LA Photo Outing
September 26, 2009 / Tags: César, Chinatown, Kathy, Photo Outing
Steven (whom we met at Carol's wedding) invited us to a casual photo outing in LA. It was a good opportunity to get more familiar with the 5D, practice my photography, and meet new friends. Thanks Steven!
After shooting a wedding where speed is critical to get the shot, it was nice to be able to take my time and really think about the picture before I shoot. Or if it didn't come out the way I intended, try again. I took this photo about four or five times before I finally got it to look the way I had pictured it in my head.
I really like this one, but it was all luck. We passed these skateboarders as we were walking down the street. They were sitting down, not really skateboarding, so I looked up at the building and started to frame the shot. As I was doing it, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the skateboarders were getting back up, and that one was going to pass through my frame. So I finished framing, then waited a second or two, and when he passed, I snapped the picture.
New Camera, New Homepage
September 11, 2009 / Tags: 5D Mark II, Jon, Kathy, OCPAC, Photo Outing, The District
Unlike some people, I'm not much of a writer, at least when it comes to personal blogging. For some time now, I have wanted to change my homepage to more of a photo blog, but I never could find the time to write the software. I tried evaluating Wordpress and other open source projects, but nothing was exactly what I wanted (duh). I did find some inspiration though, and with the arrival of my 5D Mark II, I figured now was the time to make it the switch. So a sleepless week later, I present to you ::drumroll:: my new home page.
The main features are a cleaner layout with nicer inline display of images
and better large image display. Instead of going to a separate page, large image display is done using a lightbox. (Click on the image above to test it out.) I wrote all the lightbox code myself -- it's based on the lightbox code I wrote for Arcadia Music, except instead of fixed display sizes, it sends the size of your window to the server and the server determines the optimal size image to send back. Oh, and it's written in JQuery instead of Prototype. I still like Prototype better, but JQuery appears to run faster, and it downloads a lot faster than Prototype + script.aculo.us. The HTML is also super-clean because so much of the heavy lifting is done by the javascript. The new software also supports pretty permalinks and tags. RSS support is planned, as is an open source release.
I'll leave you with a few test shots from the new Mark II. Some of these were taken at the park near my condo, some were taken at The District, and rest were taken at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.
This one is my favorite from the group.
P.S. I'll try to find time to back-fill the galleries from my old homepage.
Kathy and I went up to Malibu to check out a potential wedding site one weekend. We're glad we did, because it was a lot smaller than it looked in the pictures. Not wanting to waste the trip, we headed down to the beach to take some pictures by the pier.
As I was figuring out poses and lighting this guy came up to us and offered to take our picture. I refused at first, but as he started talking it became apparent that he was a professional photographer.
So I gave him my camera and let him pose us. The pictures turned out great!
Afterward, I took a few more of Kathy on the other side of the pier. I'm pretty happy with how those turned out, too.
The Penguin Effect
January 31, 2006 / Tags: 350Z, Photo Outing, UCI
As you probably already know, I've been wanting a Nissan 350Z for a while now. It was on my Christmas list last year, and Kathy even went so far as to get me a die-cast model of one. But it's not quite the same as having the real thing:
Yup, that's right! As of Saturday, January 28, 2006, I am the proud owner of a brand new, 300 horsepower, 6-speed manual transmission, Nissan 350Z. =D
The way people turn their heads when I drive by is hilarious. It's what I call the Penguin Effect... small groups of people simultaneously turn their heads to follow the car. Tonight I was driving by these three guys, and when Kathy saw them turn their heads, she said to me: "you used to be one of those people." So true, heh.
I'm still learning how to drive it (I only have about a week's worth of stick shift experience under my belt so far...), but it is *so* fun. (Edit in 2009: It's still fun. =D)
And I am *so* broke. But that's another story. Enough talking... here are more pics...
Edit: A lot of people thought these were promotional pictures of the 350Z, but they're not! These are pictures of my actual car -- I took it to UCI's new Engineering parking structure and took pictures of it with Brad. If you look closely at some of the pictures, you can see our reflections. ;)