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.