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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