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Happy Halloween!

Gizmo, the orange dinosaur! Roar!

Photo Class: Portraits

I finally had to turn in my portraits in photo class last Wednesday. These are some of the ones I came up with. I wasn't too happy with them, but the class seemed to like them. Either they're being too nice or I'm too critical of myself. More than likely it's a combination of the two. I want to get better at portraits anyway, so I'll keep working on them. Here are some of the ones I turned in. Click photos to make bigger, and any advice is always appreciated.

Photo week 4

I was right about the portraits section being a multiple week assignment. He actually wants us to cover it in next week's class too. The week after that is spring break, so the final picture won't be turned in until the end of class on April 2. It's a good thing too, because I didn't like how most of my shots turned out. This will give me lots of time to tweak things a bit and shoot more / re-shoot others that were close. I'm not going to post any of what I have so far. I'd hate for those people to refuse me in the following weeks.

We had to get up and discuss the pictures we turned in last week. The teacher passed around all three of my pictures for people to see up close. Only one other picture from the rest of the class got that treatment! I'm the winner! There's one other guy in the class that I think takes amazing shots, but he was a bit off this week. I still have 110% in the class. I'm hoping that will help balance out some other less than spectacular grades from my college career.

I need help!

...in more ways than one.

My assignment for this week is portraits. I can't just volunteer Cyndi, because I have to have a bunch of different people. They all have to be teenage and up...no kids or babies allowed.

This is where you (yes, YOU) come in. I know most people are self conscious and don't want to be the focus of pictures like this, but I'll make it as painless as possible. I'll even give you veto power in case there are any you really hate. If they turn out good, I can make you some copies to keep. All of this has to be done before next Wednesday.

Ok, so who's in?

Photo week 3

I'm back in class. Our topic of the week was landscapes, which the teacher explained didn't have to just be shots of the mountains, but could include close-ups as well. We are showing our pics to the class right now. There are a couple of people with much better pics, but most of the class has no idea what they're doing. Here are a few of mine that I turned in. The first two are the ones I printed out this week.

(click to make bigger)

Journal 2/27/08

Today was busy at work. For the second day in a row, three people called out sick. Another one is new and was in training all day so she didn't really count. Since all eight of us are usually there Tuesday-Thursday, we schedule as much as we can during those days. I was able to get some of the big afternoon projects done in the morning, but I have no idea how they were going to manage at night. Only one person scheduled past 6pm was still coming in.

Our lunch today was the annual "Black History Month Celebration Lunch". What's the menu like for a Black History Month celebration you ask? Fried chicken, mac and cheese, cornbread, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and watermelon for dessert. The place was packed though, so maybe I'm the only one who thought it sounded a bit wrong.

Now I'm in my photo class working on some of my pictures of the week. The first one is the one I printed out. The rest just get turned in on a flash drive once we edit them. Next week's theme is landscapes which I think is one of my strong points.

(click to make bigger)

School days...

Yesterday was the second day of my photo class. We had to turn in 4 pictures we've taken and show them on the overhead projector. I was very nervous about this because I always think my stuff is going to suck. I was telling Amy last week that I don't want to be like the people auditioning for American Idol. You know the ones who go in and think they're hot stuff because everyone they know has told them they were great just to avoid hurting their feelings? That is until they sing for the judges and are shocked to find out that they're really horrible. I fear that.

So anyway, one by one everyone in the class went up to show their pictures. There were some really good ones, but then a few people in a row went up who had very boring or even out of focus or whitewashed pictures. I knew I had them beat so I went up. The professor commented on 2 of them. An older one I took of a flower was his favorite of my bunch, but he liked my river picture I took with my newer camera. Next week I have to have 6 new pictures using some of the techniques we went over. I really hope it stops raining though, because it's going to be real hard to get good shots with all the gray skies.

Here are the two pics I got comments on (click to make bigger):

Back to School

Today, on my 4th attempt, I finally got accepted to East L.A. College. Don't laugh...I hear it's the Harvard of Aztlan. I'm taking Intro to Digital Photography and from what I saw, I probably have the best camera in the class. Most of the class is older though there are enough actual college students in there to make me feel young again. So far I haven't been invited to any frat parties, but I'm sure that'll be coming up soon.

Since I'm not from the area, I had to attend an orientation before my actual class started. You can see some of the highlights here:



Once I proved I could fit in, I went off to find where I was supposed to be. I was 20 minutes late to class because I had to run around to different offices to become official and then get the flash card we needed for today's lesson. However, I did get all the extra credit during class so that should have made up for my attendance issues.

Most of the class time was spent getting people used to using the Macs. Then we watched some DVDs about how to get started with digital photography. The camera they raved about the most in it was the one I have so that was cool. We were given time at the end of class to take pictures around campus and have an assignment to take several different types of pictures throughout the week. I have finished my other assignments without any trouble so I got to leave 2 hours early.

Back to camp...

Last week I finally got some vacation time. And what did I do with it you may ask? I went to work. Good old Camp Maranatha needed some extra workers since they had a pre-summer full week camp in so I volunteered my services from Monday to Friday.

To me, working at camp really doesn't seem like work. It probably would if I was there year round, but spending a week with friends and revisiting my high school/early college life is very relaxing....even if I'm doing dishes half the day.

The only bad part was that Cyndi still had to work and couldn't be there too. Otherwise it would have been a perfect week.

The trees from my 5:30 am nature walk/devotion time.

View of the gazebo and camp from the new hiking trail.

Playing disc golf with Lucy and Bowden.

Hitting golf balls off Inspiration Point with Josh.

Washing dishes....I've still got it!

We may be the tiniest bit blog-obsessed...

For the full picture go here and here.

Auto junkyard pics...

You can find a lot of cool stuff at an auto wrecking yard. Among the highlights: Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega Genesis, an AOL 2.0 diskette, and a videotape of the Menendez brothers trial from 1993, several people's bankrupcy notices, and pictures of 40 year old wannabe gangsters trying to throw gang signs.