Choir Tour Through Germany 1

These pictures do absolutely no justice to the amazing sights I've seen on this tour. More pictures will be posted as I am able to post them with our busy tour schedule!

Old Town

So I got to do a cool photo shoot today. A friend and old church leader of mine and her room mate wanted some shots of themselves to print and post up for a graduation party they are going to throw pretty soon, so they called me up. I think this was my first actual designated photo shoot for portraits and candids. I was doubtful that I got anything very good, but now that I've looked through everything and recolored them, I'm starting to think otherwise.

The Murrays

I am blessed. So so blessed.

I was invited to stay with the Murray family Thanksgiving weekend in Newport Hills. Friday evening they had planned to head down to Laguna and take some family portraits so I tagged along with my camera and took some 'behind the scenes' shots when the hired photographer wasn't shooting. To say the least, this family is awesome.

Miscellaneous Madness

I just thought I'd throw up some graphic designy-type stuff that I've done for the heck of it. I'm not NEARLY as happy with this stuff as I am my photography, which is why I think I'll focus on graphic design a lot more in college than on photography. I have a lot to learn and tons of room to improve.

The first piece is a three-step process of an art piece I was trying to do for my Point Loma application, but it fell through in the end and I didn't finish it... maybe I'll try coming back to it another time. It was a play off of one of my favorite bible verses, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the well-spring of life." I really need to learn how to color on photoshop and get my hands on a better drawing tablet.

The second piece is one you may recognize from an earlier post. It was a graphic to go along with a promotion for a big service project we used to do at Lake Avenue called Black Out. It was intended to raise awareness to all of the injustices in our world from across the globe, right up to our door step. This was something I whipped up in a couple hours in the morning before I left to go on a mini missions trip for a weekend to East LA, Pico Union Dist.

The third piece has no story behind it. I just got bored and had some time to kill so I grabbed a couple cloudy-ish type brushes for Photoshop, found a skyline picture, and when to work manipulating the shot. I threw in the colors, the sky, the reflection on the water, and the glow of the city. The End.

Some Things Hit Way Too Close To Home

I realize that this post is a tad bit late and after the fact, but what the heck! So you had to have been living under a rock to not have known about the Station Fire that started in La Canada and graced us with its presence in La Crescenta. I believe it is still burning to this date, but it has been completely surrounded by fire lines and has long since moved away from homes, thank goodness! I had the misfortune and the blessing of having the fire come quite close to where I live and having mandatory evacuations placed on my street. I think it's obvious why it was a misfortune, but I also see it as a blessing because it was a huge opportunity to get great pictures. Once the evacuation orders had been given, the intersections leading up to my neighborhood had been blocked off leaving the streets completely empty of traffic other than police and fire vehicles. My family and I decided not to evacuate, as did many other families, which I soon realized was a huge advantage for myself to get great pictures. Only those who lived above the police barricades and didn't evacuate could walk the streets that were closest to the fire lines. In the end I was able to get closer to the fire than most people... if only I had a press pass, though. THEN I could've gotten some insane shots, but oh well. The first picture with all of the glowing dots is taken from a street about 4 blocks up from my house. That hill that you see in the picture is at most only 100 yards from the houses... pretty dang close! What you see are the embers still glowing a day after the fire had been extinguished.

Today, the smoke can still be smelled and ash continues to rain down on La Crescenta. We are now worrying about the rain that is soon to come. Mud slides, anyone?! It will be an interesting development in the story of the Station Fire, but I'm sure everything will be fine in the end.

La Crescenta Meets La Jolla

I was VERY blessed to have been able to take the train down to San Diego over Labor Day weekend to visit a very close friend that I met at Forest Home this past summer. I had all intentions of taking tons of pictures while i was down there, but as it turned out, I just had far too much fun to worry about getting all the shots. It was a matter of living through the lens or really taking it in and living in the moment. I chose the latter, and enjoyed every second of it. BUT, here are just a few shots that I did manage to pull off!

The Big Easy

I just realized that I never posted any pictures from the Louisiana trip! OOPS! Well here's a few cool ones!

 Good Times. :D