Travel - Fountain Valley: L's Wedding

I attended my college friend L's wedding in Fountain Valley, CA. I arrived late to the ceremony and had to sit far in the back. I absolutely adored the skylight above the altar and was thrilled to fire off many shots of the couple beneath it. This was just one of them. As you probably noticed, I'm experimenting with a processing technique/style. Not sure if it's my thing, but it was nice to drastically alter settings I normally use. I'm sure I'll post more photos from this weekend as B and I stayed in a hotel that weekend to explore more of Orange County.

Tilapia

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I'm actually don't know what to do right now. I have had a large surge in followers in the past couple weeks that is a result of the B&W work I've been showing recently. However, that isn't usually my focus nor my preferred style. I meant for this site to be primarily a forum to show off my photographs of my travels. But it seems my black and white work are what people prefer. I'll obviously take that into consideration over the next few days as I reconfigure what I'm doing. Maybe, I'll do a hybrid: black and white travel photos. Perhaps.

This, by the way, was shot in the Philippines as someone was preparing fried tilapia for my breakfast.

First Place: Lines

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I know I've fallen a little behind. It's been an overwhelming week!

Here's the last of my San Diego County Fair images (taken July 4th). This image coincidentally won first place in Chrysta Rae's Scavenger Hunt (July edition -- for "lines"). I was absolutely blown away as I did not expect to win at all. I almost didn't even enter this image. But, I was shorthanded when it came to submitting something as the deadline loomed. I'm utterly speechless regarding all the comments, +1s, and shares my images are getting. Because of Chrysta's huge audience, more people are seeing my work than ever before. Frightening thought. ;)

The other image taken that same day and that won 2nd place for "motion" in the hunt can be found here.

Kiss

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This was my interpretation of the word "kiss." I had just had a birthday cake and on top were these cute little Hershey Kisses. I snagged a couple and originally posed them free standing. Then I had the idea to make the labels "kiss." I played with a few backgrounds before settling for this very warm pink one because of how cold the original metallic wrappers were. This photo didn't place, but I'm quite pleased with it. :)

Travel: San Francisco Bay

Oh, boy -- I have a backlog of trips I need to write about so let's get this out of the way right now.

Last month, a friend decided to celebrate her 30th birthday by inviting her friends onto a boat. Despite it being in the middle of the summer, we were absolutely freezing (and under-dressed) as we circled around San Francisco Bay. We did, however, get to see wonderful sights such as Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge (which we went under 2-3 times), and Sausalito lit up at night. Absolutely beautiful.

This shot in particular was done one of the times went UNDER the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, through a window INSIDE the nice, warm cabin. The fog blocking the sun obviously didn't help. The condensation on the window just shows the vastly different temperatures between the outside and inside of the boat. Fun day, overall. If I ever did it again, despite it being summer, I would have worn my thickest winter clothes. Brr. The upside though was when we went to a club later and ate at a crepes place afterward that same evening, it didn't seem so cold compared to the 60 degree temperature above the water.

Sky Lift

Today's post was just supposed to show another shot from the San Diego County Fair.

Unfortunately, my thoughts right now are with the people in affected regions of the Philippines that are experiencing flooding as a result of 24+ hours of continuous rain.

If you have loved ones in Manila and the surrounding provinces, you may find Google's People Finder useful: http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/2012-08-philippines-flood.html

It's available in English and Filipino.

Breakfast

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I'm using today to catch up on everything that's happened over the weekend. Boy, I missed a lot!

But, first, I really want to say thank you to everyone that left wonderful comments, +1'ed, and shared yesterday's photo. That just made my day after a very long, tiring day! I really was just through the roof! And a special thank you to the judges who actually thought my work was worthy! Really, thank you all.

Anyway, so, above was my submission for "breakfast" to Chrysta Rae's Scavenger Hunt. Unfortunately, I forgot to include the milk. ;). This was my standard overhead shot on one of my white backgrounds. I used only natural light from the large windows in my living room. I did very little processing (as I'm not a fan of it). This is in contrast to yesterday's shot where I actually deleted parts of the fair from the bottom right (via Photoshop), burned in the swing ropes, and turned the entire thing into a black and white.

Many of my submissions this round were actually just done in my own living room (I simply ran out of time this month as many of my weekends were dedicated to a lot of social events). Although I submitted my photos 3 or 4 days before the deadline, I only had time to complete a little over half the items on the list. Some items, of course, were downright difficult!

Now, I'm off to curate. I'll eventually post photos from travels from yesterday and the month of July during some downtime this month. Things are beginning to calm down for me now that summer is coming to a close. :)

Second Place: Motion

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I just got back from a trip, only to come home to an inbox full of congratulations from people on G+. Thank you all!!! I'll post a proper thank you tomorrow after I finish unpacking and recovering from my exhausting weekend.

Random Town in France

Here's another from the drive from Nice to Paris, France from a couple years ago. I don't actually know the name of the town, but I thought it was adorable.

This past week, I've been up at 3am quite frequently. I have no clue why but it sure let's me get my Google+ activities done quite early in the day without interruption. I'm beginning to like this :).

Road Through Vineyards

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I shot this while standing in the middle of a road somewhere in Epernay, France. We had stopped on our journey to Paris to trespass and get shots of grapes. Oh, what crazy, stupid things tourists do. I should have probably photoshopped out the tour bus in the middle.

Anyway, recently, I've been dealing with fragile egos (talk about an understatement), trying to get my photos seen by ONE particular person (success!), and making travel arrangements (for this weekend!). It's been a busy week, folks! Have a good one!