Women's Volleyball

The 2012 CSUDH Toros are a much improved team over last season. Their cross-town rivals Cal State Los Angeles came to the Torodome on Wednesday evening. The Toros broke out the broom and swept  CSULA in three straight games for the first time in many years. Unfortunately, I was tasked with primarily shooting Senior middle blocker, Marquis Mora (#2) from CSULA. Here are some images from the match.

Toro Soccer - 2012

In team sports which involve scoring goals, a goalkeeper (termed goaltender, netminder, goalie, or keeper) is a designated player in charge of directly preventing the opposing team from scoring.

The CSUDH Toro women have had a rough start in 2012 with an overall record of 2-5-1. However, their record does not reflect their determination and talent. Senior Goalkeeper, Tiffany Hollis is a prime example.

Welcome to the Hotel California

Actually, this is the Hotel Del Coronado (such a lovely place). Spent this weekend in the San Diego area. Perfect weather and very enjoyable. All images captured with the Olympus Zuiko 21mm f/3.5 except as noted. All I can say is that it wouldn't suck to live on Coronado Island.

Shot at 23:30 with an EF 70-200mm at 70mm, f/8, 30 seconds

End of an Era

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (August 17, 2012) - In 1987-88, I was commuting from Laguna Beach to Long Beach. I happened to be tuned onto 95.5 KLOS one morning and heard a Southern gentleman with this infectious guttural laugh. It drew me in and I started listening to these two guys (Mark and Brian) who seemingly were making it up on the fly in a free format. At the time, they really pushed the FCC boundaries and in fact were suspended on at least one occasion (for an incident involving a woman, a dog and some peanut butter). Throughout my career I have always been a near four hour listener. It's hard to believe that all this time has passed.

Today was the final broadcast of the Mark and Brian Show and it was a very heart wrenching final hour of the show. I'm sure it will really hit me on Monday morning when I get in the car and the show won't be on. Truly the End of an Era...

Way back when, Brian was one of the finalists to become Bozo the Clown, however, it turned out that he didn't get the job. One of the things they used to do was throw birthday parties for each other. For one of Brian's birthday shows, Mark worked it out so that the Bozo the Clown people came down to dress up Brian as Bozo. However, because Mark wasn't sure if he could get Brian to follow along, he got him drunk on tequila first. For years Mark has talked about his favorite photo of Brian dressed as Bozo, drunk in the back of the Mark and Brian mobile and smoking a cigarette. They could never post it because of legal reasons, however, today they did.

Here's a link to a podcast of the final hour.

http://podfuse-dl.andomedia.com/800185/podfuse-origin.andomedia.com/citadel_origin/pods/KLOS-FM/MB-8-17-12-9AM.mp3

Downtown Issaquah

Woke up early this morning and cruised to downtown Issaquah, WA. Found this old Shell gas station around 07:00 and captured it with the Zuiko 21mm, f/8, 1/60 at ISO 100. A cool place if you're looking for some good 'ol leaded gas.

Evening Magazine

MAPLE VALLEY, WA (August 6, 2012) - My nephew Haydn was one of four Jump Start participants to be featured in a piece by the local Seattle show Evening Magazine. To our surprise, the host of the show, Meeghan Black and her photographer came out for the video shoot. They shot for about three hours, including the use of a GoPro cam strapped to a gymnast and on a stick running along side the tumbling passes. Below is the segment that aired on August 7th and some stills I took during the shoot.

Haydn and Meeghan Black

Strapping on the GoPro cam for the trampoline footage

Trampoline & Tumbling Nationals

LONG BEACH, Calif. (July 5-8, 2012) - Earlier this month my nephew participated in the 2012 Trampoline & Tumbling National Championships at Long Beach Arena. He did very well scoring two second place medals in three events. Here's some shots from the event.

Small-Time Production

Since the 4th of July fell on a Wednesday this year, we just had a small family gathering and BBQ. My sister and her kids happen to be in town. They live in Washington and the kids have never lit fireworks or seen them up close. A good time was had by all.

(L-R) Jessica, Sara, Haydn and Emma

Alternative Classic

I've been looking for one of these babies for a long time and finally found it at a nice deal. The Olympus OM 21mm f/3.5 G.Zuiko is an economical compact ultra-wide angle lens. It is able to match and deliver uncompromising optical quality to rival some of the best (and more expensive) lenses in the industry. Optically, it consists of 7 elements in 7 groups and is able to deliver unusually high resolving power at the edges with excellent contrast at all apertures. It has a 92 degree angle of view that makes it very suitable for architectural and landscape applications. I adapted the lens to fit on the Canon 5D Mark III.


The image below was captured handheld at 06:30 in the morning in manual mode at 1/320, f/8, ISO 400.

The 5's have it

In the war between Canon and Nikon, this round goes to the former. Canon's latest 5 series is very impressive. In a nutshell, fast autofocus, great ISO performance and very customizable. For example, there are five menus of settings just for autofocus. Haven't had time to do any in depth shooting with it, but here are some samples.

5D Mark III with an adapted Zeiss 21mm

ISO 2500 with no noise reduction

San Diego Scenery

We headed down to the San Diego area a few weeks ago for a Show Choir event. We decided to stay for the weekend and hit a pocket of beautiful weather. We met up with Jessica's cousin Brittany and husband Sal for the weekend. They have been stationed in England for the past three years, so it was good to see them. Here are some images from the day. All images captured with the Zeiss 21mm and/or Nikon 70-200 VR.

Brittany and Sal

Point Loma Lighthouse