Operation is a GO

Photo from last night's flickr post:





So last night was my first class for photography. I met the teacher, and we talked about the stuff we'll be going over. Basically it's stuff I'm already trying to learn, but at least this way I will be taught by an official brooks masters degree holder, and I will be able to use the latest software... In fact, I'll actually be able to use my student discount and get Photoshop CS5 AND Lightroom 3 for a total of $275... thats a $900 value without the pirated versions! SWEET!

And seeing the criteria we are going over, I can't wait to get into the homework! I mean... I will be graded on creativity and technique... I'm seriously not worried about the grade at this point, all I want is a challenge. I'm thinking about asking the teacher to give me extra technical challenges to each assignment to help push myself to  achieve what I need: motivation to do what I already love to do! Our first assignment, ironic as it is to me, is actually the only assignment I've been doing on a near daily basis for almost 2 years... Self Portraits! Oh boy, this is going to be interesting. Especially since the first part of the assignment is shooting, the second is learning editing software, or at least for me, learning new techniques. So I plan to go all out with every assignment and use this advantage to its fullest and most likely freak some of my collegues out with my whacky self portraits.

Anyways... I'm just really excited as you can tell, and I have no intention of hiding or denying it. The second I stepped into that room and asked if I was in the right place, I had already decided that whether she said i had the wrong classroom or not, this was where I belonged. =D

And since that's really all that's happened in the last 24 hours since my last post... or however long it's been, less than a day and a half I'm sure, I'll go ahead and cut it off here, but not before I share with you one last thing!

This just makes me want to go find an old SNES and have at it again. Oh 90's nostalgia, what would I do without you. =P

GO TIME!!!!

Almost!

-but first-
Here's the latest and greatest from my website:




So in 18 hours I will be happily sitting in class... the first classroom I have actually been in as a real student in about 5 years! SO EXCITED. And it's a class that I am already confident that I know 99% of the material, but like I said in previous posts, it is an opportunity to get an official degree and thus earn more respect and credibility as a phhotographer as well as have a social life and motivation to use my camera more!

So other than that, nothing too incredible going on right now. I got the car window closed on my head, but only slight bleeding in the mouth, nothing serious. But it was totally worth it because I got to go to lunch with MOMO and feast on Subway. Sweet Onion Teriaki Chicken with avocado... MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. And that's pretty much all that happened today. Got off work early, came home and played around with photos and photoshop brushes and presets from my old harddrive, and now about half hour into melatonin dose and happily admitting that eyes are heavy and ready for a 7 hour nap. OH BEFORE I FORGET my camera is totally scratched on the sensor I think. Can't be too sure, but the dust removal attempts failed and I'm convinced it's hardware problems. But I'm considering upgrading to a D700 anyways... I need better low-light and full-frame capabilities for the 3 weddings I have coming this fall. Ok, wish me luck with all that!

Ja ne!

Ooooooooooh the places you will goooooooooo

Just a heads up, I'm really tired and out of creative juices right now, but I cant seem to sleep so I'm just gonna jot down some of the random thoughts and events of the weekend and try to clear my head, at least clear enough of it to make room for some sweet dreams. So here goes.

Saturday... oh boy was it NOT a saturday for me haha. Worked from 9am to about 7:40pm. Really long day filled with sitting around for hours at a time eating twinkies, doing push ups and situps and making random jokes in spanish that I really didn't understand half of them, but still I tried to contribute and pretend I was listening and said yes yes haha. Finally got off work and headed over to Momo's place for a group get together her family was having with her brother's friends. I sat at the table and had some pizza and fudge while I played apples to apples with the moms. It was pretty fun, and then we cleaned up and I came home, said goodnight, then got the urge to play a few rounds of black ops and edit a picture or two... one of which is kind of mandatory as I needed to finish this picture for a client now for a few days but haven't had time or motivation. Hope she likes it.

But here is the photo I finished for the fun of it. The Oxnard Seabridge on a foggy night.




So other than that, nothing too interesting this week. Went to revive for the first time in a year last night, only to find that it is a farcry from any form of 'revival'. certainly not the college movement that I had remembered it to be when last I visited. But before you go and get the wrong idea thinking I'm bashing it or talking bad about it, I'm not. This is a blog and on it I share my personal feelings, and this is what it felt like walking into that room. It felt like high school. I had the awkward privilage of sitting right next to Jill without realizing it til halfway through, and her boyfriend kept sneaking peaks at me... I guess I was supposed to take the hint and move or something.. but I came to spend time in God's house, not jill's so they can leave if they find my presence offensive, end of discussion, I let them know this by ignoring the stares and sang even louder and closed my eyes and just focused on the only one who deserved my attention to begin with. But aside from the awkward seating arrangement, along with leaving momo stranded again (SORRY!) It just felt like high school all over again with all of the cliques and younger people only talking to the 2 or 3 people they already talked to all the time. Nothing against the service itself. loved the music and message, definately felt the Spirit moving in there. The last time I was there it was intense. Everyone seemed to know everyone, and if you were new there then at LEAST 4 or 5 people would come up to you at any given time and ask to pray or talk with you for no reason other than to meet the rest of the family. So it was just uncomfortable afterwards knowing that so many of those people "knew about me" thanks to her rumors, and thus none of them actually KNEW me, which makes it really hard on Momo as she was new there and automatically got ignored when she was seen coming to hang out with me... like i said... high school all over again. I had to find some familiar faces to introduce Momo to without getting awkward stares from the haters, so I found my brother from another mother Emjay and we talked about some basketball tournaments starting up on sundays... I'll need to get in shape but I'm definately game. And yeah, after that we left and had snack / dinner at dennys and went home. So that's the last 2 days, in backwards order. Anything I missed or anything you want to know? feel free to ask or comment with your opinions or feedback or questions. I've been really unmotivated lately due to 10-12 hour work days and the ever-stressful burden known as random increases and studders in heartrates keeping me up all night. So please, feel free to start me off on a topic or sentence and maybe I'll have something new to run with here ya know? What's that you say? My entire post is one giant paragraph full of run on sentences? Haha, no, actually I started a new paragraph when I broke it apart with the picture...right?

Randomness terminated, commencing operation dream-beam. ZzzzzzzzzzzZZzZzZZzzzzZzZ

Year of the fluffy bunny (beweare. im feeling random right now)

I feel so random right now that my random thought just eloped with another random thought and had a random lovechild named random, but he was too hardcore and wanted to randomly kill everyone in the jungle, so he changed his name to rando and made a hit movie, then returned home only to find that its random parents disagreed with its career choice and disowned rando from the family and adopted a new child named logic and reason. but rando used his random though to trick reason into killing logic and then lied about it to its parents about betraying his own brother, thus changing his name to treason. you see, the difference between random thoughts being right or wrong, as well as reason beating logic, is a simple matter of... adding or subtracting one letter.
the end

and now the actual blog post you were waiting for:





While standing over the freeway bridge on the first day of the new decade, watching all of the people i will never meet coming back form places i may never see. I came to realize that there were hardly any cars traveling north. causing me to belive that the reason there was hardly anything to do new years eve is because no one was here, everyone was up north partying like its 1999. who knows....

Meanwhile, back in my room i have rediscovered the reason why i can't get this song out of my head, probably because i keep hitting repeat. But now i see why they call it "trance". the beat is so fast, you want to get up and flail around and keep up with it, but the melodies and smoothe bass rhythems are so hypnotic that you are only left with the option to sway in steady motion while nodding your head to the beat instead... or something like that. either way, i've spun around in my chair too much to care what you think about it, just listen to THIS. Preferably the last 7 minutes of the song... I don't drink or do drugs, nor am i dancing, yet this song still manages to give me motion sickness, without the sickness. confusing yet? exactly, you are now all victim to my logical retardation and thus are covered in awesomesauce. Enjoy the new decade and lets make 2011 so awesome that the chinese astrologists have to rename it the year of the chuck norris!