I wandered from Harbor over to Chicano Park under the Coronado Bridge.  Matt came down and met me about half way through and I got to take a few more pics with one of his wide angle lenses.  All I have is a 50mm (which is really more like a 70mm on my small frame rebel) so it’s limiting in what you can shoot.  I had a crap tripod so it was pretty difficult getting sharp images.  I’m getting a new one in the mail monday so I may have to go shoot some of the areas again soon!  I was shooting mostly long exposure, 15-30 sec,  with really small aperture 15-22, iso 100.  I messed with other settings but I was getting the effect I wanted with this.

One of the highlights of the night was eating at “El Carrito” Restaurant.  It was this funky little taco shop I found down near Chicano Park that was an old converted train car and it was delicious.

It was a fine time wandering alone and hanging out with Matt.  You can find all the pics on my Flickr.

Then I was inspired by a photo I saw on Flickr and messed with a couple long exposure shots triggering a flash in convient places.  Yes I could have done this with remote flashes on wireless systems and it would have come out cleaner but hey, all I have is a crappy speed light that takes 8 seconds to re charge, has one setting (full power), no wireless triggers and the thing doesn’t even have a shoe that would fit my camera even if I wanted to mount it on top.  We played with holding a reflector umbrella (silver lined) and set the exposure to 20 seconds.  We set off two flashes.  One camera left at about 20′ away and one directly behind the subject up into the umbrella.  They came out pretty cool  I’ll upload some of the mess ups as well so you can see what was going on.

I just recently bought a DSLR, a Canon 400D to be exact.  I never really intended to get into photography but I sort of just stumbled upon it.

I had a big model shoot coming up for Urban Sun Tanning and I was in charge.  I wasn’t taking pictures but the weight success or failure rested on my shoulders.  Since I had never done something like that before I figured I better know what the heck I was doing.  I jumped on Youtube and started learning as much as I could.  I learned about lighting, composition, gear etc.  Pretty soon I knew all the basics and didn’t even have a camera.  I realized that all the great photographers were doing was manipulating light and composing great images.  That’s easier said than done considering theres are about 5 million variables and you still have to have raw talent to bring the magic.  Anyway, I took it as a challenge.

The day before the shoot my friend started advertising a camera he had for sale.  I bought it.  Now I take pictures.  I wouldn’t consider myself a photographer, I just take pictures.