Grand Slam

Just like it says. Bases were loaded when Justin came up. He watch the first strike go by and the second one as well. The third pitch was a screaming fastball right down the pipe. His swing was timed perfectly and hit that ball 6 inches out of the shortstops reach. It only climbed about another foot or so by the time it smacked in to the Ruby’s Diner sign that was just past the 200′ fence at center field.

San Gabriel Sunset

I went to a beer tasting event at the Stuffed Sandwich (link) in San Gabriel and snapped this on my way home. (more here). The tasting was an event put on by a home brewing club named The Maltese Falcons (link). The Falcons lay claim to being the oldest home brewing club in America. On a whim, weeks before the tasting, I attended one of their meetings. It was in the back of  The Home Beer, Wine, Cheesemaking Shop. Just a bunch of guys and gals that are interested and very knowledgable in home brewing. I’d like to run a micro brew once I retire. I sampled some of the members home brews and was very impressed. They told me about the tasting event and said it was one of those “must do” events.

Poppy Goes…

This is from some seeds that my brother Thor gave me. We
must have had a thousand of these asian poppies blooming this past
spring. I shot this with 3 exposures -2ev 0 and +2ev. Processed in
Photoshop CS5.

Video Editing aka the great time suck

Those of you who know me, know that I coach my kids sports. This past baseball season I had two GREAT parents that offered to photo and video the action during the games. This is great since while I’m coaching, I don’t get to take any photos of my kids. By the end of the season we had 1000+ photos and about an hour of 1080p HD video.

My goal was to chop this down to a 15~20 minutes and create DVD’s for each player. Simple, right? After 2 weeks of 2-5 hours per night give or take, my master piece is about 2 hours away from an Oscar.

I started with the photos. I went went through each one and trashed any that were out of focus, off angle or just had something wrong with them. Then I went through again, this time I tagged them with the players names and rated them 1-5.

The video was given to me as a bunch of sequenced AVHCD files that I was able to import in to Adobe Premiere Pro. Little did I know that these HD files impose a huge drain on the computer. I had edited SD footage in the past with no problem.

I was amazed at the amount of time I put in to this project. From when I sat down it seemed that time would speed up and the next thing I know, 4 hours had gone by. Don’t get me wrong, I had a blast doing it and learned a lot along the way. Granted, if I was more knowledgeable with the software and the techniques, it would not have taken as long.

Would I do it again? You bet!

Mom and Dad

Since my mom passed away last May, me and my two brothers have been scanning all of her family photos. We’ve come across some photos that we didn’t know even existed. This is a photo of Mom and Dad at the Seven Seas nightclub in Hollywood. I’d have to guess that it is during the early 1950′s. They would work all day, Mom was a nurse and Dad was a mechanic at McDonald Douglas Aircraft, and then go out all night dancing.