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Shame

2009-08-24T23:43:00.000-07:00

I've neglected this blog. partially because I've run out of old photography to post, and have not been shooting as much as I'd like to. Also, I became really fed up with the limit on how much I could upload. I really don't like uploading crappy quality images. I've nearly reached the limit. A good number of these images are now up on my flickr site, and in better file formats! I'm planning on starting a new blog in the future. Somewhere where I can upload more high quality images.

I also, hope to shoot a lot more. After all I dropped a pretty penny a while ago on some nice film, I might as well use it.

Here's my flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21275133@N02/

Selected Photos

2008-08-03T17:39:00.000-07:00

My little brother, Oliver.

These are individual photos that I had digitized from negatives.

Willimantic, CT

2008-08-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

The Joint

2008-08-03T14:18:00.001-07:00

The Joint is a local band from my hometown. I caught a street performance they held at Willimantic's third Thursday event. They were good. The last photo is of my friend, Sean Reid, the guitarist.

Standard Tourist Photos

2008-07-27T21:34:00.001-07:00

This winter I visited my aunt and her life partner in Berkely for a long weekend. It was fun and they brought me to Golden Gate Park for the obligatory tourist visit. It's really a pretty nice park and San Francisco/Berkley was awesome.

Ecuador, Again

2008-07-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

These are off a roll that was not digitized/I lost the disc, and I just recently had the negatives scanned and digitized.

The Road to Flagstaff

2008-07-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

OK the last picture was actually after leaving Flagstaff. But this past spring my track team made the trip from LA up to Flagstaff for an indoor meet. The trip was ridiculously long. I didn't end up competing, because leaving our hotel to get back on the bus to go to dinner I hopped snow pile, slipped on a patch of ice and sprained my ankle really badly. I was unable to run for about a month, which aptly began a season nearly constantly interupted by injury. But the trip was fun, and the season ultimately somewhat successful.

Unthemed Photographs

2008-07-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

The History Pub

2008-07-26T11:23:00.001-07:00

Mmm, beer. A porter to be exact, if I recall correctly. I love me some porter.

After I got a hold of the pint.

I was a bit intoxicated taking these.

This Is My Track

2008-07-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

The second turn.

The new infield, and Toby Lemon, an old teammate who now works for the US Paraolympic team, helping run the facility in San Diego.

The back stretch, 200 meter start and beginning of the second turn.

Same photo cropped different ways. I kind of like the bottom one more. This is the home stretch, the stands and press box.

This is where I run, and my favorite place to compete, even over Claremont's track (where I've run both my PRs). It was originally built as a practice facility for the 1984 Soviet team. It took the place of the dirt track that was home to Oxy's long history of track success and domination. The Soviets ended up boycotting the Olympics and my college got a free track. One that is one of the best tracks on the West Coast. Boasting 120 meter turns it is incredibly fast and is a ton of fun to race on.

The Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research (The People's Library)

2008-07-24T20:41:00.001-07:00

These are photos from the above named library, a private non-profit library in South-Central LA. Myself along with one of my friends/fellow student and filmmaker were assigned a project to work with the library to make them a documentary.We were making them a 5+ minute film for free. Something that normally would have cost well into the thousands. Despite this they were remarkably uncooperative and unhelpful. They had a lot of really cool documents that existed nowhere else, but unfortunately did not have the funding to properly care for them, the facility lacked even air conditioning. It was really kind of sad, because they did offer unparalleled access, which is why they refused to entrust the documents to a better equipped library like the nearby USC, or UCLA libraries. Unfortunately I believe this idealistic refusal will eventually lead to the loss of many important and interesting, unique materials.

Anyways, my friend and I completed the film and sent them a copy, the only thing we failed to do was include a soundtrack as we had no original music and they planned on using the film for advertising and promotional purposes. We offered to add in the soundtrack if they supplied music, but never heard back from them, not even a thank you. Eh, really, what can you do?

The 4th on the Beach

2008-07-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

Some photos from Laguna Beach where I spent the 4th. Also one photo left over from location scouting.

Hey Little Guy

2008-06-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

So this baby praying mantis wandered into my house last week.

Dinner

2008-05-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

I thought I had more photos than this, and I probably will have some more later.

Location Scouting

2008-04-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

I just wrapped a film and decided to put up some of the still I took while location scouting. I didn't end up using the park bench in these photos because we didn't have enough time to do all the paper work to shoot in Arcadia Park, the rest are from the house my friends live in and where I will be living next year. These are not stills from the film, I'll try to get some of those up as well.

Yay! Reflexivity!

I wish I could say that this is my room, because its really nice, but it's not, and I would never wear a pink shirt.

Eh.

2008-04-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

I have some photos that I can do some work on and put up, but since school and track are winding up it is unlikely that I'll do much soon. Hopefully I'll develop the several rolls of film I've shot and then digitize them. So, not too many updates in the near future.

The Last of the Ecuadorian Photos

2008-03-26T09:17:00.000-07:00

Yet Even More Other Photos From Ecuador

2008-03-24T10:06:00.001-07:00

Even More Other Photos From Ecuador

2008-03-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

Boobies!

2008-03-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

Other Photos From Ecuador

2008-03-24T09:43:00.001-07:00

Sadly I Still Have More to Upload

2008-03-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

All of the photos except that of the side-view mirror and rear-view mirror are from a winter thaw that happened really quickly. Allowing ice and new growth to exist simultaneously. Pretty cool.

A Place That Used To Be Home

2008-03-22T23:13:00.000-07:00

I've Run Out Of Even Mildly Clever Titles

2008-03-22T19:32:00.001-07:00

Yes, Another Bee (Disclaimer: Actually A Hornet)

2008-03-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I Have A Lot of Photographs

2008-03-20T23:27:00.001-07:00

So I've Got A Lot Of Old Random Photos To Post.

2008-03-20T15:20:00.001-07:00

The Farm By My House.

2008-03-18T15:33:00.001-07:00

A Rose is a Rose Is A Rose. Except When It's A Wild Rose I Guess

2008-03-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

Still More: From the Archives: Episode IV

2008-03-18T15:19:00.001-07:00

I'm Un-be-fucking-lievebly Stupid. But Dedicated.

2008-03-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

So this one night several summer ago, there was a storm and my parents were gone. So - without anyone to point out that this might be a really bad idea - I climbed out my window and onto my roof. To take pictures of the lightning. Yes, I'll repeat that. I climbed onto my roof in a thunderstorm to take photos. Yes I'm an idiot. The sad part is I didn't even realize how dangerous and stupid it was until three days later. But I survived and here are the photos.

Another Exercise In Focus

2008-03-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

A Bee

2008-03-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

Bees really are pretty cool.

Flowers

2008-03-15T08:33:00.001-07:00

I had to do a lot of color correcting to these. The film got a bit screwed up somewhere along the line and there was a yellowish/greenish tinge over everything.

Even More Flowers! (and other flora) And Even More Spring!

2008-03-12T21:24:00.001-07:00

More Flowers! In More Spring! ... ?

2008-03-12T21:10:00.001-07:00

Flowers! In Spring! (and a leaf)

2008-03-12T20:52:00.001-07:00

The View From My House: An Exercise In Focus

2008-03-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

The View From My House

2008-03-10T12:27:00.001-07:00

A bunch of black and whites I took around my house back in CT.

Me! Again!

2008-03-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

Posting those self portraits made me go and look back on some of the photos I have of myself. The two I found in my archives are form the two years I spent in Ecuador:

This is from 2003

And this is 2004.

2004 was the summer before my Senior year of high school. Its weird to look back on myself. I've changed a bit just in the face, but my net weight change from the end of high school until now has been an approximate 15 pound weight gain. I put on the freshman 15, but in a very different way than most do. I gained about 20 pounds of muscle between the end of high school and the beginning of my Sophomore year. That has mostly been from the lifting I've done for Track, especially as a sprinter Freshman year. And I've lost about 5 pounds (probably more) of fat from the hard training and the conversion to a middle distance/distance runner.

Again, weird, especially considering I didn't really run in high school. I competed in one season of Track & Field, my senior year.

Self Portrait Project

2008-03-07T15:43:00.000-08:00

I was assigned a self portrait project for my History of Photography class. It was a bit of a shock really since I didn't expect to be producing anything for an art history class. But we had to post 5 photos, unedited, up on our private OXY websites. Here are my photos I did these over a really short period of time so they aren't very good or especially thoughtful. But, without further ado:

(Thanks to Rob Bartlett for snapping this one)

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Sewers

2008-03-06T16:27:00.001-08:00

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: The Guitar Maker

2008-03-06T16:19:00.001-08:00

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part X (2004)

2008-03-06T16:11:00.001-08:00

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part IX (2004)

2008-03-06T11:29:00.001-08:00

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part VIII (2004)

2008-03-06T05:43:00.000-08:00

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part VII (2004)

2008-03-05T22:31:00.001-08:00

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part VI (2004)

2008-03-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

So the deal with these photos is that I really couldn't decide which cropping I liked better. So I'm putting them both up. Also, I've started cropping a lot of my shots in a 16x9 format to get a filmic feel, as I am a filmmaker, so you'll be seeing some more "widescreen photos." Partially because I like the way widescreen looks and partially as a training exercise for my eyes. That being said I'm hoping to get more intersting with my framing and cropping.

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part V (2004)

2008-03-05T08:59:00.000-08:00

some futbol. I played a bunch with the kids while I was there. It was fun, and they were surprised that I was pretty good.

The Cat! This is the truck that brought the cement mixer that we used the second year I was there. I took this from the second floor of the community center I had worked on the first year I was there. We only put up the support posts that year, when we returned the second floor had been poured and set. It was pretty cool to see.

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part IV (2003)

2008-03-02T20:45:00.001-08:00

Coming Home From School: Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part III (2003)

2008-02-29T09:12:00.000-08:00

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part II (2003)

2008-01-28T21:16:00.001-08:00

Here's some more. The people here were really nice and welcoming (of course we were building homes for them, but still they were nice. It was like a two week holiday when we were there). I'd love to go back, but not with the group I went with. It was a church group, but the first year they were pretty chill, then the second year we had daily prayer meetings every morning. Yeah, that wasn't as cool for me. Anyways, college happened, but I do hope to go down again.

Guasmo Sur, Guayaquil, Ecuador: Part I (2003)

2008-01-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

During the summers before my Junior year and Senior years of High School I took two, two week trips to Guasmo, a slum of Ecuador's largest city, the port of Guayaquil. There I worked two build several houses and help build a community center. I took a bunch of photos while I was there. Here are some of 'em.

The Birds and the Bees. Well A Bee Anyway

2007-12-14T10:38:00.000-08:00

Bees are pretty cool. I probably followed this guy around for a good 10-15 minutes. Also, Macro-lenses are a lot of fun.

From the Archives: Episode III

2007-12-14T08:57:00.000-08:00

From the Archives: Episode II

2007-12-11T20:21:00.000-08:00

All of these photos are from one roll of film. There's actually several other photos that are good as well but not quite as good as those up here. To get so many good shots off of one roll is pretty awesome.

These two next photos are the same photo, just one is photo-shopped and the other isn't. I like both. The first is photo-shopped, the second not.

Same thing here.

and here.

From the Archives: Episode I

2007-12-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

So, I have a ton of photos on my hard drive and a ton more that aren't in digital form at all. Eventually I'll get those not in digital form on my computer. But since they are still just ngatives I'll continue to go through the gigs and gigs of stuff I do have and put some up every once in a while. So heres a relatively unsorted batch of photos. These were taken across a span of something like four years. I think.

A Summer on a River

2007-12-07T18:10:00.001-08:00

The Summer between my Senior year of High School and Freshman year of college was spent working on the Niantic river between Niantic, CT and Old Saybrook, CT. It was a great summer job and I made pretty decent money. Here are some of the photos I took wile on the boat.

A Series

2007-11-28T21:07:00.000-08:00

Why have I taken so many photos of this tower (and I assure you there are many more)? Because it is in my back yard. Yes, there is an old water tower in my back yard. I don't really know how old it is but I'd guess its probably a remnant from the early to mid 1900s but I could be wrong and the wood on it is in decent shape, of course its probably treated to resist rot. Anyways it is an easy subject. It never moves and it looks pretty damn cool. Also birds live in it. And I've climbed halfway up it on the old rusted out ladder on one side. I'd climb all the way up but I don't think the ladder could hold me anymore.

The shot with the lightning behind is part of a set of lightning photos I snapped in the summer after my Freshman year of college, so '06. I stood on my roof in a thunderstorm and took photos of it, yeah, pretty stupid. But I survived and I got some pretty cool photos out of it. Anyways these are all on my old N65 or my D70, no water tower photos with my F100... yet.

2007-11-26T15:25:00.000-08:00

This is a largely unimpressive photo. I took it on my Cross Country team's trip to Sequoia National Forest. I was up at 6:30ish in the AM and no one was awake, so I started to take some pictures. Eventually I lay down on the bench I had been sitting down and shot up through the trees to the moon.

What IS cool is what I found when I was messing with it in Photoshop.

I darkened it a whole bunch and it revealed the reflection of the Sun on the moon. I think that's really cool.

A Warm Winter

2007-11-25T21:04:00.000-08:00

I took these photos last winter while I was home in Connecticut. They are all taken in either Lebanon or Franklin CT with my F100, I'm not sure what film stock I used. They have all been slightly photoshopped, mostly just playing with brightness and contrast a bit, some have been cropped.

Flinging yourself over 10 ft in the air with a really long, bendable pole

2007-11-10T22:07:00.000-08:00

A.K.A Pole Vaulting. I've always wanted to pole vault. I mean launching yourself off the ground like that has to be fun. It also looks really cool.

Some of these haven't been cleaned up yet. I did it once but the then were erased. I may or may not repost this with cleaned images.

Speed

2007-11-10T21:53:00.000-08:00

I took this at a track meet during the Spring of 2007. It is a photo of the women's 4x100 meter relay, right after the hand off from the first leg to the second. I really like how cool Pomona's blue track looks, and, also how the sky turned out, it looks quite a bit less gloomy than it was. I think this photo gives a sense of speed. If I recall correctly We (Oxy, the orange team) didn't really have a good race, but I still think the photo looks good.

I liked it enough to waste a whole bunch of time messing with in in Photoshop, to create this:

Also here's the hand off itself:

Some New And Some Old

2007-09-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

This was taken on my then, "brand new" used Nikon F100 I received for Christmas at the tail end of 2006. I went out on a short expedition with my father to shoot a role of film to make sure the camera was working properly. If I recall correctly I was shooting on Color 400 speed Superia from Fuji Film. I photo-shopped this a bit, whitening up the wall and bringing up the contrast to make the sunset reflected a bit brighter. It was taken sometime in very late 2006 or very early 2007.

This is as close as I can get to one of the first pictures I've taken. I don't have a bunch of stuff on CD, only hard copy. I got my first camera at the tail end of my 7th grade year. The previous summer I had become interested in photography due to a sailing instructor that had lived with us for a week. I bought a Nikon N65. I took some photos, but It took a while to get a feel for it. Eventually I captured several moments/images pretty well. Something kind of clicked several years later. In the summer before my Junior year in high school I went on some trips. The first was a trip to Colorado to attend my cousin's wedding. This photo is from Colorado. The second trip was a trip to Ecuador. I took a lot of pictures, over 20 rolls of film. I'd like to believe that is when I truly developed a sense of lighting, of framing and a feel for photography in general. This was taken on my old trusty (and now sadly, dead) N65, with, I would guess, Color Kodak 400 speed. Its been very lightly photo-shopped, essentially I darkened the silhouette of the tree a bit. It looks a bit "cleaner" than the original. I won't say that I intended the photo to turn out this way, It was almost certainly a fortuitous accident, but many good photos are. This is one of my favorites, because its simple and deceiving. It looks like its in B&W, but it really isn't and it doesn't look nearly as dramatic when rendered in B&W. It also serves as my desktop background.

I feel bad about putting two photos that I really like that are supposed to show differences in my ability through the years. It doesn't come through very clearly, but you'll have to take my word for it, that I'm far more confident, and able now than I was 4+ years ago.

This is going to take a long time

2007-01-15T22:21:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start uploading some of my old stuff. But, first I have to go through it and decide what I want other people to see and what I don't. Hopefully, with the time I have while I'm at school and before Track and the semester start, I'll figure out what I'll put up soon. Then all I need to do is consistently get out there and shoot. I'll be shooting on a D70 and a F100 with primarily Fujifilm Superia 400 for color and Kodak 400 for B&W. As for the D70 I can change what ISO it shoots at, something I have neglected to experiment with yet, so I'll do some of that too.

Also, You can see the photos larger and in better detail by clicking on them.