A business question

So I have felt the need to create a business card, as I start to get into a little freelancing. It's not something I am too familiar with, but came up with a satisfactory card. I created it pretty quickly as I was out the door to Stanford.

Tell me what you think and if you have one to share please do.

One of the worst nights of my life...

And not because SJSU lost to Stanford.

I shot my first collegiate football game this past Saturday at Stanford Stadium. It was a great stadium to shoot at, especially lighting wise.

Unfortunately I had to leave at half time, due to the food poisoning I received prior to the game from the press box hamburgers. I am still recovering from the effects of the bad beef.

On the bright side, I had five photos in the Spartan Daily, including a front page shot.

The photo to the left was a victim of the 400mm lens. You live and die by it. But I think it's still nice shot.

Check my Flickr! for more photos.

The end of an era.

It is official, the good times are over in Riverdale.

In a move that was seen long before the sun set, the Hanford Sentinel has closed the Twin City Times, a newspaper that I was a journalist at for nearly a year and a half. It is a move made after I left the newspaper barely a month ago.

It doesn't surprise me that the decision was made to close the Twin, but it is a little tough to swallow. My whole time there, I was always worried that the small newspaper serving Riverdale, Caruthers and Easton was about to close its doors, but it outlived myself. Actually they probably closed it because it would have been to much trouble to find a reporter after I left.

I owe a lot to the Twin and all those I served in the communities I reported on. I made a lot of friends and learned more than I ever could in a classroom. It is a shame to see that it never got the backing it deserved. It was doomed since I got there, never given the chance to succeed.

But when the ink fades away from the pages of the Twin City Times, more than just the readers will be left in the dark. Mary Mancillas the office manager for the Twin will be out of the job. She has put her heart and soul in the Twin for nearly a decade, writing stories and taking photos, when all she was asked to do is answer phones. She is the one that has kept it together for so many years, a truly sad day for her.

It is funny that the last issue will be published on my 21st birthday, September 26, furthermore reminding me that one chapter in my life has past and another has started. There really is no going back now, even if I wanted to.

I am sad to see the paper that was so good to me, one I worked on so hard, just shut down. Like I said before, it was a paper that was never given a chance by a company that just doesn't know it's readers or employees. Hopefully down the line, it will be revived and flourish like I and a few other people know it can.

So here is to the Twin City Times: an end to a good paper; an end to an era.

I'm Back

So it has been a little while since I have posted. Only three weeks into school and it has me going crazy.

One class that I am taking is Color photography. Unfortunately we don't get to dabble at all into creating actual color prints in the dark, as it is all digital. But in the end it will make life a little easier and cleaner.

My First assignment was to shoot in different types of light. Now everyday I walk to this class I see a row of Palm Trees from a window. I have conjured up a few ideas on how I would like to use those for a photo, and I used one of them for this assignment. I was disappointed after trying a few different techniques that weren't working, but once I got back and saw this picture it all went away. It was a long exposure, somewhere close to like two seconds.

Now I don't have a tripod yet, so this is were I had to improvise a little. One thing I have learned during my short time behind the camera, is that if you can't improvise, you can't survive. I had an extra light stand that I used while I snapped this shot and held my breath. I am glad to say the light stand proved more sturdy than anticipated .

What are some examples of times when you had to improvise due to a lack of equipment?