Chinese food!

Menus are serious business.

Sister.

Was going through Chris Weeks' old posts and found a picture of a chair on the sidewalk. Then realized someone left this chair on a road nearby my house. Decided to snap a shot of it before it disappeared.

At school. This class is very boring.

Can I call this a self portrait?

I love Freestyle.

With the discovery of this car I've decided to try and create a series about people that can't park.

Japanese food. Mmmm.

You can barely see it, but the hollywood sign is there in the far distance.

Funny signage.

:)

Friend bought an enlarger. We went to freestyle (above ^) to buy chemicals and then we were at his house so I could show him how to print.

At school, apparently there's a classroom on the roof of one of the buildings and a lot of otherwise empty roof space. This is the view from the edge. Pretty cool.

From the roof of one building, looking at the neighboring building which is taller.

My room/enlarger/darkroom/snake cage. Etc.

Chemicals!

School! This is the only thing that I'm not liking about HP5. Either I'm really bad at exposing it or it's scanning all wrong. Most of the negscans seem over exposed a little.

Two versions of this one. I do like the way both came out.

And... I bought a Summicron. Caved in. Couldn't help myself.

Yawning scary cat.

I love how sharp this is (at f/2)

Other cat

Missed focus, but

it's ok.

More cats.

Sunset from inside my car, taken while I was on my way to school

Why hello!

And hello!

1/4, f/1.4 focus set at 0.7. It's awesome.

And, I present to you a small featurette. People that can't park and the problems they cause:

Thanks for viewing.

Printed this with a #3 contrast filter, looks really nice.

Didn't think my lens would do this, but it did. Cool effect, however.

Opening "band" for Mogwai. They're called Fuck Buttons. Nice name, eh? And, yes, they're headbanging to their laptops.

Stars on the ceiling of the Wiltern. Which reminds me, the security almost didn't let me take my leica in. But after the guy looked over the camera for a second, he was like "oh, that's ok, go ahead."

And then, Mogwai!

They were really loud.

Meet these two again.

The alley behind A&I.

Odd faces are odd.

And my shadow looks fat.

I was desperate to finish the roll so I shot random things around the house.

Like my enlarger baseboard.

And the fridge.

And a self.

And my desk.

Also, a cat. A sleeping cat. He stared at me for a second before moving his paw to cover part of his face.

And, finally, a dog.

Thanks for viewing. In case someone cares: developed with XTOL 1:1 at 20C for 12 minutes. Agitated for 10 seconds every minute.

Around halfway through the set the couple in front of me kept turning around and looking to my right. I took a glance in that direction and found these two. I think they finally stopped when the lights went up.

More to come later.

I've been busy, actually haven't shot as much film as I would have liked and haven't developed anything in about a month as well. Work has taken up a lot of my time..

But! This past weekend I rented a 45mm TS lens and had a ton of fun with it. My brother spent a couple days down in Redondo Beach with my uncle. On saturday I went down there with my Mom to pick him up. It was the first time I had been there. All of the photos in this post were with that lens and the vast majority were at f/2.8, which is the only downfall and my mistake. I should have stopped down to at least f/4 for a lot of them.

I'll let the photos speak for themselves. And, if you listen to them, Mogwai is the perfect soundtrack to this post (specifically, I'm listening to Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait).

Smoke from the fire at Griffith Park

This lens was a ton of fun to shoot with. I wasn't quite sure how what I was doing was affecting the images, and I think I only used the tilt part of the lens. I didn't realize what shifting did and, in hindsight, realized I should have shifted rather than tilted in some of them.

All of these thus far were taken from inside my mom's van.

This is my uncle's dog, Rudy. He's getting old. :(

They have a few other dogs, as well.

He (she? not sure), aside from Rudy, was the only one to not continually bark at me when I first walked in (the other two are chihuahua's, not sure if that means anything, though :p).

My brother, fresh from the skate park.

And then I was taken on a tour of the nearby beaches, Manhattan, Hermosa, and Redondo.

A lot of fishers on the piers.

Sorry for lack of words to these, I'm not sure what else I could say besides that it was absolutely beautiful and.. I can't even think of anything else.

Dream like.

Day was almost gone.

Back home, they were playing badminton while dinner was receiving its finishing touches.

It was quite dark already, maximum aperture of 2.8 hurt me. I shot a couple with my Leica, but I haven't finished that roll yet. Also, focusing on an SLR without any focus assist is quite hard.

My uncle.

Another dog.

Mother and daughter.

And the other dog (I think this one covers them all now).

Outside, about to say goodbye and goodnight.

Back home.

Following morning I had to take a self before I returned the lens. Sad occasion that was and I am definitely going to purchase one in the coming months. Shooting with this one was way too fun, and I didn't even use it to its full potential.

Thank you for viewing.

And my sister.

I shot my first event with the help of two friends about a month ago (I should probably try to update my site more often). We checked out the place before the actual event.

Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to organize any shots on this deck they had.

Neither did we use these trellises they had.

He did video.

I am a coward.

We also didn't use this location either.

Inside.

Outside.

Sometime later that week we had sushi. A place near A&I.

They were having trouble with their TV. Guy whose back you see on the right was trying to fix it, he was being yelled at by the guy on the left. Nothing serious, but it was fun to see them interact.

And this was my lunch.

It's hard to believe that people pay for these bus tours of Hollywood.

Zee moon.

Practicing.

Practicing the day of, just before the party started. It was her 18th birthday, her debut.

Her!

I'm a coward (well, for this one, just slow).

It was beautiful (Velvia 100).

And so it began (these are just the film shots).

Cheers!

In the back, moments before the dance. Funny thing about these is that I developed it as if it was shot at 400 ISO, but I actually shot it at 2500. I was still able to salvage some of the shots, surprisingly. That'll teach me to remember to write what I shot the film at down.

Later that night, on the dance floor.

Can't leave without a self portrait.

Jump forward a couple days and we're at In'n'out.

And then outside my house.

Gotta love the price of gas (and Wall-e).

Don't remember what I was doing at Samy's but apparently I decided to get something at the Jack in the Box across the street. The building next to it looks cool.

And the person two cars in front of me needed a straw.

Back home, the light was nice.

On the road to somewhere.

I was mad that I missed an earlier shot so I decided to take a shot of whatever car we passed next.

Utada!

It's the "stop wasting film on me" pose.

But we all know that isn't happening.

Reading the script I wrote for a short film.

He's (she's?) saying hello.

The things you can capture on film (dare I say, with a rangefinder?) are so different from what digital does. I know that if I had taken this with a huge ass dslr I would not have captured this expression.

One more self.

Stinky! (it's his name)

Annnnnd, my new toy: a beseler 23C II dual dichro head. It's cool how there's so much in one photo. I know it doesn't mean anything to you (the reader) but when I look at this, say, 20 years from now, there's a ton of memories it will recall. The pixel drawing of Snorlax on my wall, lord of the rings poster, my pet snake's cage, the christmas lights I have hanging around my room. I'm sure I could find a couple more things, but yea, I think that's what makes photography worth it. To capture a moment as it is, to remember forever.

And sometimes it seems so insignificant at the time you take the photo. But I'm sure I'll be happy for having hit the shutter at some point in my future.

My mom's childhood friend, who she has known since middle school is moving to northern california. I wasn't able to attend the party they had to say farewell, so my Mom and I went on my day off from work one day (not too long ago).

She didn't want to pose.

One.

Two (managed to hold the camera straight this time).

Three.

And done.

Hope you enjoyed reading and viewing, if you've got this far. :)

We went to the book store so that she could read a preview chapter of some book, read the chapter in the store, ended up buying the book anyway.

There was an exit ramp here.

Friend took this one

And I took one of him.

CA weather. One day it's raining. The next it's 100 (otherwise known as, fucking hot).

I underestimated the power of a cell phone LCD screen.

The new-ish parking lot for the local community college.

Oh hey. Ran into one of our neighbors. (yes, i know i failed and framed his head so that there's a pole growing out of it)

And, surprisingly, there's a river/pond thing separating the parking structure from the street.

Walking back home.

This time the cat isn't mine.

The light from the setting sun was perfect.

And, if it's digital, you know they're going to ask "let me see it!"

Brother.

Literal street shot at night.

And a fence.

One of the last days at school. This guy left his lights on.

Cloud covered mountains

Mr. cat.

Mr. cat again.

Mr. dog, incessantly barking.

Developing

Showing all the cookies are gone.

Mom ordered a bunch of candles. This is Trix+3. I like the way it turns out much more compared to normal Trix.

Cats were lounging as they so often do.

Mom with her huge homegrown heads of lettuce.

With a friend, off to meet with a prospective client of ours.

I actually don't remember taking this one. It actually came out decent, too, which is odd.

Showing him Severin's site.

He didn't take the photo

Amazing what a 1.4 lens and a rangefinder can do. I took this shot 3 times because I thought the first was going to have camera shake (didn't realize I was at 1/15th), but 'lo and behold the first came out just fine.

Random!

Mr. Rabbit. Cool how the frontmost part of the cage doesn't even show.

Dirty door.

And the other cat.

Hope you enjoyed these, at least a little. Thanks for viewing and maybe reading.

Trix+2, in xtol

I start with cats. Since the top of this shelf was cleaned off they've taken to lounging around on it during the morning hours.

My uncle visited one night. He brought In-n-Out coffee mugs and licorice (which was devoured quite quickly)

My mom has some science lesson that she teaches which involves crayfish (crawfish, crawdad) or something. When she was done with them she brought them home and was going to boil them. However, instead of doing that, we decided to put them in our fish tank where they happily gobble up anything and everything tossed in.

Outside a local supermarket. Quite dirty and littered, thought it looked cool.

Serious business.

The car that appears to be pulling in acted quite odd. He started to pull into the spot but it seems that once he saw that I was taking a picture he stopped, backed up and presumably went to park somewhere else. At least, that's what it seemed like when it happened.

Sister, nails. Yay.

Dog fur. Summer's here! No more winter coat.

Dog in question.

It's way too hot here in LA. Thanks for viewing/reading.

Anyways, another crashed car, this time I did a little better job at actually capturing it. This car and the site of the accident was the reason I was almost late for work. I had enough time waiting in traffic to get my camera out and snap this.

Next batch comes from a not so joyous event. My grandfather passed away March 23rd, 2008. These are from when everyone was down here in LA for his funeral and burial. I was asked to photograph it, but I used my 30D at the request of my cousin. Those photos you won't be seeing, but here are the few film ones I took.

Baby and parents! My cousin is the one behind the other camera.

Their first son,

And their second. I took these two as they were waiting for the toys from McDonalds to be opened and put together (some ship that flinged paper discs).

"Can you stop taking photos of me?"

Much better expression,

Uncle and two of my cousins

And, later that night we had pizza for dinner.

Hopefully, I'll be able to update more often once this semester is over, just a couple more weeks. I can't believe it's gone by this fast. Thanks for reading and viewing.

And one that already has been across the room.

This is the first time I've shot this much film in such a short amount of time.

And if it weren't for a fairly large assignment due tomorrow I would be developing right now.