Im still blown away.....

Ive had the D300 for a couple of weeks now and everytime that i press that shutter realease and look at the screen i am just blown away. The ease of working with this camera is incredible, the controls just feel right, its performance is simply outstanding....and i could go on. So the day after Valentines Day i hung out with my good friend Mike Baca to have a little shooting adventure, it was a round noon so we decided to fuel up before we headed out......mexican food was the poison of choice so to Filibertos we went. After consumption feeling full and lethargic we had to decide where to shoot, Mike asked if i had seen the green field full of yellow flower behind Filebertos and suggested that we start there. It was about 1 in the pm when we started, not a time that i tend to go out and shoot and the light is so harsh, but not to be stopped and seeing as how Mike had to be at work at 5 we began to shoot. I had a blast!!! Being out at that time really forced me to think creatively and see what i could shoot, and what we thought would be a short shoot at the field turned into several hours and then Mike had to go to work. We parted ways but i wasnt finished yet as i still had the urge to shoot more photos. Tired of shooting at the coast i decided to move inland and headed towards the old Bonsall Bridge. You ever had a place that you pas by all the times and think "man that would be fun to shoot" well this bridge is that place for me. For as long as i can remember i always wanted to shoot there but never got around to it until yesterday....t was incredible!!!! I busted out the lens baby for some shots and tried out the cameras live view mode for some macro shots. I tell you that live vie mode is AMAZING!!! It is incredible being able to compose your shot on the screen and not have to contort you body just to try and look through the view finder. Not only that but being able to zoom in while in live view and fine tune your focus......INCREDIBLE!!! So there you have it, that was my Friday afternoon, heres some photos. Enjoy!!

Sno Blast.......

No its not a typo, thats what the retreat that i am on is called. Im up in Big Bear mountain with my churches college group for their winter retreat, i am up here running sound for the worship team. It has been an awesome past couple of days up here, theres tons of snow still and the air is nice and chilly. The weather has been nothing short of beautiful for the past 2 days, clear blue skies.....little boring for photos but its still gorgeous so im not going to complain. Its been fun hanging out with all the college students and sharing stories, its exciting to see them grow in their walk with Christ and it seems like the weekend has been an amazing time of growth for many. Worship has been awesome!! The speaker did a great job as well, its a little sad that its so difficult to really get into the worship mindset when youre running sound but ive loved it nonetheless. A nice little perk has been that i got to take the D300 out for a spin yesterday, i walked around for a while and had a great time shooting. Ive said this before about the D300 and i will say it again.....WOW!!!! Ive been able to shoot landscape photos and photos indoors in ridiculously low light at high ISO's and gotten some sweet images of the worship time and people hanging out. Fun as the weekend has been i look forward to going home, with it being tax season my wife was not able to accompany me for this trip because of work, im looking forward to seeing her soon. I will post some of worship time photos later but will leave you with some photos of my little outing from yesterday........goodnight to all. Enjoy!!

Day 2..

Day 2 was a lot of fun!! I went down to Tamarrack Beach in Carlsbad to test out the New autofocus system with some surfers. Nikon put the new 51 point auto focus system into the D300 and it is absolutely incredible, its fast and very responsive and the new 3D tracking mode is nothing short of spectacular. After shooting some surfing shots i determined that i need bigger lenses.....hahahahaha it never ends. I was shooting in the afternoon so all the light was to the surfers backs which made things interesting for exposure but the D300 took it like it was nothing. After that i went and shot some stuff on the sand and did some long exposures, the files are incredible and the color is simply beautiful i couldnt believe how much information there was in the photos. So without further ado here is day 2.

And now on to the main event....

Having had the D300 for 3 days now and taken it out shooting in various conditions i can begin to form a solid opinion. So here it is..........WOW!!!! This camera is absolutely incredible and in my opinion far surpasses the D200, dont get me wrong i loved my D200's and they opened the doors to many more creative possibilities. In all honesty though i had my gripes with and was a little disappointed with its performance, especially in the high ISO area. I just felt that i could get a far cleaner image at high ISO's with me D1x which was several years older than the brand new D200. Now having the D300 i can say that i am blown away, the images are clean and shooting at ISO 800 is something i can do without giving it a second thought.......and yes i shot at ISO 2000!!!! Is the image noisy? Its grainy but lots of detail too and still a usable image this is huge coming from the D200 that shooting at ISO 1000 was something that i wouldnt even fathom. I wont go into to much detail on this post as i will post some of my likes and dislikes of the new camera in a later post. For now ill just leave you with some images, when it arrived i put the batteries on the chargers and started reading the manual and watching some tutorials online ( im one of those weird guys that actually reads the manual before i use something). After that my buddy mike baca and i went up north chasing some clouds, but a las by the time we left the clouds had gone. So we pulled off the freeway in san juan capistrano and shot around the town. Nothing breathtaking just putting the camera through its paces. So here is day one.....day 2 will be up shortly. Enjoy!







This image i shot using the live view feature.....its amazing and more useful than you would think...






Mr Baca


ISO 2000


Both of these are ISO 1000

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG..........

Yes that is exactly what i said and i said it just the way that you would hear some 13 year old girl say it as she can barely contain her excitement. Is was all that i could do to keep from soiling myself when i heard the knock on the door......the UPS man had arrived and i knew what he had brought me. With shaking hands i scribbled the signature that he required to deliver my package. Why so excited you ask? Well just scroll down the images will explain everything.....

More published work....

Things have been really exciting lately as i have been getting more work from Carlsbad and Encinitas Magazine. Had some stuff published in the latest issue of Carlsbad magazine and the newest edition of Encinitas that just came out has a lot of photos that i shot for them. Ill try and put up some photos of the layout soon, needless to say i have been really excited that all this is happening. My dram of being a photographer is slowly becoming a reality and it just amazes me how God just continually provides. Thank you all for your support as i continue the journey....

















Studio lighting is clearly not my expertise so these pictures dont do the magazine justice but i hope you enjoyed them nonetheless. These were all Encinitas Magazine, Ill try to post some o the Cbad ones later.