My Pummelvision

There's this cool site called Pummelvision.com that takes the photos from your flickr account and strings them all together and sets it to music to make a snazzy video of your life (or at least what you post photos of). I noticed that it didn't use all my photos, just the ones from the past 3 years or so. Maybe there's a max limit on the number of photos that I reached?

Malibu Wedding - Part 1 : The Prep Work

I've been meaning to blog this for a while, but just got swamped with life. You know how it is.

Backstory. My friend Mike and I usually geek out chat about photography during our kids' swim class. Then one day Mike asks, "Hey, I got asked by this guy I used to party with back in the day if I would photograph his wedding in Malibu next month. I'm thinking I'm gonna need help. You want in?" He then fills me in on the details about what he knows about Berwin (the groom) and the wedding. It's going to be a crazy fun time!

I have Jewish friends. I even have a Jewish uncle. But I had never been to a Jewish wedding. And only vaguely familiar with Orthodox Jews. So! This being Jewish Orthodox wedding, I did a little bit of research. I read some info online as well as asked my Jewish friends of things to expect at a Jewish wedding. Some people told me it was going to be short, some people told me it was going to be long. Hmm... Luckily Mike had the reins on this assignment and kept in good contact with Berwin. Mike also took care of finding and booking the flight and hotel for our stay in Malibu. And he also did a lot of research about Jewish weddings than I did and shared his knowledge with me.

I took this gig as an opportunity to buy some more gear! I only had a small camera bag and wanted to upgrade, so a new bag was high on my wish list. My requirements:
- Large enough to carry all my photo gear, plus laptop
- Small enough to fit as carry-on
- Light enough for me to carry
- Durable
- Not too expensive ('cause I'm a tightwad)

I researched bags until I was blue in the face. There are so many wonderful choices out there! I finally decided on a Think Tank Streetwalker HardDrive. It holds everything (except my reflector). It's awesome and fit the bill perfectly.



Not sure how well you can see, but there are two camera bodies, 5 lenses (including the 70-200), diffuser, strobe, external hard drive, random other stuff like card reader, batteries, filters. And my laptop fits in a separate compartment in the back with a side zipper, easy for taking out when going through airport security.

Along with my bag, I bought a memory card reader and a portable/durable external hard drive, both firewire compatible for fast transfer times, a new battery charger and some rechargeable AAs for my flash, more memory cards, and extra camera batteries since I only had one for my MarkII.

Sabrina generously loaned me two lenses for the shoot. What would I do without her? I hope she didn't miss her lenses too much.

After I gathered all my gear and did my cultural research and got more of a feel of what the wedding was going to entail, I was excited!

Next up... Part Two: The Non-Rehearsal

Old school digital

I recently brought our 8 year old digital camera out of hibernation so Yoshi can take pictures with immediate gratification (instead of film). It's a whopping two megapixel Canon PowerShot A40. I'm still impressed with this point and shoot. It's not ultra small and sleek like P&Ss made today, but some of my favorite photos were taken with it back when we lived in Portland.

Photo by Tom in Eastmoreland, Portland.


Autumn is gorgeous there. It's my favorite season in Portland. So many Japanese Maples in all their fiery goodness!


Tonight I took a quick shot of Tom here on the couch and with a little post-processing the pic looks nice, cheesy smile and all. I think this was my first time using the camera's manual mode. Not too shabby!


I had an even older digital camera, which didn't even have a screen on it, and I think it came free with a purchase of something I can't remember. That was a lot of fun too. I gotta hunt around more for those images, which were mostly from our crazy party days. Hmm... on second thought maybe it's better I don't find those pics.

p.s. I promise those wedding shots will be blogged... eventually.

November

Rats, I missed blogging the entire month of November. I wanted to, but just didn't make the time. Stay tuned. Maybe I can catch up.

This was the view where I ate breakfast from my hotel for the Malibu wedding shoot I assisted in November. And it was just as warm as it was beautiful. Scandalous!