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Soothing sunset, click on picture to see the landscape gallery

Opo, the photographer's assistant

Here's a question: what makes a good photographer's assistant?

Well, I actually don't really know the answer to that but let me give you my humble opinion: not a baby opossum!

Once upon a time in Torrance CA, I, an aspiring photographer, arrived home from my "real" job (you know, the one that actually makes money). After setting my stuff down and firing up my computer to work excessively on my pictures, as I always do to the dismay of my girlfriend; my phone rang. "Who might that be?" I asked, out loud. Well, thankfully those great little devices now have caller identification so my question was easily answered. It was my landlord who was worried about some sound he was hearing from underneath his car and wanted assistance in figuring out what it was. "SSHHHH... SSHHHH" it sounded like. I valiantly grabbed my favorite flashlight and ran down the stairs for the rescue mission. After an intense search (about 12 seconds, lifting a corner of the tarp covering the car), we found the threatening monster.

The monster: baby opossum

It was a 4 inch long defenseless baby opossum calling for his mom. The poor dude (I don't know what gender it was but I'll call him a dude) was shaking from the cold night and was missing his mother's cosy and warm pouch. He had probably fallen off her back or tummy as she was working her way to the next trashcan and was left behind. The mom was nowhere to be found, and we did look for a while. After some time, I decided to bring him into the warmth of my dwelling and figure out how to save the little guy. Left to fend for himself out in the brisk night of the Torrance wild he would've died from cold or a dangerous feline predators. "Opo" (yep, I just called an opossum, Opo... you only have so much imagination in a day) had no concept of danger, self-defense and couldn't move effectively.

I grabbed a box and had him climb in it. Not knowing what the heck I was doing, I made Opo a 5 star dinner (bread crumbs and a little bit of water) and proceeded in my opossum care online research.

Fun fact Did you know that opossums are the only marsupials in North America?

Well it turns out that you can't feed baby opossums with just bread and water, you have to warm up some milk and feed it to them with some sort of eye dropper or baby bottle. If you can believe it, I, a 28 year old childless male with adequately hydrated eyes, do not have either. You also have to keep baby opossums pretty warm so I wrapped little Opo in a towel and put him next to the heater for the night.

As any mischievous baby would do, he crawled out of the towel, peed in the box, made it out of his now soiled home and started screaming "sshhhh... sshhhh" waking me up in the middle of the night. "Sorry dude, I like you and all but you're going back in a box and I'm closing it for the rest of the night".

The next morning, we both woke up rested and ready for a new day. The plan was to my new friend at an animal rehabilitation center but before that, I had to test his skills as a photographer's assistant. Well, it turns out he has extensive knowledge of old Leica film cameras, especially my Leica M3! I mean, check him out, he's all over that thing.

Opo framing the shot

Opo adjusting the shutter speed

Opo about to press the shutter release

Unfortunately, his outrageous benefit requests for the position were out of my budget quota... I don't cover meals, even when it's just warm milk; so we had to part ways. Later that morning, we said our goodbyes at the shelter where I hope he will have a prosperous career as a Leica specialist. Heck, he'll probably end up more popular than I am; and I will be able to proudly say: "yep... I, was a part of his success."

To Opo, the Opotographer.

Opo self portrait

Overtime

Most of you know that my "real" job is working for Yamaha Motor which came in handy when I did my little road trip adventure a few weeks ago. Well this past weekend I had to work overtime. And by overtime, I mean that a 2013 Star Stryker needed 200 miles of riding by Monday, tough job right? Therefore, instead of riding the 22.2 miles relatively straight line from my work to home, I made a 66.6 miles detour as you can see on the map.

The shortest way between 2 points

Riding around Palos Verdes on this eye-catching bike was a lot of fun. The views were pretty nice but the weather was kind of gloomy and washed out everything in the back. Nonetheless, I had my newly beloved little Fuji X100S camera to take a few shots.

Fine prints available

Fine prints available

A spot with a view

As with my Easter ride, I was having so much fun that I didn't really stop much for pictures. I also had to make sure I didn't get home too late since I had to head up to Universal City to go watch Jurassic Park in IMAX 3D! Because of time constraints, I actually straight-lined that drive up to the Valley.

Side note: Jurassic Park holds up amazingly, go see it! My girlfriend wrote a great post about memorable lines in the movie. You should also subscribe to her Tumblr as she writes awesome little articles for "twentysomethings" (not limited to the age).

After 2 hours of awww's, ouuuhhhh's and ahhh's it was time - 1:00am - to head home. I had parked the Stryker in the preferred parking lot of Universal City Walk and by the time I got to my bike, the whole lot was empty making it a great opportunity for pictures. Once again, armed with my little Fuji X100S, I started snapping away. I can't really pick which ones I prefer!

Fine prints available

Fine prints available

Fine prints available

Fine prints available

Fine prints available

Fine prints available

That was pretty much the end of the photography aspect of my weekend. Saturday was filled with preparations for a music swap/BBQ/Game of Thrones viewing event I was hosting at my place. Sunday was the actual event. Monday morning I returned the Stryker with 203 miles... in the rain... Mission accomplished!

Rock Climbing and Fuji

I’m still figuring out how to use my new Fuji X100S. I love the pictures I get out of it but it takes some getting used to. It’s a significantly different way to photograph than what I’m used to.

To get a little bit of practice, I took it to the rock climbing gym yesterday. Combine exercise and photography? I’m in!

Anyhow, between climbs I just grabbed the camera and found the strength in my finger to press the shutter. It is not the easiest task to do when you’ve just mistreated your fingers and forearms on rugged climbing holds and drought (yep, as in "no moisture") your skin with chalk. So here are just a few pictures I took over there.

Gabe showing us how it’s done

I used the lens wide open for all those shots (f/2) and set the shutter speed at 1/60sec. The camera figured out everything else.

Oh it’s getting hard!

It did pretty well in that environment, the pictures came out clean and detailed but it’s no DSLR for action shots of course. Yet it has its place as it performed well enough and my fingers would’ve been too tired to handle a full-size heavy DSLR anyway. Plus this little Fuji is super silent!

Ropes are overrated

Bottom line is that so far, I'm really happy with this little camera. Oh, and my forearms are shot (as in "tired", nothing to do with photography). Oh and of course, here is our athlete model Gabe. Thanks for reading.

As gritty as our hands

Another weekend out of town (with my new camera!)

Not much happened last weekend in the photography/adventure registry. Yet it doesn't mean that nothing happened at all.

First of all, I just got my hands on a brand new Fuji X100S camera to replace my beloved Sony NEX-6. What an amazing little camera! I'll be keeping it on me all the time and will post many pictures from it. Besides a couple iPhone pictures, all of the others here were taken with the Fuji.

The whole weekend was dedicated Jenna's birthday celebration. We first went to the Magic Castle on Friday night with a bunch of friends and got our minds magically blown away. (Un)fortunately, the Magic Castle does not allow photography so the memories are just for ourselves.

Then on Saturday morning, we headed to Lake Sherwood where I had rented a very cute little cottage. This was my present to Jenna as a get-out-of-LA opportunity.

The cute little Lake Sherwood cottage

Out there we basically just stayed in! The cottage felt so homey and inspirational that the only time we went out was to go buy a whole bunch of groceries and cook dinner for 4 hours! 

Our delicious home-cooked dinner

On the menu:

- rosemary braised lamb shanks simmered in a whole bunch of vegetable, wine and broth

- mushroom risotto made the hard way

- brussel sprouts

- bruschetta

- tarte aux pommes

Here, be hungry:

Lamb deliciousness

Tarte aux pommes à la Dutilh

The only camera I brought was the Fuji so I played a little while Jenna graciously posed.

Just enjoying the dwelling

Striking a pose

Unfortunately the owner of the awesome cottage kicked us out before we had time to change the locks. So we headed out after having a great home-cooked breakfast. One of the items that we bought at the grocery store was the mandatory bread to feed the ducks so we did that for a few minutes until Jenna got harassed by a swan larger than she is!

Larger than life swan... oh wait...

That's not true actually... we just ran out of bread. And she really got harassed because the swan doesn't get the chicken dance...

Miscommunication

We then headed south through the Malibu mountains to the coast. That's where Jenna had the brilliant idea to go wine tasting. We headed back into the mountains where we stopped by Malibu Wines for a few sips. The wine there isn't bad, the atmosphere was pretty great though. It's all outdoors, they have live music and the place is perfectly set up for outdoors parties and picnics.

Wine lights

My Jenna generously posed some more.

Enjoying the wine and scenery

Our last stop on the way back to LA was to eat some good seafood at the Reel Inn right off of PCH. Oh what a romantic weekend.

Emotion overdose

And that's it folks, until next time.

Easter weekend camping and road trip

Every now and then the question arises: “what to do with a 3 day weekend?”

What better idea than a camping trip to Big Sur’s Kirk Creek campground? Well, that’s until the weather turns into a rain deluge which would really tamper the experience.

What better idea than a camping trip to El Capitan State Beach campground.

El Capitan State Beach

Not quite as glamorous but still pretty awesome! At least the weather forecast was more enticing.

Being quite closer than Big Sur I decided to grab an adventure motorcycle and make it a whole day ride and maaan was that a good idea. Instead of waking up at 4am to catch a pretty sunrise with my camera, I woke up at 4am to catch a pretty sunset with my motorcycle. I’ll selfishly keep that glorious memory to myself as I was too busy carving corners than stopping for pictures.

Now, that doesn’t mean I never stopped to snap a few things. My back was being mistreated by a pretty darn heavy camera bag after all so I was better off taking breaks and pulling some of the gear out. But it was always a challenge choosing between riding the twisties (the corners, not the chips) and firing the shutter. I also had a whole bunch of GoPro mounts covering the bike to record videos of the ride. I’ll probably make a montage though I have to be honest, you guys will probably get headaches from the continuous vibrations.

So here’s the ride I did (yep, on Google Treasure style map… it fits the feeling):

My treasured motorcycle ride

The sun broke through the clouds just around Lake Casitas. I didn’t stop to capture it and just kept riding instead. Around Santa Barbara I decided to go up the mountain ridge on the small Gibraltar Rd. I had gone up there last summer to go hike Forbush Flats and promised myself I’d come back with a motorcycle. Santa Barbara was overcast and drizzling but once I pierced through the clouds, the views were breathtaking. From there on the rest of the ride on this twisty road was above a sea of clouds which made the experience pretty unique.

Riding above the clouds

I kept scrapping the footpegs of the motorcycle (nah… I really only did it once) until I hit the 154 highway then cruised around Lake Cachuma.

From there I went to Solvang where I made a much shorter stop than anticipated. The Danish influenced village looked like it’d be awesome to visit until the swarm of shutter-happy-tourists started continuously asking me to take pictures of them. They even wanted to climb on my bike for their personal souvenir picture of the American-dream experience. Needless to say I was out of there pretty quickly.

Solvang colors

After cleaning up the flies off my bike and barely escaping from this tourist trap I headed towards the 1 taking Santa Rosa Rd. Ahhhh, much better scenery here. Santa Rosa Rd is a very nice drive through the local wineries.

I then turned onto the 14 miles pleasing road that dead ends at Jalama Beach. This is where I would pause and eat their famous burger that carries the same name. The ride through the mustard covered hillsides was just pure pleasure and the greasy-meaty reward was up to its reputation.

Scenery when you look away from the Jalama beach

The way out of there was even more pleasing since you don’t have a choice but to take that same beautiful 14 miles road but I got to ride it with a now satiated stomach.

The rest of the ride was just getting back on the 1 and heading to the campground. There I met up with the rest of my friends who were kind enough to carry most of my camping gear in their car. By the way, Sam and Maria rock the teardrop!

Sam’s to go

The rest of the day consisted mainly of resting after the 240 (s)miles ride and eating Sam’s delicious freshly cooked chicken stew around the campfire.

The next day, we headed out to the top of Refugio Rd and started hiking down the other side of the mountain. Having never ridden on dirt especially with a 600lb motorcycle; my friends, my bad hair and I just parked up there and started walking down.

The hiking-soon-to-feel-wimpy-group

It was a good opportunity to use the new extension tubes and do a little bit of macro work.

Fine prints available

Gigantic bug climbing a humongous mountain

Some bug climbing up roots

Now the common scenery on this little dirt road, besides Gabe climbing roots Indiana Jones style was composed dirt bikes and other off-road vehicles.

The “right” way to hike that trail

That was until we were surprised by this pristine pure white Toyota Prius with this older guy claiming he had no idea how he got all the way up there and was just breaking in his two months old car. Way to make me feel like a wimp deciding not to ride my adventure bike down a simple dirt road a hybrid city car could handle…

Off-roading zero emission style

Oh well, I got my revenge against self-wimpy-consciousness on the way down where I braved gravity for a few inches.

It’s a bird

After we got back to our campsite, we decided to take a little walk on the beach to throw a couple Frisbees and enjoy the sunset. Until now the light for photography had been pretty flat the whole time (yeah, I’m using the same excuse I used with my Vasquez Rocks hike). It was now time to take some decent sunset shots. Since I’ve been gibbering quite a bit I’ll just let the following few pictures take care of the concluding this story.

Enjoy

Sunset over the coast

Fine prints available

Fine prints available

….

I lied! I’ll say one last thing.

We also ate sand crabs/fleas!

Deep fried tasty sand crab