vienna.

Land of the free, home of the brave. Ok not really, but here are some pics. No video ’cause we were only there for a day and it got lopped into the Venice video, so look for it next post.

Bah… Why is ISO 5000 so clean?! Every time I shoot the 5D2 I’m more and more impressed with it.

Rollout.

Aaron & Ira ::: Old Town Scottsdale

Heyo! Another married couple/friends of mine wanted their own shoot (for no reason whatsoever) so I happily obliged. We started off about an hour later than planned so we missed out on a lot of light.

They were a really fun couple to shoot. Just kind of goofy people. However I think they pulled off the serious shots pretty well. Ira is a photographer herself and helped me with this shoot.

Things I learned:

DON’T cut it close at dusk.
The nifty fifty + 5D2 isn’t always glorious (where the crap are these focus issues coming from?!)
Even with the focusing issues, and even with some nice L glass, I still love my 1989 50 1.8.
I need to invest in some Pocket Wizards ASAP, cause I’m totally fed up with Canon’s IR.
Post processing to the rescue!

Gearcheck:

5D2
50.8
135L
16/35L
3x580EX

This is them telling me there’s a car coming… While I’m telling them there’s a car coming. Haha.

Favorite

As for the flash shot from a few posts ago, the hotshoe on my flash broke so I finally got around to fixing it. I got my Eurail pass (2 days! Whoo!), and Steffi’s prints came in. They look dang nice.

That’s about it for now, I’ve been crazy busy trying to get ready for London!!! My next post might be from a different state, country, and/or continent!

Peace.

The Prelude to Epic

So I’m in Yuma. Don’t ask. Work. Weird. Crazy. Anyways can’t sleep. So here is my random, very jumbled thought for the night. One day I’ll learn how to write well, I promise.

Blogs confused me for a really long time. For that matter stories in general have always confused me. I didn’t understand how I could be so totally enthralled with one story/blog/book/movie/song, and completely bored by another that was very similar to the first. Tonight I realized it’s because there are two kinds of stories/books/movies/plots/blogs.

One kind of story simply communicates information. It exists to convey what is happening. I don’t have anything against that. If anything, I’m a total infogeek. I can point to any car on the road and tell you what size engine it has, how much horsepower and torque it makes, and if it will chill your wine (I’d like to be able to say I was kidding on the last one). I can list off the entire Canon lens and body line up and give you the approximate prices for them. New and Used. I can do the same thing for Nikon. I don’t even shoot Nikon.

The info communicated doesn’t have to be a spreadsheet list of chronological stupendipities or a chart of choreographed frivolities, it can be a genuinely interesting tale of what happened in a person’s day, or a conversation of “hello’s” and “how are you’s” between two people, but in the end it still is just a recap of what has happened. Not necessarily a bad thing, there just happens to be a different kind of story that holds my interest better.

The second kind of story is the kind that exists to communicate a purpose. It extends beyond one person or one event. It may not even use words to explain that there is something more to the story than just information, sometimes it’s just implied. It keeps you thinking. And most importantly, it impacts you. You might feel motivated, inspired, disgusted, intrigued, demotivated… anything. But by the time you’re done reading/watching/listening/soaking it in, you can feel the epicness just oozing out of you.

For whatever reason, this summer has had an incredibly epic feeling to it. I’ve probably used that word in this blog 2374124 times this summer. Maybe it’s because I’m mentally preparing myself for a once in a life time semester abroad with a few awesome friends, maybe it’s because I’m starting to realize I’m actually on the right career path, maybe it’s just because the word epic was way freaking overused at Biola. I’m not really sure why, but whatever the reason, this whole summer has had the linings of “epic” written all over it. It’s not a “currently happening” kind of greatness, it’s more of a build. Think of it as something like Angels & Airwaves’ “Call to Arms”. It’s been a prelude to something big, something really awesome that’s coming up. It might be London, or it might be something else, I’m not really sure. All I know is that I’m stoked beyond all belief.

Rollfest.

Everyone Hates Dentists

Today started out as a good day, started taking a turn for the worse, and then became glorious.

I heard a new remix that I like. Finally. It’s pretty good stuff. Check it out. Also, sold “the beast” aka my Canon 1D mkII a couple days ago. Then today I sold every single stinkin’ piece of Nikon stuff that we had in our house. And got a job offer out of it.

I’ve decided that dentists are the most hated people on the planet. They dig around in your mouth and cause a lot of pain and have nothing but bad things to say about dental hygiene. Then they try to make small talk with you while digging around in your mouth. That always ends up well. This all occurs sometime after you’ve finished shelling out $5k for braces and sometime before you’re about to relinquish another $1,500 for a crown. Awesome.

Another great experience at the dentist: The nurse/dentist/lady was cleaning my teeth today with some kind of mini axel grinder and freaking nicked the inside of my cheek! I literally almost punched her. Then she went on pretending like nothing happened and preceded to blast water into the gaping cut on the inside of my mouth. At that point I probably really would have punched her if my cheek hadn’t already gone completely numb.

In case you haven’t figured it out on your own, that wasn’t the glorious part of my day (that would be the camera/job offer). On that note….

Peace yo.

Welcome to Summer

Today I decided that summer has arrived. It’s been two months since school ended, but summer was slow on the upstart this year.

Summer is what happens when you have no school. It’s what happens when you work, come home, swim, hang out with friends, and stay up late. That is all that summer is. If you happen to live in the big AZ you can add 115° days and 100° nights. But that is everything summer. Summer is waiting. It’s hangtime. It’s the ski lift ride up.

The past couple months have been way too exciting/adventurous/epic to be considered summer. It hasn’t felt like hangtime. It’s felt like life.

This week summer started. I finally moved into my room [before this week all of my stuff from college was literally just sitting in boxes in my room], I’m incredibly comfortable in my job, and the routine movie nights, random sports, and crazy outings are in full swing. The last reminder of my California life rolled back west yesterday. Now I’m puttin’ along somewhere between the Chimes Chapter and Epic Eurocityness. The days are slowing down and the weeks are speeding up. I don’t really understand how time manages to do both of those simultaneously.

The final sign that summer is here lies in the radio.

The very first thing I do when I get home is flip through the radio stations. It doesn’t matter where or why I’m driving – the radio is on and blasting. The songs are new summer releases or old favorites that I haven’t heard in awhile. There probably aren’t more than 30 or so songs that cycle through the stations, but that’s ok because they’re the summer soundtrack. They’re the ones that will become the nostalgic reminders of this year’s events.

But then summer comes. And the same songs that were instantly repeatable just yesterday are now drilling into your brain, begging to be replaced by newer ones. Preferably ones that are slightly more original than the previous 30 that all shared the exact same drum beat.

There’s my moment of nostalgia, now onto bigger and better things: The uke.

No video tonight folks. Turns out I suck at playing it at the moment, especially at midnight. But here’s some loverly snapshots:

You might be wondering, “Is that a V on the uke?” Yes. Yes indeed.

Next on the to do list: building a hard case for it.

That’s all for tonight folks.

Rollout.

Metro Station

Remixes are getting incredibly lame. I love remixes, covers, crazy variations of songs… Anything that changes up an already spiffy song, but some of the remixes I’ve heard lately have been way over the stupidity line. Keeping a song exactly the same and throwing a no-name rapper over the top of it (a la “Keep Bleeding” [Leona Lewis] or “Don’t Trust Me” [3Oh!3] does NOT make it a newly marketable song. Neither does a new drum beat or base line (think the most recent version of “I’m Yours” [Jason Mraz]). It makes it appear that all the record companies care about is the ca$hmoneyflow. Oh wait. Never mind.

Just for the record, the above paragraph does not  refer to anything that the band Metro Station has done. At least not yet.

In other news, three days ago I was just coming home from work when I noticed a large, triangular package sitting on the counter with my name on it. I literally freaked out. The uke had arrived.

I was going to delve into a long poetic essay describing how freaking awesome this lovely ukulele is, but then I realized words definitely won’t do it justice. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll post some photos (and possibly videos?) of it.

This evening Kelsey, Felicia, and I decided to bomb around Downtown Phoenix and Mill Ave on the Metro. For those of you not in the know, the Metro [aka light rail] is a relatively new thing for Phoenix. If I recall correctly, Christmas break was when it finally got up and running. The Phoenix Metro Area is pretty large, something like 4.3 million peeps all chillin’ around here, but we haven’t had any decent form of public transit. $1.4 billion and one city train later, we still have no decent form of public transit. But it makes for a fun, cheap form of entertainment for college students. Ok, history lesson over, on with the events of tonight:

Meet at Lux, Kelsey’s obsession.
Buy tickets for light rail.
Miss first train.
Wait for next train.

Hop on light rail.

Train decides it’s done for the day in the middle of the route.

Get off light rail.
Wait for other train.

Hop on light rail.
Get off light rail at Mill Ave.

Mosey down Mill.

Pizza.

Mosey up Mill.

Hop on light rail.
Kelsey and I get off light rail, Felicia is eaten by light rail.
I head home.
Felicia’s fate = undecided.

Peace yo.

One heck of a status update

Once again alohas, it’s been a long time since I’ve updated and once again I’m not sorry cause I’ve been too busy diggin’ life. I mean massively diggin’ life. There’s probably 87234982305 different things I could write here, but I’m not really in a write-a-freaking-book-on-a-blog kind of mood. But, really quick:

Very epic shooting/caught by cops video. Awesome Syracuse trip with the fam. Way awesome Boston trip with Bethc/Nate the Mate/Ski. Ukulele on order. Crazy busy at work. Massively massive monsoons in AZ. Lightning strikes so freaking close to my house. Senior photo party way the heck out in the West Valley all this week.

And the past month visually:

Epic Manly Gun Stuff Part Dos:

Syracuse Gloriousness:

[also thoughts on the new logo?]

Welcome to the family:

Flowers: Taken by Caroline [aka girl in above photo]

And the Bostonians: