James bond has LEFT the building =(

Gonna keep this short, as I just took melatonin about a half hour ago and don't wanna start sleep talking... or sleep typing.

So here's the latest upload




Went to day 3 of my class today. It was fairly interesting. Teacher was going over stuff about how to import and use camera raw, which I already had it down and spent pretty much all class time editing this amazing picture I got from the weekend. Turns out I actually DID catch the shooting star in my shot. I thought it was too far from my frame, but after looking at it on the computer screen in full resolution that light white line streaking across the picture is no doubt the falling star I saw. And the irony of it all is that the photo I took just before seeing the shooting star was a themed conceptual self portrait in which I "caught a falling star" in my hands. So all in all it was very fitting and no way a coincidence that I went to that beach at that time with that sequence of events. Thank you God for allowing me to have such an experience despite my camera giving me slight frustrations. So yeah, I am a little excited about sharing it with you... as soon as I get to class on thursday and get the pic off the school computer haha. I saved it to computer, edited it, and then forgot to put it on my flash drive to take home, so its still sitting in my assignment file, which luckily will not be touched by anyone but me and teacher until the end of the semester.

So other than that, my weekend was pretty fantastic altogether. Not only did I get amazing photos saturday night, I also got to do projection on sunday and then spent the afternoon and the rest of the night with momo and her family. We watched momma mia... yeah, I'm not gay, but I survived it nonetheless. Then her dad thought to save my huMANity and had us watch two Clint Eastwood movies. "any which way you can" and "every which way but loose." I think those were the films. All I know is that they were very much needed after watching the former 007 in a retro skin tight jump suit singing abba hits and duets in a chick flick musical.... Sorry Brosnan, You have officially been excommunicated from the male species.

=

Not that the movie was all that bad, just that.. I mean come on, its James Bond singing mushy I-miss-you songs along with Abba(Sorry abba fans, nothing against you, I just can't stand it. S-club 7 is where I draw the line)... It hurt to see a hero fall so far. =P

But I have got to ask my dad about the Eastwood movies, as I'm sure he's seen them. The second one was almost offensive considering how poorly they tried to portray a marine boxing. Even with the globe-anchor-eagle tattood on his arm, they managed to make him walk all lanky and fish-like with his arms flailing around and taking punches wide and way outside... and then Clint naturally doused him with a flurry of punches. Given, it's an older movie, so even seeing a very clear distance of 2-3 feet between fist and face despite the 'marine's' attempt to sell the punch falling to the ground in agony, didn't stop me from having a great laugh at almost every turning point of the movie. Except the whole sleeping with your girlfriend with an orangutang in the bed... yeah, I laughed, but still disturbing haha.

So this week's assignment will be 40 pictures of anything within 50 ft of where I sleep... and at first she asked for a narrative, but like half of the students didn't understand what a narrative is, so she said forget it just take pictures. So naturally, I have to come up with a narrative and then some, because I'm not going to take this class lightly. If it's a project that I already know all the criteria for and it's an easy A, then I plan to make it a hard earned A by overdoing it to the point of almost offending the other students still learning the material, because I have no intention of paying money out of my pocket to take a class and not learn anything or try anything new. So I'm gonna ask if I'm allowed to edit the photos or are they due in raw unedited format. If yes to editing, then I'm gonna have a blast turning my house into a haunted mantion or something, since my roomies can easily pass as zombies (the dude hardly sleeps so he looks half dead at best, no offense bro, haha) Ok, the pills finally kickin in an hour and a half later. Time to head out before I knock my head out... on the desk. TTFN!

~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