Wasn't it Suppose to Rain Today?

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I attend the 'Sausage Fest' at the Vault Skatepark. It was quite a fun day, lots a good friends coming together to ride some bikes & watch people ride. It was suppose to rain this day but which ended in the very opposite weather, a blue sunny sky... On the way to my car I noticed the clouds coming over the hills & I was standing on some rail road tracks & thought of it to be a good shot. In the post I did a bit of tweeking in the CR2 settings in photoshop to make the colors saturated & leveled between every section of the photo, since some of it was exposed more then other parts. I had to go beyond the CR2 settings to achieve the look I was trying to get so I went into photoshop & did a bit of masking & adding contrast in the clouds. Changed the colors a bit too with the overall look of the picture to make it more of an aged photo (I guess?).

Close to the end & Failed Plan.

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" for day 47 I took a photo of what my back yard ends up to be when you go threw the gate. When I moved here about a half year ago I was pretty siked on having a gate to a park & would think I would spend a lot of time there but I never do, ha. Well I've been there a few times, but definitely not enough.

For day 48 I had quite a mission planned out after I got out of work late on Friday to go to a building under construction. The building is still in it's base structure form right not & that was exactly what I wanted. What made it better was there was a parking structure right next to it, which would made it easy to snap a high photo of the under construction building. So I headed there after work & came to find out there was no way into the parking structure since it was being used by the construction workers unless if I jumped some pretty high fences but would probably end up with security catching me. I'll probably make another attempt at snapping a photo there, maybe for the last day for this project. So I ended up taking a photo on the way home that I've always had in mind to take a photo of but wanted to take it while it was raining, which it was :D

Out of werk early again.

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I got out of werk early again & instead of driving in the worst time of rush hour I drove around Irvine to find a place to take my photo of the day. I went to a place that I've taken a photo before, several actually. Went to go to this place cause I want to get the sun set & this was the only parking garage I could go to that I knew I wouldn't have any trouble parking at in time to catch the sun set. I forgot that there was a building in the way of the view of the set but just decided to go with it anyways. Did another HDR, saturated the sun a bit in photoshop cause it was a little to over powered with color.

As well it was my friend Brandon's birthday, snapped some photo while we waited for dinner at BJ's. Happy Birthday Brandon!

New Port Beach Sun Set!

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I headed down to New Port Beach after I got out of work since I got out a bit early. I thankfully found a decent place to shoot a bit before the sun started to go down so I didn't have to rush. It was quite cold out there. Originally I wanted to get an HDR just the sun & ocean but went under the pier, which made out to make a much better photo. I had to tweek the setting in Photomatrix quite a bit to get what I wanted. I wasn't 100% satisfied with the look of the photo so I did quite a bit of adjustments after in Photoshop with putting more contrast in the water & darkened the sky & clouds, had to do quite a bit of masking.

Santa Monica Promenade, "Biutiful", & Long Exposers.

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" for day 43 I went to go to the Santa Monica Promenade my girlfriend Catalina to see the movie 'Biutiful' at the indie theater. The movie is seriously so good & depressing. I suggest anyone & everyone to go see it. The cinematography was absolutely amazing, like Catalina said, each frame of the movie could be a amazing photo. Well after the movie I snapped a couple of photos & we enjoyed the empty Promenade. I thought it would be a good to take a photo of the empty Promenade cause it's a place that you typically see busy all the time.

For day 44 I had a little fun with long exposers. It's probably the most over done idea in photography but I think everyone has a right to have a little fun with it. I tried doing PacMan trying to eat three ghost, I took a lot of tries at it & this was probably the best of all of'em.

No Opportunities Taken...

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I went riding in Hollywood at a high school with a couple of friends. I had a lot of good opportunities to take good photos due to the rain & the location I was at but didn't take'em. I suppose I was more into filming & riding. When there was rain coming in we took cover in the eating area which was entirely under the buildings which I found to be really cool. Snapped a couple photos while waiting out the rain but definitely not enough.

Lagging it on Uploads... & Beach House

Ha, so I've been lagging it with uploading my photos these past couple of days. But no worries I took a photo each day, just been busy with some stuff & haven't had time to post about them. Anyways, For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" for day 38 I took a photo of what I could pretty much eat for the rest of my life RICE, EGGS, & BEACON! When you're Filipino you know about this meal when you wake up in the morning, ha.

For day 39 I was leaving work & spotted that the clouds were looking wicked with the moon shinning on them, I did an HDR with this photo.

For day 40 I was in Little Tokyo & after eating some awesome sushi I snapped a photo of this old Asian couple walking. I tried to get them as centered as possible. With post I added a vignette to add more concentration/focus to the couple & center of the photo.

For day 41 there was a storm with quite a kick of wind in it. I decided to head down to the Pike in Long Beach. As soon as I got out of the car to take the photo the wind was pushing me back really badly, ha. So it was a bit difficult to take this photo. I originally wanted to do a HDR but you tend to get a lot of artifacts with lights cause there way too over exposed. Makes the photos look like trash with the results of the HDR. I'm sure there is a way around it but I'm probably just too lazy to work past it, ha.


On another note I went to see my favorite band on Thursday night, BEACH HOUSE! Absolutely amazing show. Glad to got to see'em! I wanted to take my camera inside
but they didn't let any "professional photography" allowed in the venue, ha. Had to go with the crappy cellphone photo.

Random Hotel

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I headed to a Hotel by my werk in Irvine. The appeal to go to this place was the pond they had built in the area. Thought it would make for some nice lighting. I have attempted a couple of times of doing an HDR at night but always came out a bit wrong. This time around it worked quite well & pretty happy with the results. The image kinda has a ghost like feel to it, well to me at least.

By the way Happy Valentines day to you all. It's funny that it takes a single day for a guy to treat his girlfriend so nicely with all these gifts yet he his has all those 364 other days in that year to have all the same opportunities to treat them so nicely. Well I guess you can say the same about birthdays & all those other days... I dunno.

Long day of Riding! & Unused Clips

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I had a lot of riding time with my friends Dustin, Patrick & Alex so my photo of the day was bound to do something with bikes, ha. We were riding the famous SixZeroFive ditch in our neighborhood while the sun was setting & the sky was on fire! I snapped a couple of photos & decided to do another HDR, it always seems to work best when it's a sun rise. I liked the results when I was editing it in post, I took it to photoshop after photomatrix & fixed the colors a bit. It was a bit too much saturated so I brought it down, added some green, & took out the blues.

I filmed a bit too as well to work on my filming, went pretty well. I've been trying to figure out a couple different ways go about filming & it being smooth as possible. Guess it will be quite a bit of trial & error & much practice to dialing in filming with the DSLR model & being happy with it.

ALSO! I put together a Unused Clips edit that consist of footage that is getting old & not too great of filming quality. It was a good way too abuse my Vimeo Plus account too! :P

Morning at the Beach

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I woke up at 5:30 AM to head down to Santa Monica beach. I kinda made it a bit late to to catch the very start of the sun rise but deff was still able to catch some the awesome sun rise. Although these was part of "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" waking up was in hand for another project. I was checking out vimeo videos one day & got a inspired & decided just go out & shoot something & edit it to some music that was intone with the feel of the day.
I caught some great footage. Probably spent 3 hours just wandering around the Santa Monica Pier. I tend to work on a lot of color correcting with this video, make sure I make the video come off as early morning feel as possible, an enjoyable morning feel.

Late Night Walks in the Cold & Down Town Long Beach

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" for day 33 I had a late night walk in the cold & snapped a couple of photos while I was about. Wasn't anything special, I didn't realize how much the grain kicked in when I brought up the ISO, ha.

For day 34 I headed to the Queen Marry thinking I would be taking a photo of it but ended up finding an awesome view of Uptown Long Beach. I was pretty siked on the view.

Long Renders & Food with Friends

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" for day 31 & 32 I snapped a quick photo of my render times in After Effects after color correcting it for one of the shows I filmed at. I've been busy with editing them so my hands are a bit tied up time but I must not be lazy about it, agreeing with my friend Alex, so hopefully I'll actually find a spot to shoot. For day 32 I ate with a my friends after a La Habra skatepark session at Villa's Taco in Santa Fe Springs. Anyone I grew up with knows of these place, ha.

Breaking Upwards

So I just got done watching an Indie film done by Daryl Wein on Netflix called 'Breaking Upwards' with my friend Laura, well half it with her since she fell asleep. It was a deff an awesomely good film. Something on a big note that I mention to Laura, when she was conscious, while we were watching it was that the film was wayyyy better then 'No Strings Attached' which we saw a couple of weeks ago which had us ending up walking out of the theater. It goes to show that with a film like 'Breaking Upwards' with a budget of $15,000 dollars could be tremendously better then a film like 'No Strings Attached' with a budget $25,000,000 dollars, that pretty much says that a film doesn't have the quality to the amount of budget they have.

They're plenty of other example that can be put into play but it's just my word of thought, many people can agree or disagree. I suppose it depends on it being your cup of tea or not.




On another note for my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I took a photo of my last bites of my Chipotle meal lastnight & for the one today I was enjoying an evening with Laura at Coffee Bean & spotted her reflection in the window while snapping photos. Thought it would make for a good photo, so here it is!

Vault Session Edit! Finally...

So I've been done with this Vault edit for a week or so now but been struggling with getting it onto vimeo for a couple of days. I uploaded it & it said the video was still uploading hours after I it had finished uploading from my computer, then hours turn into days! I dunno if it was the vimeo servers being backed up or maybe my browser that I was using but anyways. It's up now for you all to see my shaky filming. I tried out a new way of filming with the DSLR & it works quite well, so hopefully the next edit won't be so shaky.


Tech Specs:
Camera - Canon EOS 550D T2i
Lens - Canon Kit Lens EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR

Edited with Final Cut Pro

Motion Graphics, Color Grading, & Magic Bullet Denoiser with Adobe After Effects.

TieFighter's Last Show!

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I went to TieFighter's last show at a local venue. I was pretty occupied with that pretty much the whole day cause I filmed at the show of course! While I was hanging outside the sun was setting at thought it to be a good time to take a decent photo. I manage to do a custom HDR by editing the top portion to be exposed correctly (the sky) & the bottom portion (the ground, people, buildings). I layered one photo on top of the other & masked out the sky with the incorrectly exposed photo then went on with editing the photo as I pleased.

Loooong Day!

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I didn't have much time to take a photo today, again. I got home around 11:40 pm from a that job out in Thousand Oaks. It was a 12 hour work day. I decided to take a photo of my mood, tired & run down, ha.
Some good rest & riding going down this weekend.

Caught in the Act!

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I didn't have much energy after my 11 hour work day, I chilled with my dogs for a bit when I got home & snapped this photo of Zach yawning. Thought it was good timing & he looked pretty funny.

Ben & Jerry's!

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I bought a Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk on the way home, this ice cream taste so good I had to take a picture of it, ha.

I got a freelance job for two days in Westlake Village, long drive but will be fun to mix up the week with a different place to work at. I'll be there for 12 hours tomorrow, hopefully all goes well! :D

45 Degree Hill Climb, Slippery Grass, & Thorns.

For my "Take a Photo a Day for Fifty Days Challenge" I went up to a hilly area with my friend Laura in Irvine to get a high shot of the city when the sun was going down. When we were driving around we couldn't find any place where we could possibly park, there were only closed living location in the area so I had Laura stay at the car while I go up a hill. At first I thought the hill wasn't that long of a hike, I was definitely wrong. I was pretty out of breath by the time I got to the top & as well the sun had gone down a lot. I was able to take a couple of decent photos before the sun went completely down. I wanted to try a bit of a different approach to taking this photo with getting something very close & a view of the far view in the back. As well with this photo I did a HDR. The hike back down was pretty bad too since I couldn't see anything & the grass was we too. I ended up running into a lot of shrub & thorn plants as well. BLAH. Next time I should really plan.