Can't have a birthday without people

I was kindly invited to a birthday lunch of my friend Winnie and the following pictures will be evidence to prove nothing illegal was done(by me anyways... muahaha)
I figured that this would be a very good opportunity for me to take pictures of people. First, the hugs.
I titled this picture, "D'awwwwwww"
Still trying my darnedest to get a portrait picture down right. I really liked this one.
Taylor and Ashley were there too. (and Dave, Rainier, Ken, Rene, Cameron, and Jenn)
They brought the present we got for Winnie. There she is, kissing Charlene.
She got gas.

After, we went to yee olde comic book shoppe. I figured I might as well play around and take some pictures. Mouse over the picture to see me play with aperture. Yes, I enjoy this. I'm a simple kind of guy.
We went back to Dave and Ken's place and Jan decided to be a model. I am nowhere good enough to capture her beauty, but here's my attempts.
It's still hard for me to take pictures of people. I don't really know how to do it. I guess this is where I need to read up a bit more, but I think also that much of people picture taking is also confidence. If you're not confident with the picture, then will the model be confident with you taking their picture?
Here she is cocking Winnie's gun. Lol, I typed cocking.
Devious.
Winnie decides to get her eyes all gussied up.
The cute birthday girl.
Dave decides to get gussied up as well. Pictures to add to your masculinity album.
Unf. Unf.
Hide it as she may, but the worry in Winnie's eye is present.
Ken pretends to ignore all of us.

I've been using the 35mm lens and I can't seem to want to use my 18-55mm. The extra light and the quickness is just really awesome. However, I continually keep the aperture to F1.8 and it does mess up pictures. I need to keep learning to adjust based on setting instead of just focusing and blurring too much. Learn learn learn!

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Random destination

It's that time of year...

So I got off work and just decided to drive towards a random direction(ok, i'll admit that the concept of "random" is a bit shaky when humans are involved and more than likely, I just went somewhere safe for the time of night and more uphill. Whatever ok? Who are you, the logic police?) Anyways, I drove all the way up 21st street and I saw this huge display of lights to my right. I look over and it's this huge tree decorated with Christmas ornaments!
The tree is next to a house on 21st and Sanchez (more down the hill on the 21st direction)
There are some people there for perspective. I asked them about it and they said that theres a couple(a couple of what?) that does the decorating every year. You can see the platform they use too. Crazy devotion.
Figured since I was up there, I might as well try to get a shot of the city. There are too many houses in the way though.
Oh yeah, there was frost in my backyard yesterday. It's getting chilly.

Now that we have the pictures out of the way, I can finally discuss where I am regarding this journal. I've been quite busy these past two weeks but I am still devoted to picture taking. Regarding my photographic growth, I still need to work on that. I notice that I suck with nighttime shots and am too astounded by bohke and not enough with everything else. I realized also, that I am a lazy lazy person when it comes to working with RAW files as I still have a bunch from Friendsgiving that I haven't touched. Compression is bad, but lethargy is worse. I predict the coming weeks to be quite busy as well, but lets hope I make more opportunities for myself to take pictures with both the SLRs. On a side note: I failed at retrieving my first roll of black and white film because I am an idiot. I ruined the entire set by prematurely exposing it and then rolling it in the wrong direction. Thus, I will be working on my color roll and lets hope that gets done soon. Till next time!

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th?dr (too hungry? don't read) aka Friendsgiving

Yes, that is bacon.

Dave and Ken hosted a 'Friendsgiving' celebration at their place on Saturday because they are awesome. The result was a pot-luck with amazingly awesome homely food.
Let's all start with sweets. Mmm... Peet's Coffee's ginger loaf with cream cheese
Candied yams =)
Ambrosia(yes, even mere mortals can now enjoy it)
Crushed Pecan Sweet Potatoes
And now wash it down with some warm spiced wine. It is amazing. Seriously.

There was also Rainier's amazing sweet potato pie which i didn't have to opportunity to take a picture of... because it was too delicious.

Now onto the savory...
So moist!
Cornbread. Yes, it was fantastic.
Green Bean Casserole. First time i've ever had it... I think.

Dave also made delicious Ham in the shape of Hanimal. Scroll over to see more deliciousness.
Potatoes of mashed. Elaine did this amazing dish justice.
Rene's amazing dip that made mine look like turd. Thanks Rene...
After the food coma, we decided to play pictionary. This is where Ken says, "IT'S DIGNITY! GAH! DON'T YOU KNOW YOU EVEN KNOW DIGNITY WHEN YOU SEE IT?"

One more for the road. It's Lalaine! Scroll over the picture.

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Another year

Nothing better than the support of your friends.

I really can't believe that my friends pitched in to get me a lens for my camera. Thanks again Matt, Elaine, Dave, Winnie, and Ed. (Also Justin for the selection). This is an amazing lens, the 35mm. The F1.8 is SOOOO COOOOL! What an awesome gift! Yes, be jealous.

But along with that...
My mom's friend was going to throw this stuff out, and she convinced him to give it to me. Now I have two SLRs! Yes, feed the addiction!
What it includes:
The Canon AE-1 SLR. A classic sexy beast. A Canon 50mm FD F1.8 lens is attached.(note: this is all shot with the D40 with 35mm)
The AE-1 next to a Vivitar 28mm MC F2.8 lens.
A Vivitar 70-210mm MC F4.5 lens. Looks almost like a pipe bomb of sorts.
Flash!
And an old school cleaning kit.

I've already gone out and bought three rolls of film as well as a battery for the camera. Currently 4 shots have been taken. We'll see how this all turns out if I ever get them developed and scanned.

As for the 35mm lens gift for the D40, I've taken it for a little bit of a test fun(I meant to type 'test run' but 'test fun' does sound more fitting) and it's pretty awesome.
The lens at F1.8 really does an amazing job of focusing on the main subject in the picture and blurring out (softly) the other objects.
Obligatory Pho sauce picture. Taken by either Dave or Winnie. Sexy.
It looks good even in low light and with people.

Thanks to these gift givers, I will be more addicted to cameras. Thanks. (Take that last statement how you will.) No, but seriously, thanks guys!

Also for those of you who called and texted and left messages on facebook, thanks for the birthday wishes. This old man can barely remember you all anymore be does appreciate it.

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Learning from the stars

After hearing about the Leonids meteor shower, I knew I had to try and capture it with my camera to learn more.

There are a couple of things I've learned from attempting to take these shots.
#1: Find a darker spot. The light pollution from the city affect the shot of the stars, resulting in the whiteness at the bottom of this picture which I played around with on photoshop. The lights giveth and the lights taketh away.
#2: get a remote for longer exposure. I tried to manually hold the shutter at the bulb setting for as long as I could, but even the slightest movement can cause blur. A remote would help my D40 prolong its shutter for up to 15 minutes at a time instead of the 30second preset.
#3: There are many many stars that can't be seen by the naked eye. I could only really see the brightest ones that night but not all the ones that are here in the picture.
#4: Landscape is important. Like my friend once said, there needs to be something boring in the picture to enhance the interesting parts. Perhaps the rule of thirds need be applied with the bottom third as the tree line or something.
#5: Make sure to pre-set focus to infinity before taking the shot. It is difficult to notice blur when everything is dark through the viewfinder. Since my kit lens does not come with a focus meter, an advice I read was to pre-set earlier in the day by taking a picture of something far away with autofocus and remember the position for later use.
#6: Bring some buddies and warm clothes. I went by myself to take pictures and couldn't capture any of the shooting stars in the shots. However, I did see a couple and the enjoyment of that would have been maximized with more people.

and #7 without a picture: RAW files are interesting. I took all of these pictures using the RAW format for the first time and it is very interesting and useful in situations where one wants to edit pictures. All I needed to do was to open the RAW files up in Photoshop and the options were there for me to tweak as I wanted it. However, I realized that such a process is also daunting. If there were many many shots, I would have had to go through each one and edit as I see fit, which is extremely time consuming. RAW is fun to edit, but time consuming. JPEG is more restrictive with editing, but is good to go. Those are the give and takes.

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