A Weekend in Big Bear

So this weekend my wife and I escaped off to Big Bear. I did some research and found a cute little Bed & Breakfast called the Knickerbocker Mansion. Not only is it a B&B, but it also has its own bistro that serves quite the wonderful upscale dinners on Saturday nights (Friday nights is casual dining). You can read more about it at their website, but I highly recommend it. Two cute little details - they had two home-made mint truffles for us waiting on our bed when we arrived (which were delicious), and there was a cute rubber ducky waiting on the edge of our shower/tub.

While we were there, we went on an off-roading tour which made any ride at a theme park feel like childs play. We were told it was an "educational tour" and not an "e-ticket ride." Well it was more like a Z-ticket ride, but we spoke with the owner of the company and he made things right, so we will try them again, albeit with a different driver.

We also went to our first Ocktober Fest. While we did not ourselves participate in the Chicken Dance, or any of the other traditional dances the event is known for, both my wife and I did have one German beer a piece and that was plenty. It was actually a lot of fun and everybody was having a good time even before they got intoxicated.

Two other places we ate that I highly recommend if you want good food in Big Bear are Get the Burger and The Mandoline. Fantastic! If you are a fan of In & Out, you will LOVE Get the Burger. Just be sure to order it "Raccoon Style," which means they put a special spicy sauce in the beef patty and they carmelize the onions. The other place we went - where we actually had dinner one day and lunch a couple days later was The Mandoline. Fantastic food. Fantastic desserts. I wish this place was in Orange County and not all the way in Big Bear. You can see the menu for both Get the Burger and The Mandoline here.

All-in-all, a wonderful trip. Now we need to go back after the snow has fallen and we can do some serious snowboarding and skiing!

Walker Mashup

I found a cool new way to mashup photographs and put them together to music. I've been experimenting with it and created one based on photographs I did of Walker, who you can see on my website. Take a look for yourself:

Success with iStockphoto.com

Well it's been a few months since I uploaded some photos of mine to iStockphoto.com. So far the results have been good overall. I have two images that are somewhat popular. The one you see above has had 40 downloads already, and has been consistently downloaded since I first uploaded it.

While I don't think I'll be able to quit my day job based on royalties from iStockphoto, it's a nice affirmation that I've taken pictures that people find value in.

Samy's Photo Seminar - Sept. 29th

On Saturday, September 29th, I went to an event at the Orange County Fairgrounds hosted by Samy's Camera. Naturally they had vendors of all sorts there, but that was not the main attraction for me. What I was interested in was listening to professional wedding photographer Mike Colon talk about how he does photography.

I'd seen Mike's name in all sorts of photography magazines at the back where they have all the seminars and workshops and list the photographers who will be speaking. Seeing as Samy's put this seminar on for free (although technically I think Mike was sponsored by Apple for their product Aperature), I thought I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see him.

As I had hoped, the seminar was great! I was thrilled to learn that Mr. Colon has the same philosophy regarding philosophy that I do. The most important component of a photograph is that the "moment" is caught. The photo doesn't have to be technically perfect. What makes it a great picture is the moment it captures. That doesn't mean you don't do due dilligence to get a sound photo, but I think if you were to ask him, a technically wonderful picture with no emotion or feeling within it is soulless. Better a picture of a magic moment that isn't technically perfect than a perfectly technical photo with no magic in it.

Mr. Colon is also a big fan of using natural light whenever possible. He will even crank up the ISO to get the shot because he likes the grainy photo-journalistic look. I've always been taught that noise is not your friend, but he reminded us all that it used to be that film used to have that grainy look that was once considered "classic." If he does use flash, he tries to set it up so the light looks like it is naturally coming from somewhere, rather than an obvious use of flash. Hey - the guy makes a great living taking photos of celebrity weddings and shooting for major magazines and advertisers, clearly he's doing something right.

It was a great seminar, and I picked up yet more nuggets of knowledge I can apply to my own photography. In my opinion you can never learn enough...