In the Event of a Water Landing...

This ladies and gentlemen is my "best" friend Josh Schmidt, him and i have known each other and managed to stay friends for many many many many years. Since i have no biological brother i would say that Josh is the closest thing i have to a brother, it has been awesome to see each other grow. Since i have know him i have always known that he wants to be a pilot, there has been a long line of pilots in the family and he continues a very proud tradition. i have been flying with Josh before and he always manages to have some kind of surprise for me up in there air that will scare the crap out of me. Well, about oh i dont know 2 years ago i think, the Flight school that he is an instructor for Grey Eagle, just happened to acquire a small plane called a Citabria. Its a small plane made specially for acrobatic maneuvers.........and its made out of cloth............................yeah, you read it right.........CLOTH!!!!! well you can imagine what would go through a persons mind hearing that, yeah all of those things went trough mine. Josh was all excited when they got this thing in and starts telling me how he wanted to take me up and do some.......rolls, stalls, loop de loops and all that wonderful stuff that makes your brains go into your feet. All the time "when are we going up?" to which i would proceed to say "let me get this straight........you manage to scare the crap out of me when we were in a plane made out of metal, and now youre telling me that you want to take me up and do "acrobatic" manuevers" in a plane that by all intents and purposes is a glorified kite?!?!?!" "ummmmmm yeah........yeah i guess i am" "youre out of your mind, i can just see it now. You pull some freaky maneuver I crap my pants and panic and manage to kick a hole in the side of the plane!!!! Shes falling apart captain!!!!!" "oh no worries" he says "we have parachutes" "oh well how comforting!! and if the chutes dont open?" "hmmmm then i guess we would be in for a bad day" So he never gave up and always tried to get me to go up, of course i refused. For my birthday this year, Josh comes up to me and says "your present is coming" of course i ask "what is it" all he does is take his hand and makes the motion of a plane going inverted...........well now i had to do it. On Monday, i finally got in the plane.................................. and it was an incredible experience that i will never forget. We werent up for long, as my stomach isnt exactly the iron gut and i came close to losing whatever i had in there. So instead of trying to tough it out i decided that we should land before i hurled all over the cockpit. I would tell you all about the day, but you would be here reading all day so instead i will leave you with some pictures. Understand that the cockpit is tiny and so the fisheye lens was the only thing wide enough to capture it all. Also, i apologize fot he lack of creativity with the shots, but it was my 1st time doing this...............but i hope to try again soon muahahahahahah. Josh you rock brotha, thanks for an awesome day and an incredible birthday present.

The Night my Indian Skills Failed.....

Thursday night ( I think it was Thursday) I went out during the wee hours of the night in search of bugs. Well let me tell you, they were in force that night so I though that this was going to be a walk in the park.......I was wrong. Taking pictures of bugs is hard enough during the day......but at night? FORGET IT!!! First of all, I was a little windy, second of all its dark, and third you run into EVERYTHING that you do not want to run into. So it can be a frustrating experience, I looked around with a flash light and found some subjects I wanted to photograph, I found some but like I said it was dark and I accidentally kept bumping into things and shaking the plants that the insects were on and so they proceeded to fly away......so much for Indian skills eh? Just as I was about to pack up though, I did find a cool insect to photograph albeit he was perched on a rose bush, and that was a challenge all its own. Plus I went back to see if the spider I had photographed a few days a go was still there, and low and behold it was. Except now its guarding an egg sack, so I will be watching that. While I did lose several insects do to my clumsiness, I did manage to snap a few photos of the 2 bugs that I found towards the end......so I suppose that the evening was not a complete loss after all. You just cant help but wonder though about the ones that got away. Hope you enjoy the photos until next time. Shalom.

SYYYYYYYYKE!!!!!

The slang expression to say "just kidding!"

"Monkeys fly outa yo momma's butt...SYKE!"
"Penguins ate my family...SYKE!"

At least thats what the online dictionary said it meant.......couple of days ago i did a photo shoot with my friend Mike Baca. This guy always has me laughing and hes always saying something and then ill give him a weird look and then comes the "SYKE!!!". Anyways, we did hes senior portraits, it was a lot of fun, and the pictures came out good so thats always a plus. Sorry ladies hes already taken, and im sure that his girlfriend Gaylor ( her real name is Taylor but Gaylor is my little buddy name for her.....she loves it and jumps up and down for joy whenever she hears it..................SYYKE!!!! hahahaha im an idiot) wouldnt appreciate it if you start hitting on him. So yeah, thats the post for today hope you like the photos, and check out Mike on MySpace hes got his own photo page on there, its prety cool. Until next time.......SHALOM

BUGS BUGS BUGS...

I had a longer post for this, but then Blogger decided to be retarded and i lost the whole thing......frustration!!! Oh well, move on Lorenzo. So, we had the rents and G'ma over for dinner, my wife made Enchiladas ( mmmmmmm so good ). It was lots of fun, cus we hadnt had my parents over yet, and G'ma is visiting right now so we got to have her over too. After dinner we were all talking and this grass hopper landed on my window screen.......as soon as i saw it i knew what i would be doing later. So i guess you could say that i made a new friend, shot a bunch of images. It was so much fun, and like i always say it was truly amazing. Anywho, im tired and still frustrated (shakes fist at blogger) so i will leave you with the pictures from tonight, and leave comments if you want. Oh and for the rcord.......Mom and Dad, it was good to have you over, hope we can do it again soon, G'ma youre to cool for words. Ok im done, enjoy and. Shalom.

Simplicity of Design....

One of the areas that i most love about photography is macro photography (extremely close up photography if you dont know what it is) I find it fascinating that is this immense world there is yet another unto itself that is seldom seen, to see what goes on in this small world is truly an incredible experience. Out of all the things to photograph up close in nature i think we can all easily say that bugs are by far my favorite subjects. Yes i know they are not at all the most appealing creatures as far as looks go. When you get up close even the most beautiful of butterflies looks fearsome and freaky. Yet there is a great deal of fascination that i have for these creatures, they are the most primitive of creatures in terms of intelligence. But it is the design that i truly admire, so simple and yet without their existence our ecosystem would be thrown into chaos. Everything on their bodies serves some purpose, from their unconventional eyes to the way that they sense the world through hairs on their bodies or the antennas on their head. Then thinking about how it all works together in unison to form a simple and yet at the same time complex creature. More than admiration for the creation, is the admiration of its creator.........how people think that life could have just evolved is beyond me. Seeing and photographing things in nature and studying how they work, there is no way that it could just be a bunch of random events. Ok so i have rambled on long enough i leave you with some pictures of a butterfly from our trip to yosemite. Late i know but thats what happens when i start looking through all the old pictures. Hope you like them, shalom.

The Blog from Hell......

A dark and chilly eve it was, silent but for the clacking of the keys upon the keyboard. There i was preparing pictures and typing up the words for my latest post, just happy that i had finally come around to updating. Little did i know at the horror that was about to come, the terror that would be unleash..........OH THE NIGHTMARE!!!!!! For a short time after i had posted my latest entry i decided to look at the counter at the bottom of the screen and my heart skipped a beat. For what did i see? But this horrible sight to behold.........



muahahahahahahahahahaha.................the darkness cometh.

Congrats Buster & Diana...

Last Saturday I had the privilege to shoot a beautiful small wedding, the bride was my friend Joe's mom. It was a lot of fun to shoot, it was funny cus apparently Busters real name is James but people have called him Buster for so long that nobody really knows his name. So for the ceremony they called him Buster, I thought that was cool cus usually the real name is used.........Way to go against the norm Buster!!!!!! Anywho, here's some pictures from the wedding. Shalom

Sometimes life just sucks......

Yes im still alive, my apologies to all of you that keep checking back for not having this updated. I have been super busy lately, theres lots of stuff going on right now. For those of you who don't know, I have worked at North Coast Church for 9 years now, on September 1st I took the very 1st steps into a whole new world. I cut my hours back and went part time so I only work weekends there now, I am now concentrating all of my energies into the growth of my photography business. As a result I have been busy shooting, editing, getting my office organized yada yada yada. Im also in the process of relaunching my website, my easysite will be up for another year but very soon my new website will be up. Right now only the home page is up, but I will let you know when its up and running. Ok so now......why the title? Well today I finally got to go out and do some shooting for myself, it was so much fun. Of course I went out and photographed some bugs, cus bugs are ridiculously cool. Being at the top of the food chain we don't and having no natural predators I think we forget that there's a very dangerous world out there. Bugs are not at the top so they invariably eat one another, such is the way that the world works, being that bugs have tiny brains it follows that they are sometimes stupid and get caught in situations that they cant get out of. So if you're dumb enough to get eaten well then life sucks for you because you have just become someone else's meal!!! Today was a day of feasting for some bugs and I will tell you that it was freaking cool!!! I leave you with 2 of the best pictures from today........Rest In Peace. Shalom.

The Darkhorse cometh......

So Friday night i was able to go down to Soma in San Diego and shoot a Hardcore metal show for the band Darkhorse. It was so much fun, and these guys are seriously talented. I love shooting shows and this one was no different........except that metal shows the crowd is seriously crazy. Its insane to see what happens in the mosh pit.....sorry guys but i wasnt allowed to take pictures. I was a little bummed by the fact that 1) i couldn't get onstage and shoot, and 2) the security guard only let me shoot 2 and a half songs from the pit area in the front. All in all i was grateful that i was able to shoot at all, there were some other people there to shoot the other bands but they weren't allowed to shoot any pictures or video. Anywho, if you like Hardcore screaming get your adrenaline flowing, grow hair on your chest and make you crazy so you can go and kill people like you were a viking metal, then you should check out Darkhorse cus these guys seriously rock. I leave you now with highlights from the show. Shalom.

Congrats Joe & Bi-Mia....

Last Saturday I had the privilege to shoot the wedding of one of my brothers close friends. The wedding was in the morning at North Coast Church, we didn't have a lot of time to shoot because of the time constraint but still managed to get some good shots. The wedding was small but intimate, it was a lot of fun to shoot. I leave you with some pics of the day and congratulation to Joe and his lovely bride, may the Lord bless your marriage.