Mike Harper

I love alliteration and semicolons in the English language.

"People like pictures in portland. The alliteration alone of that last sentence should bring you up here." -Mike Harper Sept. 14, 09 8:50pm Pacific.

Thanks, Mike, for making my night.

Till then.

Filipino Pirate: Photo Shoot With Karl

Karl, Anh, Aldo and Jessie came over to my house and helped me with a little project. It involved 2 strobes, 2 scooters and 1 SUV. Here is what I got:


And after words, we went and got Pho at 50% off, you know where I'm talking about!

Till then.

Oh and PCs suck; PS3 crashed on me and I've never had soooo many virus in a months time period. I think I'm going to switch over to MACS.

Oh Photoshop, How I Love Thee

I can remember using Photoshop 7 and being completely frustrated with that program. As a matter of fact, because I couldn't use the damn thing, I started hating on people that edited their photos. Can't join them, well, then HATE THEM; those jerks. I would tell myself that people made their photos in Photoshop rather than shot them with their camera and lights. Well, on record, I was wrong. You really can't shine shit (I know, it was proven otherwise on Myth Busters, but really, come on). A bad photo is a bad photo. Long story short, I'm pretty excited about my editing skills and wanted to share them. Here's what I got:


And here is what I used:
Healing brush
Patch Tool
Clone Stamp
Liquify
Eye Dropper Tool
Layer Mask
Magic Wand
Saturation
Curves
Unmask Sharpen
Levels

Many thanks to Youtube and McClain for the great tips on natural skin editing!!

Till then.

Labor Day 2009: Anh Gets Her Wisdom Teeth Pulled

So, this Labor Day (Sept. 7 09) Anh and I went to my brother's dental office in Fountain Valley and got her 2 lower wisdom teeth pulled out! It was not as bad as it sounded; the entire procedure only took about 20-30 minutes! Anh only had 1 moment of pain but my brother solved that with more Novocain.

After everything, he gave Anh her teeth and I photographed them. Here is what I got:


These look so prehistoric; they reminded me of a Velociraptors claw! Ha, they have "Velo" in their name!

Till then.

Health Care For America NOW!

LOS ANGELES-- I went into DTLA to get some photographs of people yelling at one another about Obama's plan for universal health care plan and only got some peaceful, protesting, old hippies. So much for all that stuff you see on TV about them Republicans yelling and crying at their representatives. Anyways, here's the one I like the most:

Oh, and I totally caught a guy starring at some ladies boobs!


He was SUPER annoying. Reminded me of that one guy from Happy Gilmore that would pop out of no where and call Happy a "jack-ass!" This guy...

Till then.

Cold War Kids in The LBC

The Cold War Kids, one of my favorite bands, played a free show at the Busker Festival, August 21, 09. The show took place on 1st and Elm Ave. in Long Beach, CA. The show was packed (why not, it's free) with a bunch of people wearing flannel and riding "fixies." It was really cute. No, I did not wear my flannel, and truth be told, I felt left out, sigh.

Here's what I got:














It's really cool how people think you are associated with the band that you are photographing when you're carrying a big'ol camera; cutzzies for me!

"Who are you shooting for?" "Oh me? Them, The Cold War Kids."

www.coldwarkids.com

Till then.

Sequoia in 36hrs.

Last weekend, 2 buddies of mine and I decided to go backpacking in Sequoia for only a short amount of time (We left Friday morning and I had to be at work on Sunday, 10am). I brought the essentials: Camera, 17-55mm 2.8, 2x 8 gig CF cards, batteries, tripod and a hat. Here is what i got:
















We ended up doing a 7 mile night hike in the complete dark, well, we had headlamps and little flashlights, but that only lit up about 5 feet in front of us. I wanted to get more photos set up for our night hike, but that would involve me walking into the dark forest, off the trail, and setting up the tripod. I didn't want to do that, plus everyone was super tired and did not want to slow down for me to set up a couple of pictures.

We made it back to the car in about 4hrs and got back to Huntington Bch by 9am. Success!

Till then.