Home is where the heart is...

“I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” 

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

In a way, I have fallen down the rabbit hole.  I don't know what adventures I will have but I do know one thing...  They will be full of as much wonder and self discovery as Alice herself had.

I am at the beginning of my new life, in a home that is filled with my childhood.  My past is here within these walls.  I can feel them.  

My new life begins here where I was born.    

August 31, 2012.

My rebirth. 

Moonshine

Goodbye...

One of the hardest things we ever have to do. Say goodbye to the ones that we love. Though we never really say goodbye. We are forever left with a part of them in us. A piece that they left of themselves, precisely just for us. So that in whatever we say or do that little piece of them shows itself. We are then reminded of that person and think of them. Thinking of them often.

Though they may not be around anymore for one reason or another, they are forever with us in spirit.

Portraits

I have never photographed so many people as I have within this year. With the youth sports photography and the photography class that I'm taking this semester... Funny, considering I'm not really good at photographing people, yet my instructor says he likes my portraits better than he does my photos of other stuff. If anything, I'm definitely getting a lot of practice.






And when you run out all your friends and their kids to take pictures of there is always the homeless people on the streets of San Francisco.

NorCal Pirate Festival Revisted

Lab time this semester was cut dramatically this semester. We barely have enough time to get our assignments printed on time. Although, I've managed to fuck up on the first two assignments and have fallen completely behind. I'm supposed to be working on my 3rd assignment which is shooting 3 rolls of film. 3200 film shot at 800, 1600, 3200, and 6400. 25 or 50 film and infrared film. Printing 2 prints from each roll due next week on the 16th. I haven't even shot one roll yet.

However, I was able to manage to get some frames printed from the 2 1/2 rolls that I shot at the NorCal Pirate Festival earlier this summer. Not may, but at least some. I'm working on getting a flat bed negative scanner here pretty soon (yeah, along with everything else I'm trying to get!), so I can at least scan some of those in eventually.

Here are the prints that I did manage to get done.

Same Time Next Year

It's been quite awhile since I posted last. Not that there has been a whole lot to post about. Been busy with work, photography work on the weekends, and now with the Fall semester under way, my photography class. Needless to say I've been very busy.

I still have no love life. Surprise! It's not from lack of wanting something, anything... It's more like all the men are either married or just your typical man who likes to talk a good game, but can't step up to the plate long enough to shut his trap and stop talking about what he says he's going to do instead of just doing it. Men like these I have no patience for and just irritate the fuck out of me. Like speed bumps they put in the middle of the road to slow you down. Just get the fuck out of my way! I've got no time for you. I just keep on going like they were never even there.

The past two months I was busy with youth sports photography. Managed to mack close to $700 during the soccer league season. That money will definitely come in handy. I was going to put all that money towards the digital DSLR I'm eventually going to buy, but it looks like I need to get new tires for my car. I already dumped about $2,000 into the bitch just at the end of August. Money that was meant for my digital camera. It was a sad, sad day for me when I had to put it all into my car. But as luck would have it, Nikon announced that they are releasing the D300 just in time for Christmas. I was planning on buying the D200, so it worked out perfect. Well, not entirely perfect. It's just going to take a little longer. I will still have to come up with all the money still, but at least I will have the new and improved upon version of the D200.

With that said, looks like I'll be dumping another $330 for much needed tires. I think I broke a belt in my front right tire over the weekend. My front end is shimmy and shaking more than normal, just like the last time I busted a belt. Only I never got a front end alignment so my front did a little shimmy shaking. At this rate, it may take me until next November until I'll be able to afford my camera.

Specially since I leave for my annual New England vacation next Friday. Looks like I'm going to be a little bit lighter on money for my trip too. That sucks ass. But, what can you do? Bitching and moaning isn't going to make any difference. I'm just happy to be getting away for a little while. One thing I noticed. My vacation always ends a day or two after daylight savings time. I know we set the clocks back an hour, so in all actuality we are gaining hour. But damn if it doesn't always mess me up when I'm home. It's bad enough that by the time my vacation is ending I'm finally on East coast time, I sure don't need that extra hour added on messing with me when I'm finally home. I'm looking forward to the New England colors and weather though. I can't wait! 11 days and counting...

Projekt Revolution, Part I - MSI

My brother and I decided we only wanted to stick around to see Mindless Self Indulgence and HIM. Since HIM was the 3rd act on the main stage, they were the only reason why I paid $55 a ticket for Linkin Park's little music fest. I would have paid $76 a ticket for the good seats, so I could be that much closer to the stage to see HIM and to get closer shots of Ville, but apparently the second section of seats were the best seats available at the time of the pre-sale. Yeah, ri-ight. Bullshit! (Just once I would love to get really good seats in the first section!)

Because I had lost my tickets I had to go pick them up over at the will call window. After standing in the A - whatever-fucking-letter for quite a while, I was directed over to the customer assistance window. Then when I finally got to that window and went through my losing my ticket and calling them in spiel again with the guy at this window, he informs me that I should have stood in the A - whatever-fucking-letter window and told them my last name since that's where my tickets were. I explained to him that what I told the person over there was the same exact thing I just told him and they told me to come over to his freaking window. The guy was very nice though and got my tickets for me. He also happened to notice that they were actual seats, "These are hard to come by." I said, "Yeah. That is why I was freaked out about losing them. If they were lawn tickets I would have just bought a couple more." But I guess I should have been a little more thankful that I had actual seats, even though my view of the left side (my left that is) of the stage was obstructed by the stupid section sign posts for sections 103 & 102. Yeah. Uh huh. Very thankful.

My brother and I couldn't have timed getting to the show any better. By the time I finally got through the will call lines, got my tickets, and headed inside over to the second stage, MSI took the stage not 10 minutes later. Perfect timing.

Just like when we saw them at the Download Festival in 2005, they were fucking awesome. Little Jimmy Urine definitely knows how to play up to the crowd. Dance Dance Revolution, baby!

After looking at some of these photos though and seeing them up a lot closer, I didn't realize how old they were. I guess I just assumed that they were all in like their mid 20's or something just from how their crowd really seems to be the much younger set. (Well, much younger than me anyway)

I was looking at some of these pictures of Jimmy and was thinking "Damn! This guy looks like he's a total tweaker." He's got that whole thin, spun out of his mind for years that I look 50 instead of 23, tweaker look going on. So out of curiosity I looked them up further and looked to see when Jimmy was born. He was born just a year after me, in 1969. Well, hell. That explains a lot right there. Specially with all the references to the 80s pop culture, I thought they were a little young to be so into the 80s...I guess not. LOL Jimmy does look a little bit roughly worn though, and not just from age. I'm just saying is all. I'm sure the road is not kind to even those who abstain from putting any form of chemicals, so called pharmaceuticals, or liquids into their bodies.

Anyway, without much further ado, here are some shots I made of MSI.

Enjoy, Bitches.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of dust being stirred up during their set. Every time I tried to get shots of Steve, Right? a big dust cloud would then pop up and drift over towards where he was. This shot and another one below were the only two somewhat good shots that I was able to make of Steve. I would have liked to have gotten a really good dust clear shot of him, but it just wasn't meant to be. So if some of the pictures seem to be a little 'hazy' to you, you now know why.

Oh yeah? Proof it!

I got a new toy for one of my cameras yesterday.

[At last count I've now got something like 16 cameras. But we'll talk about my camera habit in a later post.]




My new toy is a Polaroid back for my Mamiya 645 Super. A Polaroid? Yeah. And it's way cool too! It takes the Polaroid peel-apart 3 ¼" x 4 ¼" pack film that you peel away from the paper after its allotted development time. The whole process is pretty freaking neat. Snap the picture. Pull on the white tab to expose the tab for the picture. Pull on that tab, pulling it through the rollers, distributing the developer across the picture. Let it sit for 90 secs [depending on the film type], then peel apart. And waah-laa! You've got yourself a nice little Polaroid proof.

[I'm working towards experimenting with emulsion transfer. But I don't have all the equipment for that quite yet. I need to find me an old Polaroid Land Camera and a lot of other semi-expensive stuff for that. But it is on my list as one of the alternate processes that I want to learn.]

The Polaroid backs were used with medium format cameras like the Mamiya as a proofer. Before the digital age it, helped the photographer to instantly see that the lighting was good during the shoot before, and all that other good stuff, before shooting with film, and is still done today as such.

I've never worked with this particular film before [my Polaroid experiences have been with the instamatic film] and my Polaroid back unfortunately didn't come with a user's instruction. I bought it off of eBay for like a buck fifty plus $10.95 for shipping, so for $12.45 I'm not complaining since I rarely see one of these go for under $50. Loading the film into the backing was a guess and go, and hoping that I loaded it right. And but of course, I didn't! It wasn't too bad though. Thanks to Polaroid have a lot of documents available on their website, prior to all this I had downloaded and printed a document that helped me figure out what I did wrong and how to fix it. If only the instructions on how to load the film were explained a little bit more. But, in the end I only ended up wasting the first two pictures. Trial and error, but all in all, not so bad.

These are two test shots that I took after finally getting the film loaded correctly.

It's a Revolution... and it's upon us!

Sunday the Projekt Revolution Tour is coming to the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. Linkin Park's little music fest, which of course they are headlining. I'm not a big Linkin Park fan, I liked their first album, Hybrid Theory and was one of the millions who bought it. But when they came out with Reanimation, I dunno, as much as I love remixes, they kind of lost me with that one. And Meteora, to me, just sounded too much like Hybrid, really nothing new there to chew on. I might stick around to see them perform, but I dunno, we'll see.

So then why in the hell am I going to Projekt Revolution then if I'm not such a big Linkin Park fan?

Good question. Glad you asked!

Well, I'm not a big My Chemical Romance fan either. I've heard of Taking Black Sunday and Saosin but haven't heard any songs from them. Placebo? Yeah, never heard of them either. Nor have I heard of Julien-K (giving them a listen on MySpace now, I like Kick the Bass, not too sure about the other songs they got up here though.), The Bled, Styles of Beyond... Yup, never hear of any of them.

Mindless Self Indulgence I had actually caught at the Download Festival, never heard of them until that day. My brother and I were actually making fun of them while they were playing cause they were terrible...but terrible in a good way if that makes any sense. The lead singer actually has a great stage presence that just works. And yeah, my brother and I ended up liking Shut Me Up. I mean, how could you not. It's a great catchy tune and it sounded great that day. MSI is one of those bands that you would love to hire to play at college party. In the end, MSI ended up winning my brother and I over.

Okay, so that leaves just one band left...

Oh com'mon now. Like you really didn't see that coming! That one was a given. Why in the hell else would I be going to this concert!? Why in the hell HIM are touring with Linkin Park and the like, though, is beyond me. They really don't fit in the same genre of music. But I guess because Him, Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, and Taking Back Sunday are all on Warner Bros. Music makes sense on that aspect of it all.

Last year HIM was supposed lined up to play on the No Sleep 'Til Halloween Tour with Papa Roach, Lostprophets, and Kill Hannah. Again, another line up that I didn't feel one way or the other about, but bought tickets nonetheless just to see HIM again for their Dark Light release. They later backed out of it in favor of getting back into the studio though, which I don't blame them for wanting to do. But I was a lot little bummed that I wouldn't be getting the chance to see them again until after they completed the new album.


Well, now the new album, Venus Doom, is scheduled to be released September 19th. AND... I've already got my copies pre-ordered with express shipping so I wouldn't have to wait and will actually receive them the day of the release. Copies? Yeah. They are release 3 versions of the album. There is the regular version, a special edition version that will have a bonus CD with a couple of the new songs remixed, in a special album package. Then there is the limited edition version that will come with "a 7" x 9" size antique-style "leather" wrapped journal with 60 pages of photos, illustrations, lyrics, etc. and includes the full length CD and bonus disc with 3 songs in parchment envelopes and 3 "polaroid" photos, contained in a sealed envelope in the back of the book." A little excessive you say? Yeah. But guess what? I don't care. So… [sticking tongue out at you]

So yeah, I'm a little extremely excited about Sunday. I'm finally getting to see them again and get to hear some of the new songs off the new album. I've already been listening to Passions Killing Floor, bought that one off of iTunes, since they contributed that song to the Transformers soundtrack. And I've been watching the new video for Kiss of Dawn (also on iTunes), which I really, really like. I'm having high hopes for Venus Doom, already it sounds a lot harder than the Dark Light album, which I knew was going to sound too much the way it did. [Why is that for American consumption that when a foreign band finally gets their recognition and gets officially released on a US label that the record companies end up pushing them for a more "poppy, more radio friendly" album? Fucking record companies! Yeah I know, it's all about getting their money back, then some, on their investments. But fuck-n-a already! Let the artist be themselves. After all, that is part of the reason they were signed in the first place.] Don't get me wrong, I liked the Dark Light, I just thought it could have been a lot better. But like I said earlier, I'm a lot more hopeful with Venus Doom, so far so good. I'm not so sure about the album cover [pictured], but I definitely can't wait to get it so I can hear the whole thing!

Wanna hear the most fucked up part about this whole Projekt Revolution concert that my brother and I are supposed to be going to?

I lost the fucking tickets! I can't find them ANYWHERE! I tore my freaking room apart looking for them fucking tickets over the weekend. It's not like they were lawn tickets either or I'd just say fuck it and buy two more. Since HIM is on the main stage I bought seats so I wouldn't have to be so far back, plus I bought the premier parking ticket too so I wouldn't have to park out in the dusty boondocks. I have no freaking idea where I put them since they obviously were not where I always put my concert tickets so that I WON'T lose them. Ha! I called Ticket Master and spent what felt like forever and a day holding until I finally got a CS Rep. My name is supposedly on the list for the premier parking and my two tickets are waiting for me to pick up at the will-call office. Supposedly. I don't know how smooth this is going to do since I've never lost concert tickets before.

I'll let you know how that goes.

Shake, rattle, and roll.

I get on-line this morning to check my e-mail, first scanning the news headlines on Yahoo’s home page. Apparently “An earthquake jolted San Francisco Bay area residents awake early Friday, breaking glass and rattling nerves, although there were no immediate reports of injuries.”

The earthquake hit shortly after 4:40 this morning and was recorded to have been located 2 miles east of Oakland, with a magnitude of 4.2. It was also noted that it could be felt for up to 10 seconds on both sides of the San Francisco Bay.

If I hadn’t skimmed the headlines I wouldn’t have even known we had a small quake this morning. This was one resident that slept through the bugger. My eyes lids didn’t snap open until my alarm clock started blaring in my ear at 4:55.

After we had our big one back in 1989 I had a couple of friends that live in New England that had asked me if I was a little frightened living in California with all of our quakes and with the threat of the “Big One” that has been predicted to hit us. Hell, we have so many little jolts that most of the time they go totally unnoticed. But unlike the people who live in states that have tornadoes and hurricanes every year, we don’t have to worry about having to rebuild every time a quake hits. We rarely get big ones like the one we had in 1989. As for the “Big One” that is still predicted to hit the Bay Area? I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it to hit. If it hits, it hits.

I'm just glad we're not Japan. Now that is a country that seems to have a lot more big freaking earthquakes than we do.

Personally, I would much rather live with earthquakes than hurricanes any freaking day. But that’s just me.

Thar Be Pirates!

Looking to do something a little different for Father's Day this year?

Well, if you live in Northern California I just might have the thing for you.

The first annual NorCal Pirate Festival.

Vallejo, California on the Waterfront June 16 & 17.

Best of all?

Admission is FREE!