Paradise Pier…Disneyland California Adventure

Life is About Change…

I remember growing up and listening to my parents and family always talking about how they had to walk 10 miles to school in 200 degree heat, through a sandstorm and then swim through a lake filled with piranhas every day just to get to school and back. Well, not that extreme of course but that is what I felt like I was hearing. Now at age 30 I find myself telling my niece how easy she has it because she gets dropped off and picked up from school every day while I had to walk to school. Sometimes if the rain was extreme I would get a ride to school from my parents, but on regular rain days an umbrellas would have to suffice. I can’t even imagine what else she won’t get to experience as she gets older, especially in high school. I used to love walking a mile to school cutting across a huge dirt lot which has now been paved and made into the 125 freeway along Sweetwater Rd.

Speaking about high school, we were from a generation where digital cameras were still too expensive to buy so everyone pretty much had film cameras, if that. Life is about change…when our children our old enough imagine how we will need to educate them on what film cameras were!?

Our generation was also a part of the “compact” cell phone group. Who remembers the Nokia’s with snake built in? Or if you were “super cool” you had a Motorola Razr…which I had. hehe

It’s hard to believe that we were the last generation to experience T9 text messaging, polyphonic ring tones and pixelated cell phone screens. Some of us had pagers but those were already coming to the end of their time so some of us had them and some didn’t. Oh and the smaller pager that you had the more hip you were, don’t ask me why but that is how it was. Life is about change because now the bigger the screen and the higher resolution your cell phone is the better your phone is. I’m almost positive that more pictures are taken with cell phones now then they are taken with digital cameras too.

Life is about change which is maybe why the tablets and laptops will soon take over desktop computers. Will the next generation even know what a desktop computer is? Will it be considered the film camera and Razr of my generation? Who knows. I just know that when I go into Starbucks half the people in there studying or lounging around have tablets while the other half are using a laptop. However there was a couple of times when I saw someone take their desktop to starbucks, set it up and start using it. True story.

Life is about change so I’m not sure what stories I will be telling my niece but I do hope that as she gets older she’ll be able to tell stories of how hard she had it growing up. Who knows maybe she’ll tell them how strict her uncle was and wouldn’t let her eat ice cream or fast food. hehe

My First Camera

It’s my pops birthday and this post is for him.

I can’t say that I have always loved taking pictures but I do know that once my pops gave me my first camera I really haven’t stopped taking pictures. My sister was in middle school and my pops bought her a camera to help keep the memories, and something that he always followed was that if one of us got a gift so did the other sibling. Of course the camera wasn’t fancy at all since I was still a little kid but I would have been happy with a simple pinhole camera. I was very fortunate growing up because I can’t remember many of my classmates who had a camera to take pictures, and most of my classmates were eager to take pics with our friends so I have a lot of memories to share.

Once I got into middle school I kept the same camera and once again I got to take a lot of pictures with friends that I met in middle school. Thanks to my pops I still have those pictures and with social media now I have been able to share those memories with those classmates. He’s always supported me in any new hobbies that I ventured into and once I took a photography class in high school he bought me my own manual SLR camera, again it wasn’t fancy (Yashica FX-3) but perfect for me. That was the camera that taught me how to take a pictures regarding the focus, ISO and aperture settings.

After I left high school digital cameras became affordable so I bought one (and many more) to continue on taking pictures. Because of my pops buying me that first camera when I was so young I can thank him for any pictures that I have taken, and the reason I got into “iPhoneography”.

I don’t think he has ever seen any of the pictures that I have taken, so today on his birthday I made him an 11×14 print of some of the pictures that I have taken. Hopefully I can keep on taking pictures.

Spring Valley Sunrise

Ensenada, MX Harbor

SeaWorld Boat Dock

Colored Ghosts

I wanted to try out the “Harris” effect where you take three separate pictures each with a different filter creating a separate color where movement occurs. As you can see the lady in the foreground has a different color for every frame that was taken as she walked.