Saturday, June 30, 2007

Aloha.....

Hello and Grettings form the beautiful island of Kauai, Jen and i are here for 2 weeks. Our first week will be spent with my mom and dad and their friends Jack and his wife Sam. The second week we wil be here with Jens parents and her brother and Casie, we are looking forward to just relaxing and dong nothing...........im sure its everything that i ever thought it could be. Of course as always i have all my toys, so after a long flight here and grabbing some yummy food we came back to the hotel and i had to go out and get some shots of the beach. It is BEAUTIFUL here and i cant wait to go out and do more shooting, especially this week since there is a full moon. Stay tuned as i will be updating this as much as possible. Heres some pics from tonight....Enjoy!!





Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Ive never had to move so fast....

Went out to do some night shooting on Monday night, the moon isnt quite full yet but its still proving some nice illumination. For the past several weeks and even before that i have been dying to go out and shoot but we keep getting this thick marine layer that makes for very dull pictures. Well Monday we had a very nice clear night and i thought i would take advantage of it. Alas it was not meant to be, byt the time i got out to the Harbor that marine layer started to roll in. I park my car and ran down to the beach and was set up and ready to go in about 5 minutes. Ive never moved so fast before, im sure if someone was watching it would have been pretty comical to see. I managed to get 2 shots at the harbor before the moon was completely gone. After that i drove down Coast Highway to see if there were any clear areas of sky. I found one with this cool tree on the side of the road, but as before that thick layer came in during the exposure and it looks dull. I will try to get another shot of it when we get some sweet looking clouds. So there you go, that was my photo adventure for Monday night. Heres some photos.



The continuing adventures of Zo & Mike Baca

So on Saturday night......i think it was Saturday night, Mike and I went to do some night shooting. Hes been wanting to shoot this church thats been under construction for a few day now, and so we went to do some shots at 2 am. The church was cool but i will admit that i was at a loss for creativity as to how to shoot the building. I got one shot that i am not excited about but i dont hate it either. Mike had a lot of fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifun shooting it and doing some with my million candle power spot light. While he occupied himself doing that i went and explored the surrounding area. Low and behold what do i find?!?!?! A BLACK WIDOW!!!!! Are you sick of seeing these things yet? I tell ya, im a total bug magnet, for a while it was lady bugs that i would find all over the place, then it was grasshoppers or some other form of jumping creature, now its black widows. Anywho, ive been having a lot of fun using my R1-C1 strobe kit and using the colored gels that came with them. I have been trying to make the spiders look as creepy and menacing as possible. I think with these shots i finally got a lot closer to what i was envisioning......but ill let you be the judge of that. Feel free to comment or ask questions. So there you have it, and now heres some photos. Enjoy!







Congrats to Dan & Ashley...

Last Friday i helped my buddy Mike Baca shoot his very 1st wedding, the wedding was for his long time friend Dan Howard. I dont know Dan all that well but i do know his family and his sister Joni back from when i was working at North Coast Church and doing sound for the College Group. The day was fun and certainly a different role for me as i was assisting on this one and not the "official" shooter. Its been very cool hanging out with Mike and talking through shooting techniques and photoshop stuff. Well as i always seem to write a novel ill spare you and keep this short and just say a final congratulation to Dan and Ashley and to all the their families. Im sure there are many happy days ahead. Heres some photos. Enjoy!
















Monday, June 25, 2007

Shelob & Friends.....

Not to long ago i did a post on this HUGE Black Widow spider that i found while washing the car. Well a bout 2 weeks ago i decided to go check out that area and see if i could find it again. Turns out that this huge black widow has some homies just chillin there. I counted 5 of these things just hanging around there and found one that was even BIGGER than the one i had originally found!! This thing is enormous, its butt is gigantic............baby got back!!! hahahahaha. I will say this, if anyone wants a lesson in patience then take up macro photography. I tell you it can be the most frustrating thing ever, but so cool when you get a good shot. So since black widows are so skittish and will run and hide if something hits their web i spent some time in the front yard and found another spider to shoot. I have not yet identified this one but im working on it. In the mean time heres some pics......enjoy!!







Thursday, June 14, 2007

San Jose Day 3....

Our last day in San Jose was spent driving around looking for this park that we could see on the map but because of the terrible lack of signs in the city we could not find it. After what seemed like an eternity of driving around we were about to just call it quits, but a las we finally found the place! I was glad that we did, while the time of day was terrible as far as light goes it was still a lot of fun. We spent all the time we had in this Japanese Friendship Garden, the garden was beautiful and apparently very popular cus there were a ton of photographers there shooting weddings and various other things. Jen and i walked around and shot photos, i think the funnest thing was the coy ponds not just because of the fish in it but the kids are so much fun to watch especially when they find something that interest them. Oh and while we were there we found these.......well fuzzy trees. Yeah i know it sounds weird but they were trees that had fuzzy things instead of flowers, they were pretty cool so we shot a bunch of photos of them. Well it was time to leave so we began to wrap things up and packed our gear, as we were leaving.........disaster struck. For that story though youll have to check out my other blog. Enjoy the photos!














San Jose Day 2....

Well im behind again and now im trying to play catch up......again. The second day that i was in San Jose i decided to stick around the downtown area that we were staying in and do some urban shooting. If theres one thing that San Jose had in abundance it was cool looking run down areas. Lots of red brick and old looking buildings, i love that kind of stuff cus i think that it gives cities tons of "personality". San Jose also had a lot of areas that were newer or underdevelopment, it gave the city a really neat contrast between old and new. i had a lot of fun shooting and think that i got some cool stuff. While i was shooting i kept hearing music from somewhere in the city, after i had shot what i wanted i decided to go see what all the noise was about. Turns out that there was some raggae concert going on in the park, it was a band called Eek-a-Mouse and they were actually pretty good. seems like the city has concerts there every week . It was unfortunate that i did not go and check it out earlier. I arrived at the end of the concert but had just enough time to get a couple of shots.........and smell the ridiculous amounts of weed that was being smoked. Anywho, the day was fun check back later this week as i have more blogs to post. For now enjoy these photos.