Happy 4th!! (and other ramblings)

First of all...HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!! I love this holiday because it reminds me of how great America really is. Sure, politics suck and we have our disagreements, but we can't deny this this is a great country. We have freedom. What more can we ask for?? I don't get into political debates very often, or at all really, but I had a debate with someone about how great America is compared to other less-fortunate countries. We fought and still fight for our freedom and are really a powerful nation. Sure, no country is perfect, but I would rather be here than anywhere else :)

Can't wait to see some fireworks!! My favorite part of this holiday!

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See? I'm terrible at blogging! I guess I just don't like the idea of putting parts of my boring life on the internet for everyone to see, but people told me to keep it up, so here I am! I took the end of my internship as a break from it :P But I've gotta keep it up, I'll do my best!

My internship is officially over (and has been for a week) and now I have to start looking for a real job. Fun, huh?? Not so much... I've been looking/applying all over the place, from Los Angeles, San Diego,  the Bay Area, Seattle, and even Salt Lake City. But no luck. I am currently living in San Diego in hopes of finding a job, but we'll see how long this lasts. Thought it'd be easer to find a job than it's been. Stupid economy. I might have to move back to cheaper Provo. An my mom is trying to get me to move back home. Ha, no... but nothing is set in stone; in fact, it's more like water right now. We'll see!

But, on a different note, my little sister Christina got married last week and she looked beautiful! (p.s. I did her hair :) ) My whole family came down to San Diego for the event and we went to Disneyland and the Safari Park that week. It was a long week, but so much fun! I love hanging with my family and all its craziness :)

Since I was the photographer at my sister's wedding, here are some pictures of the lovely bride and groom (the pictures took forever to upload, so this is all I currently have time/patience to show haha)

Perfume Shot and Movie Sets

This week was much more successful. Jerry was there to help me through the whole shooting process this time and gave me much-needed tips! I am much happier with my result this time.

I love the shape of this bottle! It was really tricky but fun to shoot. When Jerry said that it was going to be interesting (aka hard) to shoot, I thought, "Aw crap..." But it was actually a really cool experience. And it felt good that he said "This is your shot, not the ad? It's very nice! Great job!" :)

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Some other cool stuff that happened

For one shoot, we went to a studio to photograph a city-- built ENTIRELY out of computer parts. It was sooo cool! I couldn't get very good pictures on my camera phone, but here's basically what it looked like:

It even had little street lights!! So cute! 

This studio was also the place where many big/famous films were shot. When we were there, they were shooting a Vizio commercial and there wasn't much for me to do, so I went exploring for a bit. Here are some pictures I found on the wall of the sets...

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INCEPTION

THE DARK KNIGHT

THE AVIATOR ( I love this one. He looks massive!)

CHRONICLES OF NARNIA (I thought this was pretty cool)

RESIDENT EVIL

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And, here's a hybrid car charger in a mall parking structure. I've never seen spots dedicated to them in a mall before...

First Personal Shoot

So, I know a lot of you were wondering what the heck was in that box with all the lights pointing into it...

After about 3 hours of hard work (by myself), I still didn't get the lighting right... lame, huh? Well, turns out, I have a lot to learn. But I did get some good-ish shots. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it, but I'll save this product for a more advanced day; I need to start with something that's not see-through or reflective (baby steps). And next time, Jerry will be there to help me with the lighting. It's amazing what you don't learn in school! :P

But, here's the final product (so far), my first official personal piece during the internship:

MetroMint LemonMint Water (sounds yummy, huh?...)

Pretty good, considering I did it all by myself, huh? ;)

As for the rest of my time here in L.A...

I'm really enjoying it. Sure there's days when I get sick of all the traffic and the ridiculous gas prices, but all in all, it's a great place. The people here are friendlier than the stereotype they have. I went to a church activity and met a bunch of really fun, cool, down-to-earth people (took me a while, but I finally found a group that I get along with!). I'm trying to decide where I'm going to go from here (stay here, San Diego, Orange County, the bay area...) My internship ends at the end of June, then from there, I'm free to have a REAL job!! Crazy! But it's great. I've applied to many places and have already had interviews, so we'll see how I did!

And I'm due for another shoot sometime this week, so watch for that! It should be a lot better! :)

Exploring L.A. and Beaches

This past week was pretty good. I did a shoot, but it didn't turn out as I'd hoped (I still have a LOT to learn), so that was disappointing. But I'm still enjoying it. I did a lot of fun things that made up for my failure, though :)

On Thursday, we did a shoot for ErgoBaby, a company that makes carriers for babies. They're kinda cute little contraptions.

That baby was SO cute and smiley :) And this was her first shoot, so she did pretty well! It was so fun playing with all the little kids. A fringe benefit of being an assistant.

Beaches:

You can't live in Southern California and not go to the beach. And so far, I've been to Venice, Malibu, and Mission Beach. More beaches than I ever went to as a child.

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On Wednesday of last week, my friend Nate and I went to Venice beach. It's a really cool place during the day, but at night it gets kinda sketchy. I didn't know that it has this reputation. But it was kinda entertaining -- I'm pretty sure we were some of only sober ones there.

But I went again today with my friend come college Melissa and it was a lot better. It definitely has that L.A. feel to it. But here are some pictures from the beach

It's a pretty place. Guess it kinda looks like all beaches though :P

Then, yesterday (Friday) I went down to San Diego for a job interview and to meet up with people and have fun. I found that traffic is a LOT less hectic in San Diego than in L.A. After living in L.A. for 3 weeks, NO traffic anywhere else seems like "traffic". And San Diego is prettier, in my opinion. And cheaper, when it comes to renting. After realizing all of this I'm pretty sure I'm going to move back there. I'd forgotten just how amazing it is. AND, you don't have to pay for parking nearly as much. All I need now is a job! Just one more month in L.A. Crazy...

Anyway, Nate and I went to Mission beach in San Diego and it was SO nice. So much more my scene, more laid back.

And there were a lot of seagulls. An irrational fear of mine. But we don't need to get into that.

Avenue of the Stars:

I FINALLY got out into the city to see what all the hype is about Los Angeles!

Today, Melissa (along with her boyfriend and his friend) and I went to Avenue of the Stars in Hollywood. That was fun, and there were a ton of people dressed up as movie characters. It was really cool. Sadly, I was too distracted to think about taking pictures of them :/ Guess I was just livin' in the moment! But I did grab some pictures of the stars on the ground! Close enough, right? :P

One of my favorite actresses

LOVE this show!

Notice the guy wearing socks with sandals...why is this still around??

Found an empty spot. A miracle.

Dorothy!

We also saw Ripley's believe it or not museum. We didn't go in, but here's a picture of some craziness

Siamese twins playing the harp, guy playing 2 trombones.

We also passed by the Guiness Book of World Records museum. The tallest guy in history was 8'11"!! He was HUGE!!

That's what my past week or two was in a nutshell. I'm doing a shoot next week and I HOPE to have some good images to show!

Transition

I'm finally getting to know the city where I live (Los Angeles, right next to Culver City), mainly because I'm sent on errands (part of being a 2nd assistant) by myself. I thought I'd get lost a lot, but I have only had to turn around once during 5 errands I've run so far. I have to rely on my keen sense of direction (aka GPS) and memory. But one thing I've learned is how to drive on a crowded street. Aggression is key. I have never been cut off so much in one day, nor have I purposefully been that jerk myself. But you gotta do what you gotta do...

One thing that sucks about this city (I found out today): 

NO FREE PARKING :(

In Provo, there was parking is you could find it, but here there's very little, if any, free parking, yet it's still always crowded/full.

Anyway, I get to work on my own shoot on Friday, so I'm pretty stoked about that. And, the more I assist, the more I realize how much photography equipment I have to buy, and the more I realize just how broke I really am... Reality bites. BUT I'm still excited to shoot on Friday!

I thought it would take me a while to get used to L.A. but so far the transition has been much easier and better than I expected. I don't know when or where I'll move next, but for now, it's a nice place to be :)

First Week: Done

I promised you more pictures, so that's exactly what I delivered.

You may get sick of them, but, oh well. At least I kept my promise :)

The rest of this week was better because of 3 things (not necessarily in this order): (1) I got to help photograph products (my favorite subject matter), and (2) I GOT a decent amount SLEEP!! Ok, I may have overslept. But I'm technically still a college student, so I deserve it :) (3) I explored Los Angeles a little bit with some of my family. Granted, it took us about 1/2 hour to go 5 miles, but we still got out.

For the shoot, we photographed a brand of stage makeup made by Ben Nye. I guess the musical "Cats" used his cosmetics line and he was the makeup director for 20th Century Fox. Pretty cool, huh? The founder's son, Dana Nye, currently owns the company and he came by with some of his most recent product to photograph. It was pretty cool stuff (I thought it looked a little weird for a cosmetics line, but after I knew what it was for it made sense) and I got to learn what to use and what not to use for lighting products. And I learned a lot about post-production. It was a great 2 days :)  Oh, I got a tour of his factory (a fringe benefit of being the photographer) and it's so cool! They hand-make all of their product in the building. Looks like a LOT of work, though. And I got some free "Zombie" makeup that could be fun for Halloween... haha.

Here's some shots of our photoshoot:

 Some of the makeup. Pretty weird colors, huh?

The setup for the shoot

Another angle

The main assistant Taylor joking around while adjusting the lights. Yeah, we have fun here, sometimes :)

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Then, I got to spend some quality time with Gucci (the dog), AKA take her on a walk and play with her while we waited for the roomies to come home...

So I thought we should take at least one pic together :P

And the sky was really beautiful from being cloudy all day... I have a much better pic on my DSLR, but I'm too lazy to get that one right now. I'll post it soon, though.

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Then, my eldest sister and her family (who lives in Riverside) came to visit me, so we went to lunch and then went to The Grove L.A., which was really cool. It was like it's own little city tucked into Los Angeles. 

All of us (minus Jeff) on the roof

Overlooking the city

There was a live concert, which was really nice and relaxing

A pretty fountain. Kinda reminded me of the one in Vegas, because it did some cool things and lit up at night.

It was a pretty good first week. It started out slow and stressful, but ended quickly and fun :) I learned a lot about what being a photographer is really like. Work long hours to make and keep a living, but also keep it balanced with your life outside of work. Jerry, the photographer I'm interning with, takes weekend off of work, and that's the way it should be. He's not lazy by any means; he just has a family and a life. Working with him has taught me that you should work hard, but also take the time to enjoy life and take one day at a time. I'm really happy to be here. And though it's stressful for me at times to have moved out here with basically no friends less than an hour away, it's a good time for me to be independent and discover what I want in my life.

A 48-hour Day

So, the past 2 days, I worked 13 hours per day and got about 4 hours of sleep in between. I had to be at work at 7am on both days, and got off at 7pm on Tuesday and 6pm today, just enough time for dinner, a little relaxing, and getting ready for bed. Fun, huh? C'est la vie. But it was fun, the shooting part, I mean. Since we were doing portrait shots at UCLA, as the assistant my job was to entertain the people/subjects and move lights around. So I had conversations with the UCLA business school students and we could talk about pretty much anything. It was great :)

Here are a few shots of shoot.

Okay, this isn't the most interesting shot, but we were busy so I didn't really have time

Our crowded table that we stuffed some of our expensive equipment on. I got to man it while they shot some other stuff outside.

Makeup GALORE. Our professional makeup artist's (who is AWESOME) kit. Yup, there is even some makeup for the guys. How glamourous ;)

One of the huge houses we passed on our way to UCLA. There was a production going on there, and that house was MASSIVE! I'm sure it wasn't the biggest one around, but it was pretty dang close

K, so this isn't really at the main site that we shot at, but it's in the UCLA library, and it's a REAL stock machine from back in the day. I don't know when, but I thought it was cool. Also, I got to go on top of one of the roofs and UCLA is MASSIVE!! And the buildings are so cool-looking. I really want to go exploring there when I have time.

There are also some perks to my apartment. For example:

I got to see this from my apartment balcony (not the BEST view, but pretty reasonable for the price)...

and get greeted by this the second I come home :) She's so cute and energetic and just follows me to my room and hops on my bed as if to say "play with me!!" I love it! Dogs are the best :)

These are all just taken on my camera phone, but I should start to shoot my own stuff (more interesting, haha) in the studio within the next few weeks here, so keep your eyes peeled for that!