What a terrific little getaway we had last weekend. We originally considered taking a couple of days off and driving the six hours up to Yosemite, but it didn't happen mainly because we've both been busy at work and didn't want to leave it behind (maybe "want" isn't the right word). So instead we spent one night at Montaña de Oro state park, which is about two hours north of here. Hiking along the rocky coast and up the treeless peaks was amazing. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. We also enjoyed cooking dinner--and drinking a bottle of wine--in front of a campfire, under a bright Milky Way. I didn't even attempt to capture that magic with the camera.
Oh, and you can see R's new haircut in the photos too.
Back in April I posted a few stills from some skateboarding footage I shot in Wilmington. Remember? I never intended to edit the footage. Instead I handed it off to Gordon, the guy who asked me to shoot it, so he could use it as a part of a promotional piece he was working on for the Wilmington Skate Project. Apparently he was going to conduct some interviews in front of a green screen and bulk it up a bit. He had another editor lined up to handle the technical work. But I kept my own copy of the footage, and decided to play around with it after we moved. Well, what you see here is what I came up with. I sent the finished product to Gordon. He liked it and so it has become his promotional project. He even decided to show it in front of the film festival he's organizing for September 25th. This is what the rest of the lineup looks like. I'm pretty excited to have my little video included.
The music I used is from a band I know from my hometown. They are called So Called Myth, and I'm grateful they let me use their tune. It's not the kind of stuff I normally listen to, but it has a punky edge the video needed.
Another little piece of trivia: Just about all of skateboarding sounds you hear in the video (e.g. wheels on pavement, launches off of ramps, the occasional "yeah!") were recorded at a skate plaza here in Santa Barbara. There was loud music playing in the background during the original shoot making the sound impossible to cut together and virtually unusable, except for in the interviews, which were mic'd with a lavalier. So I made a trip to the plaza and recorded the sound completely separate from the video. It's a little ironic (for the lack of a better word) that these kids are trying to raise money for a skate plaza, and the sound of them skating in the video is actually from one.
Anyway, I had fun editing this one. It was nice to work on a project at my own pace again, without deadlines or expectations (and of course money). Plus, I'm glad I can help out the Skate Project, who is planning to give the video a permanent home on their web site. The little bit of skateboarding I've been doing myself around here has made me appreciate their cause. I haven't had the guts to embarrass myself at the skate plaza down by the beach yet, and I'm finding the streets can be a harsh surface.
Okay, in the prior entry you read all about how I'm going to start taking better photos. Well, they will also be getting worse because I now own a phone with a camera on it . Obviously phones don't have all of the optics/resolution/controls that an actual camera has, so the results can be downright gross. I'm not going to pretend mine are any good, but by taking pictures in places and situations where I wouldn't normally have a camera with me, such as at the bar or on a bike ride, they could be fun. I'm going to embrace the imperfection. Let's see how it works out. I'll be storing my phone photos right here.
I attended a day-long photography workshop on Saturday and, for the first time, received formal instruction about aperture, shutter speed, composition, etc. We covered the contents of a 7-week course in a matter of 8 hours. Most of it I had read about on my own before, but I think that put me in a better position to soak it all up on Saturday. I really enjoyed the class and don't remember the last time I was so interested in learning something. I'm getting excited about this hobby and the new dimensions that are added to it when you leave Auto mode behind.
The car photo above is one of my homework assignments from the class. The instructor gave us a list of photos to take over our lunch break. The purpose of this one was to use a slow shutter speed and pan along a moving object so that the background is blurry but the object is not. I think my experience as a videographer helped me here by giving me practice with smooth pans.
Another assignment was to shoot something that was predominantly white and overexpose it to make it actually look white (rather than middle gray, which is how it would look if you followed the exposure meter), and then do the same thing by underexposing black. We also learned about depth of field, a thing or two about lighting, how to white balance correctly for a sunset, and some tips about editing photos on a computer. Suddenly I'm seeing all kinds of problems in most of the pictures I've ever taken (the same can be said about my video as well). But I'm not exactly going to delete my gallery... even poorly taken pictures serve as a record of our adventures and good times.
One thing I'm realizing is I may need to buy a better lens sometime in the future. I've been using the one that came with the camera, but if I could get a telephoto that has a 2.8 F-stop, I'd have the capability of shooting at a faster shutter speed in lower light, which is really what every photography enthusiast wants. I know lenses aren't cheap, but I'm going to start shopping around. Too bad R doesn't have another birthday coming up.
I had big plans for this entry. I was going to break from my format, post a series of unusual photos, ramble on about a lucid dream I had... in other words, it was going to be great. But here we go again instead, trying to cram in a rather standard weekend recap before another weekend starts. The opportunity to blog just didn't present itself all week. My ground-breaking entry will have to wait for another time.
Chances are when someone says a hike is going to be "fun" and you're not starting it until 6:30PM, you won't be reaching the end of it until after dark. Such was the case last Friday. After a strenuous and constant climb, we arrived at a dried up waterfall at dusk and required the assistance of our flashlights for the entire hike back. It was indeed fun. I'm not opposed to an occasional night hike.
On Saturday, after getting some coffee and hitting the farmers' market, R brought me to my first ever yoga session. One of the studios around here was holding free classes for the day, so we figured this was my opportunity to try it. It was a good stretch and very calming, welcomed qualities after a stressful week of desk work. After that I wrote a blog entry about the condo we are purchasing (am I getting into too much detail here?) and then we had some ecletic California cuisine at a restaurant called Opal.
On Sunday we tailgated at a polo match with the Newcomers group. Yes, this is the sport where they basically play hockey on horses. R helped stomp the divots. We continue to meet interesting people at these events. In some ways I wish I was looking for a new job because I've been surrounded by networking opportunities lately.
After that another week started, one that was surprisingly stressful considering I barely left the house. Remind me to tell you about my lucid dream sometime. The vividness is waning... but I took notes.
Each place we buy is smaller and more expensive than the last. The condo we will be moving into in about a month (pending contingencies) has one less bedroom than our townhouse in Wilmington and is costing us roughly three times as much. And before that there was the house in Mobile, which seems now like a flat out amazing deal. We're used to living below our means, so it will be interesting to see how stretching to pay a mortgage out here will impact our lifestyle.
We looked at places that were less expensive, places that were closer to the beach, and places that had more space and better views of the mountains. But the best feature of the one we settled on is its location in the town of Santa Barbara (see point A on the map). It's three blocks from our favorite coffee shop, about the same distance from the best tacos I've ever had, and still only 20 blocks from the beach. There's a trolley stop close by that will take us down State Street to the ocean and pass through an area filled with restaurants, bars, and shops along the way. And I'll bet we could walk to that awesome movie theater I've told you about in less than 10 minutes.
The inside of the condo looks great: hardwood floors, nicely updated kitchen, fresh paint. (I'll post more photos after we move in.) We considered getting a fixer-upper this time but decided to save that for next time instead. Who wants to spend their time in California working on a house? As you probably know, I'm not terribly handy anyway.
This place reminds us of the house we owned in Mobile in that it's older but in good shape, stylish, and move-in ready. We loved that house, especially in the way it had more character than the cookie-cutter townhouse of ours in Wilmington (which we still really liked for other reasons), so let's hope this new place works out just as well. Being that it's in a fourplex, it's a little more like apartment living, but I think we can handle it. If we can't, we'll just spend more time at the coffee shop.
California scored another point today for its convenient beach access. R and I boogied it up this afternoon at a beach that was more scenic, less crowded, and much closer to home than any of the beaches in Delaware or Alabama ever were to us. (Alabama also has the hurricane season working against it these days, so we're not exactly missing living there, although I will say its low cost of real estate does sound appealing right now.) The beach was fun today. I hope the end of summer doesn't keep us from returning in the coming weeks/months. Around here I'm guessing we have a little longer to work with.
Tomorrow is the first day back at school, isn't it? I get shivers thinking about that for some reason, even if it has little effect on my life any more. I remember all of those Labor Day evenings spent in dreaded anticipation, reviewing my locker combination over and over, wondering about my new class schedule and if I'd be able to find the right rooms, worried my classmates wouldn't like me anymore. To be honest I still have dreams related to those fears. I get a sense of relief when September comes around and my job doesn't change. There are things about school that I miss, but the first day of a new year is not one of them.
By the way, I'm planning to do some EDITING this week. My inspiration has been lost, but this weekend has gone a long way toward finding it.
What a terrific little getaway we had last weekend. We originally considered taking a couple of days off and driving the six hours up to Yosemite, but it didn't happen mainly because we've both been busy at work and didn't want to leave it behind (maybe "want" isn't the right word). So instead we spent one night at Montaña de Oro state park, which is about two hours north of here. Hiking along the rocky coast and up the treeless peaks was amazing. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. We also enjoyed cooking dinner--and drinking a bottle of wine--in front of a campfire, under a bright Milky Way. I didn't even attempt to capture that magic with the camera.
