A Beautiful Sunset

The sky was a beautiful orange, 

with the water reflecting it.

On of the many beautiful view of the 

ocean from Port Townsend, Washington.

On the two day drive to washington w/ the family. 

ISO - 200

Focal Length - 18mm 

f/3.5

1/500sec

Flash - TTL Set to 3 stops under.

An Awesome Desert Sky

The bell tower in Sierra Madre.

Hume Lake Christian Camps

Hume Lake is one of the best camps I've ever been to. The experience is unforgettable. This week our speaker was Chris Brown, he was an incredible speaker, he always started with placing the story like a movie then moved on to scripture and the implementations on our lives. The camp was is unlike anything else, the band Campaign was awesome. The worship is unlike anything else. This year I was lucky enough to be on the High School side called Ponderosa. Every year the camp has a theme. This years was "Hey Rube" a call to action. The lesson was that no matter what we hit in life we are to be the one to help others, and help the one that needs it no matter how weird, or messed up they are. The lessons learned their are unforgettable.

A sign on the road up to chapel

The office

The Lake from the Dock

The lake from the Volleyball Court

The Volleyball Court


The Dining Hall


Ducks on the water

Malibu, Canada

Malibu Canada is one of the most beautiful places in the world, it is a young life camp in the Princess Louisa inlet which is rated as 1 of the top ten places to boat to in boating magazines every year. The camp is one of the premier young life camps, and has many awesome activities because of the vast amount of land and its location. The camp features 2 docks, a frisbee golf course, and hiking. One of the two docks called the outer dock has sailboats, kayaking, and caribe(caribe is a thing you sit on, it's like a long intertube that you and hold on to for dear life hoping not to fall in cold water while being pulled by a speedboat). On the other deck called the inner dock (so creative with the names, don't you agree?) you can kayak, wake-board, water-ski, canoe, and rowboat. The nice thing is all of this is free with the camp. If you want to go hiking, there is 1 route, it leads of to a place called inspiration point that is above the camp and has gorgeous views of the inlet and the ocean around it. Going as the doctors son also had it's advantages, I was able to go to a place called chatterbox falls which is a the end of the inlet, and is a gigantic waterfall. I also got to see the camps hydroelectric plant(sorry no pictures of that.) Overall the camp was awesome.

Click here to see the pictures

Washington

Yesterday we left from LA to go to Washington. A family tradition is to go to a restaurant called the Oak Table for Breakfast. They have delicious food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For breakfast I usually get the Apple Pancake. The apple pancake is cooked like a soufflé, and served like one too. When they serve them they ring a bell, the pancake when served is about 1 to 2 inches high. They also serve many other delicious entrees. Outside in the hall there is always a bunch of lavender products because Sequim is the Lavender capital of the world, they even have a lavender festival which is going on right now.

PS. My brother Jonathan flies in from India, hoping he took a lot of pictures, and am excited to here about his experiences.

Sierra Madre 4th of July

Although we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, the majority of people actually signed it on August 2nd, 1776. Many cities have their own traditions they have on the 4th, Sierra Madre tradition is to have a July 4th parade. The parade starts in the beginning of Sierra Madre, and ends at the end. A specific tradition is to soak the firefighters, while they soak you using their hoses. This year the city had a water zone where the kids would get soaked. Lets just say that a water balloon, and water gun does not beat the fire hoses.

A Cool Picture

An army officer walking through town

Sierra Madre concert in the park

A Sierra Madre summer tradition is to have concerts in the park, this weeks was to celebrate the fourth of July. The Sheds were the intro band for Aluminum Marshmallow which are both well known to Sierra Madre.

Getty Museum

The Getty Museum is an awesome place full of art inside, and out. The building itself is awesome in design, and size. The museum contains many galleries, my favorite this trip was the ancient egyptian style books, and art. If you get a chance to go there, I highly recommend you do. admission is free, parking is $15.

Light Box

For a lot of macro shots it’s good to have a soft-box or light-box for lighting with no harsh lighting or shadows, the problem for me was that it’s expensive to buy/rent one so, I built my own.

Instructions:

1. Choose a box (go for the size that you think you’ll use the most)

2. Cut out the sides leaving space for the edges

3. Fill those edges with white card stock

4. Fill in the sides with paper of some sort that is not too thick, not too thin. (Wax Paper will work good as a light diffuser)

5. Select a light source of some type (I am using two lamps)

Product

A picture taken in the light box

The Light Box

Free Video Editing Software

Let me make this clear, free software is all pretty basic. A couple of days ago my friend asked me what free video editing software there is out there, I immediately answered with my software of choice which is Video-Spin by Pinnacle. He insisted on using Wax which is another free software for editing video. Wax is pretty hard to use if you've never edited video before, and some people just need something easy to use, the nice thing is that video spin has tutorials on it's website. Wax on the other hand has a lot of advanced features like being able to do overlays and green screen. It's really up to you which one you like better. Click on the top picture to go to WAX's Homepage, or click on the bottom picture to go to Video-Spin's Homepage. Take a look at the features, and decide for yourself which you like better.

A trick on the SB-800

Recently a friend showed me a feature on the Nikon SB-800, it's called SU-4, It's slave mode built in to the flash so it can be fired by any other flash. To get it hold down the SEL button, Hit the
Icon with the 2 Swirvy Lines, and 2 Flashes and scroll down to SU-4 and hit the SEL Button. Now shoot off any other flash you have, it will work with point and shoot cameras, or anything else with a flash (a flashing light won't trigger it).

Fast Shutter Speed

I have a Nikon D40 it has the ability to go to 1/4000 of a second shutter speed. I put my Tamron 70-300mm lens, and Sunpak auto 422D on my camera and shot pictures of water coming out of the sink. The water is basically frozen in time. Here are a couple of sample pictures.

PS: The Flash is very important when taking these types of pictures.