Glasses from Mars...

Ok so if any of you know me well you probably know of the affinity that I have with weird designs. So a couple of years ago I found these glasses that are made by Oakley (a company that I am also a big fan of). So these are by far the weirdest things that you will ever see,I seriously thought these things were amazing. Well I also have this weird desire to change my "hair style" like all the time. So far I've had LONG hair, I've been completely bald, I've bleached the snot out of it (and my beard) and so on and so forth. These weird hair styles usually happen when im up at lake Shasta, sooooo seeing as how I was just up at Shasta it was time for a new do. Since I have weird glasses why not have a weird do that goes along with the weird glasses, ok so its not that weird but my MOHAWK goes perfect with these things. So now I look like im the last of the Mohicans with glasses handed down by the Great Spirit himself. The hawk acts as antenna focusing all of my Injun powers more than ever, so don't tick me off or I might just do a massive rain dance on your butt muahahahahahaha. Im an idiot. Anywho I decided to take a self portrait to illustrate the AWESOME nature of the hawk, take my word for it.....you don't want to meet me in a dark ally because ill probably scalp you. I leave you with he picture.........try not to stare at it to long for the hawk will leave you breathless. Shalom.

Shasta 2006...

Another year has come and gone, it so hard to believe that it has been that long and that Shasta is over for this year. If you dont know, Shasta Blast is a week long summer retreat for the JR's and Seniors of North Coast Church. I went as a student MANY moons ago and became a beleiver on this trip and by the grace of God i have had the incredible privelege to continue to go as a leader and official photographer for the trip. I am always amazed by the end of this trip, just seeing how HS students grow up and help each other and come to learn more about themsleves and their desire to grow closer to God......they always manage to teach me something about my faith and myself. I hope that God allows me to continue to be there for many more years to come, now i leave you with pictures from an incredible week on a beautiful lake. Hope you enjoy them.

P.S.
Sorry i have not been updating this on a regular basis, its been crazy lately but thing should be slowing a little bit so expect to see more pics on here.

A Fishy Point of View II.... Revenge of the Trout!!!!

Ok so on the title is weird but what can i say im a total nerd. On the last day that we were in Yosemite my wife and i decided to head up tp Glacier point to watch the sunset. Great idea we thought, so we waited around for the right time to leave and have enough time to watch it.......no problem, good plan. We left probably around 3:30-4:00 pm. It took us maybe 45 minutes to get up there.........so now we have a HUGE problem because the sun doesnt start to set until about 8 OCLOCK THESE DAYS!!!!!! Needless to say im an idiot and didnt catch this when we left. The view was absolutely beautiful, but we wanted to photograph the sunset and since everything in Yosemite is about 13,000 miles away we knew that we could not leave to go somewhere else and still be back in time for sunset. So at Glacier Point we stayed for 4 HOURS!!!!! Boredom starts to set in about 10 minutes after the 1st hour, and the only thing to do was talk to the squirrels and watch weird people go by. In our boredom i realized that i had just purchsed a fisheye lens........oh that wonderful peice of optical technology that makes ordinary things look funny. Yeah, we proceeded to have some fun with the fish eye!!!!! So long story short......we got bored so we took funny pictures of each other to pass the time. Arent you glad you read the whole thing just to get the short version at the end? I know you are. Hope you have a good laugh at our expense. Shalom.

The Vacation Continues...

Well we are no longer in Hollister, we are now in Fremont visiting Joel and Christy Enyart. They used to be our old neighbors and then they left us all alone with only our tears as companionship.......hahahaha just kidding. Its been really fun here, weve enjoyed catching with Joel and Christy and seeing their new baby girl (who is a pretty big baby now) Indiana. Jen and I went into San Francisco today, we rode the Bart in, that was fun. I LOVE SF, so much to see and do and so many things to photograph, its weird being here because eventhough we are still in California the culture is really different here so it feel like we are in a totally different state. We had a lot of fun today, after we went into the city we walked from the downtown part into Chinatown, saw part of little Italy and went down to fishermans warf (im sure i didnt spell that right) we saw the robot guy performing on the street there, he was cool. Oh and by the way the robot guy makes BANK, jen being the accountant that she is, figured that he probably makes about 40 bucks and hour, yeah you got it.....AMERICAN DOLLARS and all for dancing like a freaking robot!!! i am in the wrong line of work. Anywho, we have one day left here and will leave Thursday morning, Jen and i have loved our vacation but do look forward to being back home. Words cannot describe how amazing an experience this has been for me, i feel like i know my wife so much more and have come to appreciate the amazing woman that God has made her to be. Keep us in your prayers as we make our way back home on Thursday, we would greatly appreciate it. For now i leave you with some photos form the city and with a picture of the cutest baby i have seen to date. Shalom.

The Menendi Are Alive...

Greetings to all, well if you have been checking you probably know by now that i did not have an internet conection up in Yosemite. Actually the hotel we stayed at did have an internet "kiosk" with dial up for 20 cents a minute.........hmmmmmm let me think? How about NO!!!! So that was that, but now we are out of the park and in Hollister staying with relatives. Thank you God for Panera and free WI-FI. OK so yes we are alive, we didnt get eaten by a bear or fall over a waterfall........although i did get eaten by mosquitos. They werent HUGE but there were millions of them EVERYWHERE, my legs look like they were through a war zone but i prevailed!!!! i still have most of my blood and somewhere in Yosemite many mosquitos are having memorial services for their loved ones.....MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! So our vacation so far has been awesome, Jennifer and i have been having a great time. Yosemite was of course beautiful and there was water everywhere. We had a blast while we were there, its simply indescribable. We look forward to returning next year and hopefully many times more. For now we will be in Hollister until Monday and then we head for San Francisco for 3 days we are very excited. Well i think that is all for now, and i leave you with pictures from the Valley. Hope you like them, and if you would like to get a hold of me then give me a call.Shalom.

ZO

Vacation......

Well after 9 years at North Coast I am finally taking my 1st official vacation. My wife are taking the WHOLE month of June off!!! Today was the 1st full day of our vacation and it was a lot of fun, got to spend the day with my wife and went shopping most of the day. Went down to UTC and when to the apple store......yes its a very dangerous place for me to be but I was good and only bought a cleaning kit for my power book. Now the screen looks clean and shiny, I also got my 60GB ipod replaced so that is also shiny and new. I'm looking forward to spending more time with the wife, I really enjoyed today since I haven't been able to spend a lot of time with her because we have both been working a lot. To end a very splendid day we went to Vinaka and had some coffee, Jen (my wife) got to spend some time with one of her friends so I had some time to myself, had some coffee and went to the beach to catch the sunset and take some pics. Nothing spectacular but it was still relaxing and enjoyable, hope you like the pics. Oh and on the 14th we will be heading up to Yosemite for 2 weeks so look on here for some updates, if I have an internet connection I will post as we are up there if not then I will as soon as we get back. Shalom.

ZO

A fishy point of view...

If you haven't read the previous blog well let me update you. Wednesday the UPS man brought me a new toy, my new fisheye lens, tonight I finally got a chance to go out and do some shooting with it. Since my wife and I are usually out in the Carlsbad area getting some coffee at Vinakas, we decided to go out to Tamarack beach. If I keep shooting there anymore I'm going to have to find a new beach, but in the mean time I still like to shoot there. Since night photography is still somewhat of a new area for me I'm still working on getting my exposures right. I'm getting better but I'm not entirely there yet, either way it was still fun and I'm excited to finally have at least some real wide angle capability back in the arsenal. I hope to me out some more later this week......in the mean time here's some images from tonight. Hope you like them. Shalom.

ZO

The UPS man came with gifts....

So I have been ordering stuff like crazy lately and today the last of my new toys came in. Back in the days of shooting film I had and still have a 15mm fisheye, I love that lens and gives such an extreme perspective on the world. Well when I went digital you would think that I could use the same lens right? Not so, see with digital there's a little cropping factor going on and while I wont go into technical details it simply means that my once glorious 15mm fisheye was not so glorious anymore. While I can still use the lens the angle of view is a lot more narrow, and it is not so wide anymore what was once a 15mm is now a 22.5mm on my digital body. Canon addressed this issue and decided to put out full frame cameras, Nikon went the other direction and made smaller lenses, this can be very annoying since I have to spend more money to have what I once had........but such is life. Well today was a very exciting day, cus I've been tracking the progress of my package like every 20 minutes. Maps strewn about, compass in hand and indian spies across the country telling me where the UPS truck was I was able to triangulate the exact location of the truck........who needs satellites and the internet when you have indians tracking your crap. OK not really, anywho the package finally came, I laughed I cried hugged the UPS guy......it was a very emotional moment he ran after that. I now have fisheye capability back and it is sooooo glorious, expect new pictures up soon. In the mean time here's a little view with the new lens and some of the lens itself. Shalom.

ZO