The blog

So I got my first front page photo. I thought I would be waiting at least a month for it, but i ended up getting it for my first assignment, haha. Its a regional article, so it ran in the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times, the Tri-Valley Herald, the Argus something and another paper I cant remember. I should be happier, but it really is such a boring photo

so i had an assignment that i thought would be really really boring. “pictures of a guy who cleans a park.” what it ends up being is like kick it spot for a lot of druggies, homeless and alcoholics and theres this guy who has a crew and they go and clean up these parks for the residents, and he gets the help of the people that use the park. cool guy. anyways, we get there, and i know i need to force myself out of my comfort zone which is really important for taking good photographs. i decided i first needed to blend in more so i changed up my clothes to stuff more “used” i guess so i dont stick out so much in nice shoes and a cardigan. so some interesting stuff: at one point i was taking photos and had a strong strong strong smell of urine and feces hit me, i didn’t take much note of it, but then Alex (the park guy) told me to watch out on that corner, cause thats area people use to defecate. along with that we found a crack pipe, i got offered some weed (4th time in a week, haha) and we saw a drug deal go down. i dont want to focus on all the bad stuff though, cause Leroy, the guy in the last photo was pretty sweet, friendly guy. he let me take some photos of him and gave me his address to drop off some prints of that i took.

had some extra time and i didnt feel like taking photos of people so i drove around to try and find the port of Oakland and see how close i can get to the dinosaurs. i found it, and its a pretty dope place. i set a little challenge and said I wont retake any photos, nor will i stop to take a photograph. so if i mess up, i lost the shot and it’ll be a little punishment for screwing up. better here than if something real happened. most shots were takenwith an 85 at f/1.2, only because i can, muahahaha

for fun

Had an assignment in Fremont to take photos of David, the historian at the Silent Film Museum. For those who dont know, the area of Niles used to be the Hollywood of the early film era. This is where people like Charlie Chaplin and Broncho Billy Anderson made their claim to fame. It was a pretty interesting place to go to mostly because he gave me a tour of the whole museum. For the last photo, the projection rooms used to be lined with tin because film back in the day used to be made of highly flammable nitrate (yes, Inglorious Bastards) so the tin lining would help contain a fire in case of an outbreak. Kewl

so in the past week ive got people visiting my blog from… Tunisia, Egypt, India, New Zealand, Morrocco, Germany, Italy, France, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Japan and South Korea. thats freakin crazy…if you read this, introduce yourself, i would reallllly like to talk to you guys.

Ok i had some time to kill and heard that there was a protest goin down at city hall. I packed my stuff and drove down to see what was happening. There was another photographer already there shooting, so most of what I shot was for my portfolio, but I had a good time. It was good because I got to experience the city a bit more.

The content of these protests were geared towards the freedoms that the injunctions infringe upon, because you can be classified as a gang member in Oakland, and be restricted from being in these specified “safe-zones” in town. Problem is that a lot of innocent people get arrested for violating these rights on the basis of their race rather than any specific reason.

Here are le photos…

Went to go shoot a Phish concert last night. Well not quite Phish, Trey Anastasio of Phish. Cant really say I’m a fan, but he did play Hey Ya at one point which was kind of fun. Id say about 80% of the people were either on drugs or getting high (yes, present progressive). I was offered to smoke out of a bong 3 times and saw a shit-faced guy do a line of E, but before which we actually shared pretty decent conversation, haha. He called trey a self-absorbed bleep bleep of a bleeping bleep for coming out and doing a solo concert. Then he pointed to the toilets and said, what do you think? Uhh, yes?

Anyways, im no music critic, i listened to Good Charlotte and Limp Bizkit at one sad point in my life, so to all you Phish fans out there, keep on rockin on.

and to those who are interested in photography, i was trying a new technique for shooting concerts. When the lights move around at any venue, it can reallllly throw off your exposure, making it either wayy too dark or wayy too bright. Most of the time you gotta play your cards right and anticipation is a huge aspect of concert photography. I set my camera to spot metering since it meters at the most even setting (his face) and i shot in Manual. What I would do is set my middle finger on the shutter and my index finger on the exposure dial, and then i would anticipate the lights making it possible to get two fully different shots in just one swoop of the lights. When the lights come into the frame, ill whip the dial to a faster shutter speed, take a few shots with my finger never leaving the camera, then as it leaves, ill whip the dial back to a slower shutter speed and take a few more shots, fingers always intact and on the camera. It may feel weird at first and odds are your middle finger will leave the shutter more often since its not used to to sensitivity, but keep at it. Seemed to work really well and id say 95% of my exposures were consistent. Hope that helps

Rest of the photos can be seen here