Epic

So remember yesterday how I was complaining about having nothing to shoot and not really much motivation to get out and do stuff? Well, I may not have worded it that way, but I was definately needing something to do. I was doing jumpropes in my room, which should be physically impossible do to me being 6'4'' and my room being so small. I just tried not to scrape all the popcorn off the roof or knock my tv over in the process. But either way, rain or shine, I need to keep my ankle active now that I tore a ligament I need to soften it up so it can heal. Though it looks like surgery may be my only option at this point :(

Anywho, I finally got around to editing the pics  I took from friday's lunch break. take a look!



Notice anything different about the two pics? see if you can find all five differences. (basically the top one has 5 things less than the bottom one)




The first one was just his car. A mitsubishi lancer evolution, or as we call it, and 'EVO'. But for my homework this week I had to take a portrait of two people without a face showing, so I asked the owner, who happened to work with me in the office, to step outside and stand by his car acting cool. Then I HDR'd him with the car. YUP that's right, both of those pictures are made up of 9 different pictures blended into one, so luckily Ricardo (owner) stood still enough not to make ghosting or blurring effects.

As for the other portrait, well, I have about 130 shots from tonight to go through. The sun came out to play today and my good friend John called me back to go shoot at the beach with him and his girlfriend. So now I have shots of myself, his girl, him, and him and his girl together... and I only need to use one. sheesh this is hard!

On the way home from the beach I got a txt back from my friend Rosalie and went to hang out. I took her to pick her kids up from Awanas and then dropped them off as we went to Dennys for some biscuits with gravy, mozzerella fried cheese melt, and some french silk pie. AND OF COURSE ROOT BEER, DUH! After that we went to her house where our other good friends Krista and Aubree were waiting with the kids. We continued to play with bubbles until we got the amazing idea to start a game of volleybubble. Basically, since I'm the best bubble blower around, I blew huge bubbles and then everyone tried to blow it around and pass it to eachother. I got some video footage of it on my phone but am too lazy to go hook it up and load it to youtube and post it for you, but next post I will definately show you the carnage that ensued.

So all in all I had a pretty good weekend, despite my girl bein over in Las Vegas, I've been through enough to understand that time and separation can actually bring people closer together as they realise how much is missing in their life once they are away from eachother long enough, so I can't really complain, I'm just glad that she's happy and slightly jealous she got to go see Chris Angel and Phantom of the Opera live. (not at the same time obviously)

Well, gonna get goin to bed now, gotta get up for work in the mornin. Thanks for stoppin by and have a great week! Whoever it is reading this, don't be a stranger, feel free to make use of that comment box below. It's not for some stupid view count or personal acknowledgement thing, I just simply love when people take the time to show some love once in awhile. I mean, you got this far already, you must have spent at least a good 5 minutes if not more just reading all this nonsense, possibly 15-20 minutes if you paid attention and checked out all the photos on their actual webpages and viewed them large. So what would it hurt to say hello or some feedback on what you liked/disliked/would like to see about my writing, or at least simply to let me know you were here so I know I'm not just typing to one or two people with a bunch of other people reading a few words and being done with it, haha.

Well, take care!

~sw23

I now pronounce you FINALLY FINISHED!

I know, I know, it's 2:25 in the morning... I'm bad. But I promised myself not to sleep until these photos were finished today, so despite taking melatonin at 11:20 as I also promised, I somehow managed to finish the photos. Thanks root beer!

So, without further delay, here is the fruit of my labor. From the 427 I took, I chose 64 keepers, and from those 64 keepers I chose 13 of my own personal favorites to share. Check 'em out and let me know what you think!


























Sorry I've been flaking on the blog and photos lately... not going to make excuses, because I honestly don't know where all my time went. I can't think of anything to hold responsible for my lack of motivation. This week I got to use the macro lens and take some fun pictures of the world that is invisible to the naked eye. Hopefully I'll have those ones up some time soon, but until then, feel free to take a look and show some love... or un-love, whichever it is you feel necessary, any feedback at this point would be great. Thanks!

~sw23

Weekend of fun!

Gonna make a quick update here before I head to bed.

This week has been incredible in terms of photography. I finally got around to editing the last batch from New Year's Eve.



Then on tuesday we got to turn in our self portrait photos for class. My teacher hasn't given the grade yet but the other students seemed to like it. The idea for the photo comes from the AFI song 'death of seasons.'

"I watched the stars as they fell from the sky, I held a falling star as it wept for me, dying."



And the irony of the whole shoot is that less than 5 minutes after shooting the selfie in which I "caught a shooting star," I went to take a picture of the staircase leading into the night sky and it just so happens I caught a falling star... A REAL ONE. I look up to check the lighting to see if I should use my flashlight but the moonlight was more than enough for the job, and just then I see it shoot right across where I'm shooting. I was thinking 'Oooooh I sure hope that was bright enough to show up on the picture!' It's not SUPER bright, but it's still visible and serves as proof that it's still possible. So now I can add shooting stars AND lightning to my night photography portfolio. =D



Then Saturday rolls around after a normal work week. Momo and I went bowling for the first time in years at Harley's Camarillo Bowl for their Club Atomic night. It was alot of fun and we had some really good games, followed by a record breaking bad game. I'll let Momo explain how that one went, haha. All I know is I'm still sore from playing Dance Dance Revolution for the first time in over 6 years. The last time I played I was a local favorite at Lazerstar where me and my old buddy George would go for hours and spend all kinds of money just dancing like idiots on heavy mode. Hey, it was a serious workout, and I'm considering getting back into it for lack of motivation to actually run or workout on my own, haha!

So finally, Sunday! My good friend Jun asked me to shoot his engagement photos for him and his beautiful fiance, Missy. I took roughly 400 photos, and of those I selected 64 to edit and submit for their approval, and of those 64... I have no idea how many they want to use for whatever, but its all good sicne I'm just gonna put my best effort into it and give them something to remember for the rest of their lives, hopefully.




So basically, that's it for now. Gonna head to bed now and get some rest for another loooooong day at work tomorrow. Hope everyone is having a wonderful new year!

~sw23

I'm supposed to be in bed...

I promised I'd get some sleep once I finished working with some pictures. But I never promised I wouldn't do other stuff before I started the pictures, muahahaha! But seriously, I couldn't keep all this stuff to myself, since my internet wasn't working the past 2 days. So first and foremost, as I have made it a new tradition. Here is the latest from CTSP:




So from the beginning of interestingness, Thursday was the second day of my new class. We had the chance to introduce ourselves and naturally I got shy and didn't say anything I meant to say and basically made it look like I know NOTHING about photography and have no interest in anything but surrealism and art, which is in fact somewhat true. I am an artist, not a photographer. My camera is nothing but a tool for my artistic outlet, just like my guitar and my pencil or my keyboard. I'm a surrealist and will never see things for what they really are. That's far too boring.

But then it was time for everyone else to introduce themselves and boy there is an interesting bunch I get to work with this semester. The guy across from me, not to judge, but is probably mid 30's, long black hair, rugged facial hair, muscular and tight-fitting jeans just high enough to let every know that it doesn't matter who's signing for it, he's got a package for you. And not much to our surprise he stood up and confessed that he was raised around photography... pornography to be exact. And then we have two or three "pro" photographers who bought really cool cameras, paid for a website, and started charging people up the butt to shoot their events. I know I'm not a pro and I don't advertise or charge anything close to what I should, but that's because I know I have a full time job and I'm still learning photography every day I shoot. But after seeing some of their sites I finally get what John was saying about people who think that a camera takes good pictures. Cameras, as the teacher explained, do nothing more than store information on light and color, just millions of 1's and 0's. Only the person holding the camera can make what he'she sees into something worth calling a photo. We then discussed the difference between Cameras and artists. Blah blah blah, stuff I knew long before I started shooting, and then finally we got to the good stuff; Photoshop! I actually got in trouble. Not even done with my second day of school and I get humiliated in front of the whole class. And it was so awesome haha. We were editing a photo that was on the community network. What the teacher didn't mention was that if I clicked 'done' in camera-Raw, it automatically saves it to its original location and replaces the old one. So suddenly after I clicked "done" everyone in the room started saying 'hey, my picture just changed and I didnt touch it." Finally the teacher asked "who keeps changing the picture? Now it's desaturated and we can't work with it." I raised my hand and said 'my bad' and everyone just laughed and we tried a different picture while I put my hands in my pockets... Hah! Okay, enough about thursday, gotta save some space for the rest of the week(end).

Yesterday (Friday, so day before yesterday technically since it's now 1 am sunday morning) I believe was fairly okay, with the exception of a few internal struggles. But Momo came to the rescue and came  to spend some time with me after work. We watched James and the Giant Peach, Master of Disguise and about half of Hook before she had to get goin back home. I very much enjoyed the innocent childish humor to relieve me from the stresses of adult life. Thanks Momo!

Then Today (or yesterday for you technicalitarians) I had a half day at work. That's right, a REAL half day, where I was GONE by 1:45 or so. I went straight home, showered and shaved and got something to run around in and headed over to pick up Momo for some sunset photography madness at the beach shown above, El Matador State Beach. The pic above was taken new years eve, but the shots we got tonight were amazing. I got some goofy self portraits while jumping like a maniac off the rocks on the cliff face, as well as some pics of Momo and then another Selfie of a fallen star. (You'll see it soon enough) Then, after shooting a fake falling star, we went to the staircase and shot a long exposure of the stairs under the light of the moon and stars, and just as I started taking the picture a REAL shooting star streaked right across the sky, but it was just centimeters out of view of my frame! But I don't mind it not being in the shot, I still got to see it and that was enough for me. I have to admitt, I've never seen a shooting star turn that bright red before. Usually they are just white and tiny, but this one was orange-ish red and just ever-so slightly slower than most. I can only assume that this indicates that it was a very large body of mass and was large enough and slow enough to fully ignite and still make it close enough to the atmosphere for the human eye to distinct its color before it disintegrated. But I could just be a rambling idiot after all, but it makes sense to me.

So then after shooting we went back to her town and played with fishies and birdies and a puppy that she is house-sitting for, So cute!

Then we went over to my town and enjoyed some Souplantation. THEY FINALLY STARTED SERVING CHOCOLATE LAVA CAKE AGAIN!!!!! Yes, it is so epic it deserves all caps, end of discussion. The entire meal was incredible. 4 kinds of salad leaves with olives, shredded carrots, kidney beans, hardboiled eggs, cheese, noodles and chicken, broccoli and some slices of pickles for no reason at all, smothered in ranch and then downed with my soon-to-be world famous Froot Beer. (Just ask Momo, I have officially taken root beer to the next level. Maybe even over 9000!!!!!!!) Then we headed for the bread n' pasta buffet table and scrummed up some pizza bread, cheesey alfredo pasta, mac n' cheese, and of course some LAVA CAKE! I can officially say now that I ate way too much, and after spending all day at work doing sets of 50-100 push ups and sit ups between trucks, I have now defeated the very purpose of working out and will probably have to work thrice as hard for the next few weeks to undo the damage I caused tonight at dinner... And it was so worth it! :)

So now it's 1:27 a.m. and I'm chillin' out listening to some of my mom's favorite music from the 70's and 80's Amy Grant albums, and I gotta get up in 4 and a half hours to get everything set up at church. I get the feeling I am going to be tiiiiiiiiiiired tomorrow (or later today, for you technicalitorianites) but oh well, I'll live, and if I don't, I'll still live. :)

Goodnight internet! (or morning for you technica.....forget it. goodnight)

~sw23

Where has my heart gone? An uneven trade for the real world...?

Well, It's not much of a surprise to me, but I may as well just admitt it for those of you, whoever you are, who don't know. I'm a bit of a flake. Not like I had a specific daily word count quota or anything, but I do tend to not manage my updating priorites very well. But better late than never right? So what's been goin on lately? Oh boy, too much.

So I'll just throw it all out there randomly for the sake of not pretending to be any more organized than I really have been. Last week was decent. Went to work, did my thing, went home and eventually got over being sick. Saturday I went to Momo's house and spent the day with her family playing Farkle and Apples to Apples, then we watched a movie called House of D. The movie was good, very touching story and all, but hit a little too close to home at some points and I had to turn my head from Momo before she noticed my eyes watering. (Yes I get sucked into good stories, but stuff that is still fresh in my memory can only be pushed so far down before the right movie or song baits it back to the surface again) But then we went to see the new installment of the Harry Potter series. It was pretty good, though I'm not sure how 2 hours passed without me even realizing. Then we went to her house for an ALMOST midnight snack with pumkin pie and plenty of cool wHip then made my way to my car, only to run back and knock on her door to make her come out and see the HUGE moon.

Sunday was very nice indeed. Momo came over and we watched some more movies and spent more time getting to know eachother talking and quoting more random movies. That is, of course, until I fell asleep. I didn't sleep much the night before, so I kind of ruined the "go out and play" plans as she decided to forego waking me up to instead sit and stare at the adorable wonder which was my sleeping face. Yeah...women. Since I was so out of it, I can't 100% recall the events of the evening after Momo went home, all I know is I went to bed early because Monday was a day I would not soon look back on with fondness.

Monday was hell. Not going to sugar coat it. The last three days have been hell actually. I got moved to a new facility and no longer have my old job. My manager is also taking over management for another company and told me I would get a small pay raise, health benefits and PLENTY of hours. The only thing he didn't mention was that the work is near-impossible for someone with a short mental capasity like me. Oh that and the "plenty" of hours actually means a schedule that will suck the life out of me. Not to complain about having too many hours during a recession, but lets be honest here, I'll be working from 9a.m. to 7 or 9p.m. from Monday through Saturday, year round. Sounds great for a hard working man right? Well guess what, I work at the church on Sundays and that means I dont get a single day off... all year. Yeah, yeah, boo-hoo no more social life no more hopes of spending time with friends let alone finding someone who might marry me. And that's just it. If I was married with a house and family to provide for, this job would be perfect because I know when I get home from work I have my beloved wife and kids to keep me company and share in their happiness and such. But I'm not married, I don't have anyone but myself to provide for, and I am trying to put myself through school so I might be able to rise above 10 bucks an hour. That's a pretty nice wage, but here in southern California, 10 bucks and hour for 60 hours a week won't even get you an apartment, and I know I'm not going to rent rooms in a stranger's house for the rest of my life. I need to get to school, but my boss said very specifically: No days off. if you're too sick, he want's a doctor's note releasing me from work. There is no other reciever to cover me if I take classes.

So basically, I just got stuck in a position that I can't keep up with. With the recent amount of stress I've been under, I reached a near breaking point today and asked one of the other managers what my options are if I could go back to my old position and find someone more suited for this one. I am perfectly fine with 30-40 hour work weeks with weekends off and a little more flexibility, even if there are no health benefits or awesome paychecks. I'd sooner get fired from my new position for all the mistakes I'm making anyways. And the best part is...It's not hard work at all. It's not like I don't understand it all, It's just too much at once and my brain literally can't process all of the things I have to do without getting nervous and making stupid mistakes. And if you know anything about shipping business, once you make a mistake in recieving, that mistake continues to go through the system all the way until we ship the wrong product, get billed for it and rejected, then my boss has to call the corperate and explain to HIS boss that he hired a reciever who is making tiny mistakes here and there that are costing the business thousands...And guess what; My boss called me into his office today to tell me just that! He said I'm only 3 days into the new position and I'm already getting worse with every day. He sees that I'm visibly nervous, and wants to know if I will show improvement. I wanted to say no please let me back to my old job, but another manager at the company was the one who referred me to that position (I didn't know that until today) and if I bail on this job, then that manager who stuck his neck out for me gets in trouble too. So I'm at a loss here. not sure what to do. If I keep this job, I will have to sacrifice social life, me-time, friends and family, school, and probably the biggest slam in the face, photography. That's right. If I'm stuck at work from the time I wake up 'til long after the sun is gone, every day of the year, I'll have to give up any hopes of booking clients or going out just to shoot pictures like this one:



I for one do not believe in the 'american dream'. I'd much rather work my butt off to piece together my rent, then spend all my free time chasing my two passions: photography and people. Without my artistic expression and the people close to me whom I share it with, my life would amount to nothing more than a weekly paycheck and reciepts for all the food I wasted it on, as I would do nothing more than work and eat and sleep simply to sustain my lifeforce while my soul deteriorates...That is NOT what I plan to let happen.


But wait! There may be hope! Although I'm not 100% sure on the details, I went ahead and enrolled for spring 2011 classes in the evenings anyways! If I lose my job, then I'm fine because I'm ready for change and if this is the way to bring it about then bring it on! But hopefully I can sit and talk with the boss and explain that I'm young and trying to put myself through school, so I signed up for classes that start at 6p.m. two days a week, so for those two days i can come in 9-5 and go to classes, then take saturdays for projects / field trips as required by the class. That way maybe, JUST MAYBE I'll be able to even out my schedule to include some free time and life-progression as I go to school. But this is all just hopeful thinking for now. I'm hoping I can take the classes I want, and hoping the boss doesn't let me go when he finds out I'm taking control of my schedule. and I'm also hoping that if I can balance school and work and continue my position, perhaps those health benefits and pay raise might help me put some money in the bank while I get my teeth fixed and finally start wearing glasses after more than 13 years without them. So since I know only one person who reads this blog; Momo, whoever else is out there, along with Momo, if you are people of prayer, I would appreciate all the help I can get. Both for my situation at hand, as well as my anxiety problems as I have come to realize my fuse is much shorter than I imagined and lately every little thing has caused intolerable amounts of pain even though I know everything's not all that bad. I think I need a break from life.