I’ve become a regular.

Contemplating waking up 4 hours early to save 2 dollars on the bridge toll. What’s wrong with me? They also had my drink ready before I could even order it. Things are getting weird around here.

So anyway, it’s about time I shared some photos. I used to really enjoy photo-blogging more than any other kind of blogging, so here’s where I bring it back. But I gotta limit myself. I got thousands of photos. Hundreds of Thousands. Out of that many, at least a few of them are bound to be good. Even if they’re not great, I still like a lot of them. Too many to share in one post. So I’m going to try to limit myself to 10 or less photos per photo post.

Later on, if I’m say, recounting a trip I took or something, then more photos might be necessary, but I don’t want it to be something I can do just whenever.

I could start anywhere with this, but I figure I might as well start at the beginning. Find the photos I like the most that I uploaded to flickr first. Oh that’s another thing, I keep my photos on flickr. Not really the best place, probably, but it’s where I’ve set up and I’m too lazy to switch.

Some are digital, some are film. I’m pretty sure my film use is only going to go down as time goes on, but there’s still a lot of film just sitting in my freezer. I’m not just gonna forget about that stuff. It just might be a while before I get to it.

So let’s start! I’d love some feedback on these. One thing I really do miss from college is the art critiques. For a while now, I’ve been my own critic, and I’m not the best judge of my own work. Please help!

For a first post, I think I’d like to cover what I like to photograph most. If I sum it all up, the things I like shooting most are extreme bokeh closeup portraits, and random wild stuff. Occasionally I’ll shoot something with good composition by accident. Most of my good shots include a family member, for some reason.

Examples! (In semi-chronological order)

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This is my mother's mother, Grandmother Betty.

This is a fairly good example of a motif of mine; portrait, wide open, low-light, fast film, family.

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Isn't that cute?

That’s my cousin Lisa Ann. I took these photos after I dropped my camera case with a bunch of telephoto zoom lenses inside, so I rushed out to test them. Dropping this lens might have messed up the optics inside a little bit, but if you ask me, this photo still turned out okay. This is also a rare example of me grappling that ‘decisive moment,’ with her foot just coming off the pedal and catching her glimpse back at the camera. It’s very hard to get the decisive moment with an iPhone, I’ve noticed. Perhaps the iPhone 5 will fix that issue.

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Magic Carpet Ride

This is kind of the other side of my low depth of field preferences. This is more of a deep-focus, wide angle shot. My family shows up again, this time from Dad’s side of the family. This is his brother Dave, his wife Mimi, and their dog. I think it’s their newer dog Louie, but it’s possibly their older dog, the late Oscar. I feel like I lucked out with the composition on this one. I’m rarely conscious of composition when I’m taking good photos, if I start to think about composition everything goes to shit.

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The Man In The Desert

Here’s another wide-angle deep-focus shot. Something about the southern California desert that really lets me get lucky with composition. By the way, that’s my dad there on the left.

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2 brothers at Denny's

See, whenever I have my mom’s Tamron zoom lens, my tendency is to go wide angle. So here’s another wide angle shot, this time of my uncle Rick (l), and my dad (r). Interestingly, my uncle is the youngest, and my dad is like 6 or more years older than him. Yet somehow, my uncle looks like he could be the oldest.

Speaking of my dad and my uncle Rick…

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Cheers

We go from the desert to the tundra, back where they come from, Madison, Wisconsin. Something about those two, more than their other two brothers, is photogenic. They balance each other pretty well. It even works both ways!

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They’re just generally pretty distinctive and interesting looking. Especially together.

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Quite

The final picture today is the only digital photo I’m going to share this time, and doesn’t include any family members in it.

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Walking on water under the bridge

That’s kind of poetic, isn’t it? I dunno what it means. I love that picture though. Being a norther Californian, I never really got to enjoy the water the way my mom did when she grew up. She had a pool in her back yard, countless lakes and creeks to swim in, and free community pools to share with her neighbors. And it gets so hot there, you have to swim. It’s just the only relief. Here, swimming is more like a chore, and it’s expensive.

I glimpsed that from the freeway, and managed to grab a picture with my old laggy digital camera before we passed it. An alternative title could be “2 guys, a girl, and a dog.” But that’s a little bit too suggestive for you people with naughty minds.

So that’s the 10 photos. I’m gonna share a couple bonus photos ’cause of what I’m up to this evening.

Over a year ago, back in September 2010, I offered to help out on a 1 day movie shoot, doing my best to record location sound at the top of a hill on the coast of Marin.

It was an interesting location, visually. But Jesus Christ was it hard to shoot there. First of all, it was an hour long uphill walk, carrying all the gear we’d need that day. It’s always humid over there, so, while it was cold, you couldn’t wear your coat and do anything strenuous, like walking to where you needed to go.

I recorded sound with what equipment they had. There was a boom pole, kind of, it was actually a broomstick. There was always a lot of signal interference on the wireless mics. And you couldn’t step anywhere without making noise.

Oh and it was cold. Cold cold cold, all day.

It was still pretty fun. Not sure what it was all about, I was only there for that one day. I’m not sure if the work I did was very good. But it was an experience. And because of that, I am now going to watch this movie’s premiere here in San Francisco, in about an hour and a half.

Here’s some pictures from that day on location:

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San Francisco from Marin
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Jessica Fisher scouts

Jessica Fisher is, of course, a genius.

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Reza & Cheryl, Luger

I’m sure the final film will be timed and graded to be more, I don’t know, post-apocalyptic. It was some heavy drama in the scene I was helping out on. Sci-fi something or other. I really don’t know what to expect.

Maybe I’ll review it!

That reminds me, I still need to review The Secret World of Arrietty. I’ll get to it.

But for today, that’ll do. This was a lot of fun. I like sharing photos. I hope they weren’t uninteresting. I look forward to your feedback.


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