able to share what I've learned.  I don't have a problem with it because anyone can take my settings, but you can't take my eyes.  :D I shoot what I see for the most part and set up my camera to get the shots I want.

You can find that information by clicking on the pictures so they take you to the picture page on my Flickr.  From there, you will see text just to the right of the image saying something like: "This photo was taken yesterday using a Canon EOS 7D."  There will be a link on the text for "Canon EOS 7D" if you hover over it with your tracker.  This link will show you the camera settings used for that particular photo as well as a handful of other information that could be helpful.

My first full month of Project 365 has just been completed!  It's been a blast so far without too many challenges yet, but I'm sure I'll encounter those days soon. Here are Days 29-31 followed by a short slideshow of the month's photos at the end of this post!  Enjoy!  Please leave a comment and tell me what you think about the series so far.

[029/365] :: Flats.  My wife and her shoes...She's most comfortable in a pair of slippahs, but slips into some toe coverings when the weather turns cooler or when her outfit dictates it.  I've seen he wear these particular flats before, but they grabbed my attention a little bit when I saw them on her this evening.  I guess I like the pattern or something.  I was trying to do this photo in black and white, but I couldn't get the right look I was looking for in post, so I desaturated it a little and gave it a light tint.

[030/365] :: The Sniper.  It's the Canon EF 400mm ƒ/5.6L USM.  This is my longest reaching lens used mainly for surf photography from the beach.  It also doubles as a wildlife or birding lens.  I have also had great success using this as a portrait lens with enough distance between me and the subject.  I took this photo using another gem in my lens lineup, the Canon EF 135mm ƒ/2.0L USM.  Each of these lenses has a very limited use because of their long focal lengths, but I don't think I'll ever get rid of either of them because I consistently get outstanding results from each one.

[031/365] :: Keep It Simple.  I had a lot of ideas running through my head about what type of shot I wanted to shoot for today, but they were getting too complicated and it would have taken a while to get the shots set up, so I decided to just keep it simple with a nice flower shot.  I don't normally shoot these type of shots, but it's something I wanted to try especially since I've been playing with my 135L for the past couple days.  I like the simplicity of the single flower and uncluttered background.

Well, that's it for the first month of my Project 365!  On to the next!

:: Project 365 - January Slideshow ::

Aloha!  I'm back from Hawaii with a little tan and a lot of pictures to sort through!  Fortunately, I've already selected and uploaded my daily photos for Project 365 on my Flickr and I can share them all with you here! 

[020/365] :: Waikiki Lights.  Our first night in Hawaii and I desperately needed a shot for the day.  The flight got in later in the day and we spent a lot of time getting checked in and situated with everything.  I didn't remember about having to take a shot until the end of the day.  Luckily, we had a great view of Waikiki from out balcony, so I set up the tripod and shot a few long exposures of the city.  This one came out pretty good with nice colors and contrast.  The light trails from the passing cars was an added bonus to the shot.  I really like how the street lights turn into bright shining stars for long exposure shots.  This was my first real try at this type of shot, so I'm happy I was able to get a good result out of it.

[021/365] :: Broken Board.  We made our way to Sunset Beach on the North Shore of Oahu to check out the huge waves that arrived the day before.  Everyone had anticipated the running of the Quiksilver Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational to run with the previous day's monster swell, but the waves weren't consistent enough to run the event.  The waves were still huge and there were plenty of guys out there paddling into some crazy drops.  Stay tuned to this blog for a separate post of all the surfing shots I took in Hawaii.  I got really lucky with this particular shot.  This shot is straight out of camera with no extra editing done to the image.  I noticed the surfer peddling by on his bike, but didn't notice the broken board until he had passed me by.  I quickly turned my camera to shoot him as he peddled away.  I really like how the shot is framed by the green foliage along each side of the subject. 

[022/365] :: High Five.  Our hotel room in Hawaii had a cool parchment screen between the bathroom and sleeping area.  It created a nice backlit shadow effect for people inside the bathroom standing close to the screen.  I had my wife place her hand on the screen with the backlight on in the bathroom.  The light wasn't completely covered up, so it created a bright spot in the photo, but I was still able to get the effect I was looking for in the shot.

[023/365] :: Vanishing Horizon.  The sun happened to be setting as we were walking along Waikiki beach, so we decided to post up and take some pictures.  I had to shoot this with the huge sky and very low horizon line to eliminate a lot of the tourists that were standing in the foreground.  I like how it turned out as it really draws your attention to the sunset without too many silhouettes distracting from the subject.  One thing that I do find distracting is the watermark I have placed just below the horizon line.  I'll have to remember to move that watermark or get rid of it altogether for these type of shots.

[024/365] :: Hanauma Bay.  This is a shot of the famous snorkeling location just past the entrance to the bay.  The vivid blue water and the green foliage really add a lot of color to the image.  I'm not really a huge fan of snorkeling here because a lot of the coral reef has been trampled on by tourists making for a mostly dull time in the water.  My friend Brian and I decided to make it a little interesting by swimming out just past the shallow reef safe zone and into the deeper waters of the bay.  It was a pretty sketchy experience as we were getting tossed around by waves close to some hard coral formations.  We were able to find some larger schools of fish not normally seen in the calmer waters.  There was also a healthy population of corals that were untouched by tourists in this portion of the bay.  It's definitely worth a swim out there if you feel confident swimming in the open ocean.  Just make sure you use the buddy system and watch your backs for large shadows coming towards you in the water.

[025/365] :: Turtles Attack.  Our group decided to check out a Luau at the Polynesian Cultural Center in the North Shore.  It was our first time at the center and we had a good time checking out some shows and learning about the South Pacific Islands and their people.  This shot was taken at the gift shop while we were waiting for their finale show to start.  My son was playing with a couple stuffed turtles next to a display.  I rolled him over closer to the display and dumped a bunch of the stuffed toys on top of him and snapped this shot before he got overwhelmed.  We all had a pretty good time at the PCC and I would recommend it to people wanting to learn a thing or two about Polynesian Culture.  The new finale show they have is called 'Ha - The Breath of Life'.  We all were impressed by the performances and left well fed and well entertained.

[026/365] :: Pineapple.  This is a shot of a pineapple growing in the garden of the Dole Plantation near the North Shore.  I'm not sure what variety pineapple this is (I should have taken a shot of the label), but I like how it almost gets lost in the leaves surrounding it.  It's probably fully mature and ready to be eaten on the spot.  I learned that you could plant your own pineapples by taking the crown and placing it in a jar of water, not unlike planting a potato in a jar.  I'll have to try it the next time I have a pineapple around.

[027/365] :: Wipeout.  Day 27 was the last day of the Volcom Pipeline Pro competition at the Banzai Pipeline in the North Shore.  This is one of the scariest places in the world to surf.  Period.  We started the day with a big breakfast at the Hukilau Cafe and desserts from Ted's Bakery.  Then we drove on over to Ehukai Beach Park to check out the contest.  It was sick.  Pro surfers really know how to negotiate that wave and get themselves into the perfect position for a nice barrel ride.  The poor guy that fell off his board in this shot was a free surfer that was surfing at Off The Wall, just a few meters south of Pipeline.  I have other shots of him before he hit the water, but I decided to post the one not showing his face to save him from embarrassment.  HAHA!  You can pretty much tell from this shot that it was a bad wipeout.  He's falling into just a couple feet of water with a sharp coral reef below.  Luckily, he made it back up unharmed and quickly paddled back into the lineup before the next wave broke over him.  I've got a lot of respect for any surfer that paddles into these dangerous conditions. 

[028/365] :: Flight.  Sadly, all vacations must come to an end.  The family hopped back onto a plane and headed back to the mainland.  Hawaiian Airlines treated us good and we'll be looking forward to flying with them again for another trip to the islands.  This is a shot out our window seat during blue period.  The sun was setting faster since we were flying east, so I had to remember to get this shot before the sky turned completely dark.  Mahalo Hawaii for another good time.  Stay tuned for all the other pictures I took of the trip.  Aloha!

Today is my Friday. Then I have an 11 day weekend! STOKED!

I may not update my blog for a few weeks, so I wanted to get everyone caught up with my Project 365 before I get too far behind.  Most of the pictures I've taken for this set have been on the fly without much setting up.  It's convenient and doesn't take me away from the moment.  I'm happy to be able to capture images as the scene develops in front of my camera, but I would still like to concentrate on some setup shots for future pictures.  Unfortunately, setting up a shot takes more time and effort on my part.  Something I can easily manage as long as I commit to doing it right.  Anyway...on to the pictures!

[013/365] :: Continuing the food theme of the cupcake, I decided to shoot what I was having for dinner for Day 13.  Homemade tacos, spanish rice, and beans!  HAHA!  YUM!  The Sigma 30/1.4 has rarely left my camera body since purchasing it and I've been playing around with the shallow DOF (Depth of Field) that the wide f/1.4 aperture allows.  This was taken indoors, at night, in low light.  The wide aperture allowed me to shoot with at ISO100 at 1/10 sec.  I think I would have gotten a better shot if I had raised ISO to 400 and maybe 1/30sec, but I like how this one turned out.

[014/365] :: More low light action with the Sigma 30/1.4!  I took into account the settings from Day 13's shot and upped my ISO to 400 and shutter speed to 1/30sec.  I think I ended up with a much better capture on this day!  I focused on the little guy's sausage fingers and toes.  He's become all too familiar with the Mac interface on both my MacBook Pro and our iPad.  He's actually queueing up a Yo Gabba Gabba! video in this picture. Little Genius.

[015/365] :: More food pron!  Pigs-in-a-Blanket.  Delicious...but looking kinda phallic.  There isn't much else to say about this shot.  I think my favorite part of the shot are bokeh highlights on the upper right corner. 

[016/365] :: If you haven't figured it out yet from my previous posts, I love to surf.  This is my surfboard.  I have other surfboards, but this is The One.  It's my quiver killer.  A Firewire Dominator FST: 5'10" x 20.25" x 2.50".  It's the best board I've ever ridden and it'll be a hard one to ever replace.  I normally had riden this board as a quad fin and had never tried it as a tri-fin thruster until this day.  The waves were picking up and I decided to see if I could get more directional feel with the thruster setup.  Long story short, it worked!  I think I'll be keeping the thruster setup for a while and maybe change it back to a quad setup when summer comes around.

[017/365] :: Dressed the little kid up in his warrior tee and took him to the park.  Kid had a blast and even posed for some pictures for me.  This is his Warrior Cheese pose.  I shot it with the Canon 135L.  This is a marvelous piece of glass and I love every picture that I take with it!  The backgrounds just melt away and the subjects pop!  Focus was spot on using AI Servo on the camera because the kid was walking towards me in this shot.  There were some hotspots in this shot that I had to correct due to my not paying attention to shutter speeds (user error), but I believe the final image turned out great.

[018/365] :: I had a completely different shot lined up for Day 18, but after loading it into the camera, I saw that I had missed focus and the shot was unusable.  It was getting late and I didn't want to drive somewhere to find a shot with my son in tow.  Then I remembered that there was a full moon out tonight.  I hadn't shot with my 400L in a while,  so why not now?  I quickly bundled up the kid and we went outside to look for the moon.  I setup the tripod for this shot and used live view on my camera's LCD to get focus just right.  It only took me 3 exposures to get this shot.  It was my first time shooting the moon with the Canon 400/5.6L.  I'm glad that I've found another use for the lens besides shooting surf.

[019/365] :: It's 11:35pm on Day 19 as I'm typing this entry.  I finally was able to select a photo to use for today with some time to spare.  Restaurant Week kicked off in San Diego this week and we had to take advantage of it before it ends.  It's a great opportunity to try out different restaurants in town with 3-course meals at greatly reduced prices.  Good food and great company was the recipe for the night.  Good times all around. 

And that's it for this posting.  I'll continue snapping pictures everyday and have more pictures for Project 365 soon! I will also have more surf for everyone, too!  Stay tuned!

Back to our regular scheduled programming!  It's been a long week so far and I wanted to update everyone on my Project 365 before I get too far behind on posting again.  Enjoy the photos and please leave a comment below if you like them, hate them, want to buy them...haha!

[008/365] :: The Day 8 shot was taken towards the end of a great day.  I quickly snapped this shot of my friend and her adorable daughter.  I really love the expressions on their faces in the photo.  There's a lot of togetherness and separation going on in this one shot (if that makes any sense).  Tegetherness because they're both connected physically and emotionally as mother and daughter.  The expressions on their faces are both of happiness.  But that's also where the separation is shown.  They look like they're happy about completely separate things.  I really struggled with the lighting in the photo, but I think the darkness adds to the mood a little.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.

[009/365] :: After a full day of frolicking on Saturday, my son got up bright and early Sunday morning for some fun outside.  I took a few minutes to snap a few photos of him before putting the camera down for some ruckus.  This kid has grown so much and so fast!  I love him to death!  This look on his face is so mischievous and his body language is telling me that he's ready to do something playful.  Today was a good day.

[010/365] :: Another shot of the little guy.  My uncle celebrated a birthday and the fam gathered over at his place to eat!  Little man loves singing the happy birthday song and blowing out candles on cakes.  We saved a slice for him and let him at it.  His Grandma is in the background urging him on.

[011/365] :: I decided to work from home in the evening so I could take the boy and his god brother out to the The New Children's Museum for some good times.  We went with the moms and another friend, too.  These two just had a lot of fun together and ran around exploring most of what the Museum had to offer.  We'll be visiting the museum a lot this year since becoming yearly members.  I really had a hard time with this photo during post processing.  There was so much light coming from alot of different sources.  It threw my white balance off a lot.  I decided to play a little bit with the colors and saturation and the photo eventually just morphed into the selective color piece.  I'm not usually a big fan of selective color (I'm not even sure if I did it right), but I think it really works well for this shot.  We'll have to try this shot again on our next visit.

[012/365] :: This was a GOOD cupcake.  My coworker brought over some cupcakes she got from a Sprinkles opening in La Jolla.  If you ever have a chance to have one of their cupcakes, take it.  I had taken a couple shots of the cupcake before I bit into it, but those looked too boring.  I decided to bite into it to add some texture to the shot.  I think it worked.  I don't know if I like the teeth marks so much, but the inside texture of the cupcake definitely added another dimension to the photo.  One thing I would change about the shot is the background.  I was working in the confines of my office, but I will definitely start paying more attention to backgrounds for shots like this.

Believe it or not, I've actually started a Project 365!  I'm feeling a lot of pressure to take some pleasing photos for the few people that actually take the time to view them.  I decided to start the project with Day 0 on December 31, 2010.  I'll be taking a photo every day from that point onward until the last day of 2011.  This is first and foremost a photography project, so I will not be posting, uploading, or blogging about my photos every day.  The photos will be taken daily, but the blogs and posts will be done about once a week or whenever I can find the time to do so.

I will also be following some sort of theme to my photos each week, but I will not be strict about following that theme.  I would rather choose a strong photo that is out of theme versus a weak photo that is in line with that week's theme.

My week one theme is NEWNESS.  I decided to showcase new things (items, experiences, occurences, etc) in conjunction with the new year and the new project.

[000/365] :: My Day 0 shot is of my 19 month old son enjoying his mac & cheese at Milk.  It was our first time here with all the delicious confections.  I loved the natural light coming into the restaurant and how it reflected off all the metal surfaces.  The food was great, but the desserts were better. :)

[001/365] :: Day 1 is some face time with the little man and his new hat!  It's Sherriff Woody's hat and was part of a Toy Story costume set given to him by his god brother.  He LOVES Toy Story and tries really hard to recite the lines from the latest movie whenever we allow him to watch it.  Since this picture was taken, the poor hat has been sat on, rolled over, and thrown around as a frisbee.  RIP Sherriff Woody's hat.

[002/365] :: Snow Day!  It doesn't normally snow where we're from, so when it started snowing during a visit to some family up north, we all got really excited.  It was the first time most of us had witnessed a snow fall and definitely a first time experience for these kids.  The got to enjoy the start of the snow fall outside, but it quickly got too cold for them and they decided to plop themselved by the door to watch the rest of it fall down.

[003/365] :: Day 3 brought us back home and me back to work.  This shiny new lens was waiting for me in the office when I got back.  It's a Sigma 30mm ƒ/1.4 EX DC HSM with gloss finish.  I already owned the Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 EX DG HSM which I had brought with me into work that day.  I snapped the shot with the 50mm and 7D.  I love how sharp these Sigma lenses are.  Focus has been spot on with all the Sigma glass I've owned.  If you look very closely, you can just make out the letters through the lens from the rear cap.  The letters are part of the "Made in Japan" phrase written on the rear cap attached to the lens.  SHARP!

[004/365] :: I was thinking about shooting something new that morning when I stepped out of the house and saw the shiny new BMW X5 parked in my driveway.  It's actaully a used car purchased by my in-laws the day before.  It was new enough.  The lighting that morning was really good, so I snapped away at the car using my new Sigma 30!

[005/365] :: Day 5 brought about the first significant swell of 2011.  This is a wide angle shot of Scripps Pier just after sunrise.  I used a Canon EF-S 10-22mm ƒ/3.5-4.5 USM that I borrowed from a friend for this capture.  It was COLD, but the conditions were clean and the water was just slightly warmer than the air.  There were some surfers out there shooting the pier on those short lefts.  You can probably see one surfer having a go at it towards the middle of the image.  The rights were a longer ride as you can probably tell from the photo.  The surf has only gotten better since.

[006/365] :: My awesome wife gifted me this cool new Nixon 51-30 Chrono watch for Christmas.  I haven't gotten around to wearing it or even taken a proper photo of it.  I finally decided to get a good photo of it for Project 365.  I really like how it turned out using all ambient lighting with the Christmas lights as a viable supplement.  I keep getting amazed at how great my new Sigma 30 lens has consistently delivered.  This was handheld at 1/50 sec!  Focus and sharpness is spot on. 

[007/365] :: Day 7 is the end of the first week for Project 365.  It's been a great start to 2011 and I'm looking forward to what the year has in store.  When my son was born, God blessed me with infinite happiness.  In 2011, He's going to double that.  Someone's on their way and I can't wait to meet this little person!  I'm blessed with a wonderful, healthy family.  LML = Love My Life!