California Day 1

My wonderful two week vacation journals! Starts now:

Day 1

I left home at 6:10 AM to bring dad to this massage place that he likes going to. Mom dropped me off at the Philadelphia Airport at about 6:20 AM. There I checked in and then was searched by the TSA. I forgot to take off my belt so I gave the alarm a spin. The Lady said to go back and take off my belt and try again. I did and did not beep. Then the guy next to her patted me down and the other lady grabbed my gear to swab it down. I didn’t feel like arguing as it was early in the morning, and I would have been held back longer. That was an unsavory, but interesting experience.

Well that was over with, so I walked to my terminal waiting for the South West plane to fly me to California. I have been reading on Cnn.com that the airlines are plotting to add prices to the free drinks and food that they serve. But they didn’t, FREE COFFEE!!

After self seating and flying to Chicago for my layover, I finished my first book called, “The Art of Travel,” I thought that it was a pretty good read.

What else was amazing was that I arrived in Chicago 15 minutes earlier than expected! I was in Chicago for about fifty minutes waiting for my flight to LA.

While waiting, I ate most of the food that I brought along from home. I had three sandwiches, two apples, one bag of baby carrots, and a bag of brown rice sushi.

The next flight took me straight to LAX, Los Angeles Airport. During this four hour flight, I finished from start to finish the other book that I brought along, called “The tourist.” It was a book examining from a sociological perspective on who travels. It was very verbose and not really what I was looking for in a read. But it helped pass the time on the airplane. The man next to me constantly put his arms way past the divider putting me into a very uncomfortable position. But luckily I had the aisle seat!

I finally landed at LAX at 12:23 PM.  Eric, Ann, and Vincent landed about an hour and a half before me.  So when I landed I called Eric that I landed and where to meet.  He told me to get my luggage ad meet them at the Budget Car rental office where I would meet Ann waiting in front with their luggage.

I think I like SouthWest airlines.  They did not lose my luggage, put on additional fees, or excessively late!

Well I met Ann and Vincent before I saw Eric waiting in line to get a rental car.  Vincent loves to fly on airplanes!    I said hi to Ann and rushed into the bathroom in the rental car place.  The line to get the cars was long!

==Counter==

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As you can tell from the rudimentary drawing, that was a very long waiting line.

Eric, Ann, and Vincent brought a lot of gear.  I only brought my camera gear bag, the tent, and a duffel bag of clothes.  When we finally got our maroon Ford Taurus, we packed it to the brim!  The trunk was absolutely packed and the side seat vacant to the right of Vincent was filled with our backpacks.

Then we started our trek down to anaheim to the Quality Inn to stay for two nights.  On the way we went to Little Saigon to eat lunch and get some food for our day at Disney the next day.

We ate at this Vietnamese Vegan Restaurant.  I ordered lemon grass tofu dish, Eric ordered a hot pot, and Ann ordered a noodle dish.  Vincent was picky as always with his food.  He gets too distracted to eat.  When Eric’s hot pot came out, I whipped my 30D out and snapped some photos.

By 2 pm, we finished our meal.  The owners saw that I took photographs of the food and showed me a photography book from a prominent Vietnamese photographer.  There was some really nice photos in there.  After we ate and looked at the photography, we headed to some near by Vietnamese stores to get some Boba tea and other assorted goods.

When I tried to pay, I was informed that i couldn’t use my debit or credit cards to pay!  Oh crap!  So I was forced to withdraw money, $40 worth.

We went back to our cramped Quality Inn.  It was really small, but we all fitted in the room.  Setting our gear down, Vincent and I grabbed our swimming gear and went down to the pool with Ann.  The water was freezing cold!!  Ann headed back, while Vincent and I played a game of water chase!

Eric came down several minutes later and joined us in the fun.  So it became a three man troupe!  We kept on swimming till Vincent’s lips turned a slight purple color and then headed back.

Dinner came and the night came right afterwards harking in the next day.

Becoming a film set photographer

Becoming a Movie set Photographer

After meeting Otto Pohl in Yosemite, the more I want to be a Freelance photographer.  I thought the link above was interesting, as I wanted to be a film set photographer as well.

Well I am still working on the photos from California.

Is it over? No … it is just the beginning!

Coming back from vacation and a journey is never easy. I still have to finish my photographs from this wonderful journey before I can post it up here! But this set of images, are just a taste of what I have done. For better or worse. haha!!

Like Ireland, I have spent day and night working on the photographs from the trip. This is about 20 gigabytes worth of awesome photographs! I like the heavy load of photographs that I need to work on. It is really fun to look at what I have shot, what I can learn do shoot better, and what came out really great!

Then there are the pictures where you find … dust specs! Only when I open the aperature up to 10, I see dust specs. I cleaned out my sensor before I left for the trip! But, I should have realized that this would have happened since I constantly changed lenses. From my 12-24 to 24-70. I wanted to get the ultra wide and decent portrait shots.

In the end, I learned i really need to revise my travel pack. The 70-200 is an important piece of my gear, just that I need a new camera bag to fit all my current line up of lenses. Also my tripod. Even though my tripod was $75, it is clearly not a very good tripod! ARGH!! I need to get a ballhead Gitzo tripod. Those are light, durable, and have easy ejection off the pod! But those puppies are $500 and up.

I still need to get a macbook pro.

On another note, I am moving on from wanting to pursue graduate school in cultural psychology to finally moving towards freelance photography. Hope to see myself in a magazine soon!

Radio

I am listening to the Corr’s Radio this morning, and it reminded me of when I was strolling around in Dublin.  Just the melody of the song brings up some very fond memories of my trip to Ireland.  It is very remarkable how music can bring up memories and vastly different emotions each and every time!  Especially when it is associated with something special.

I just started working on some of the photographs from the California trip.  I only have the last couple days with me, as the rest are on my brother’s laptop.  So far, I like what I have shot.  For the most part.  It seems my sensor got dirty by the end of the trip, which means I need to clean it again.  A result of constant changing of my lenses.

For the first week, I relied mainly on my 50mm and 24-70 lens because I was mainly in urban locations.  But for the time spent in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, I used mainly the 12-24 and 24-70.  I … idiotically used the 12-24 for a good amount of portraits with my family at the corners where they looked heavily distorted.  While I did want to get the grand scope of the landscapes and trees, I should have either moved or asked them to move.

Well…  they should be up relatively soon.  I will post my highlights of the trip soon!

What a fantastic trip!

I just had a wonderful 2 week trip to California!  I took over 20 gigs of photographs of my journey with my brother Eric, sister in law Ann, and nephew Vincent!

I am going to go as fast as I possible can to process and display them, as well as posting my journal entries!  So hold tight!