Muddy Buddy 2008
November 4, 2008
event it usually takes place in many different cities all over the United States. This weekend’s event happened to be the last Muddy Buddy event of the year. It took place at Bonelli Park in San Dimas, the same park where we covered the Renegade Adventure Race. However, this event is even more popular than Renegade so the park was packed full of participants and spectators. We chose to park in the park-and-ride area just outside of the park which we highly recommend because the line of cars going into the park was crazy. The parking inside was beyond full, they were actually parking cars in the picnic areas on the grass, we had never seen Bonelli so full before.
Muddy Buddy Spectator
Watching these teams crawl through the mud looked like so much fun, you could tell some of the spectators wanted to jump right in, especially the kids. Many of the spectators didn’t need to jump in as they got covered in mud just from watching. Just in case things weren’t already muddy enough for the event it started pouring rain outside. It was the first rain we had gotten in a while so it was nice but it made photographing just a bit more difficult, as the equipment I was using is not sealed. I think we both got some pretty hilarious shots and we learned an important lesson for next year: bring a poncho!
To see more race coverage check out Amateur Endurance and of course to see more photos from Muddy Buddy check out our GALLERY.
This is Halloween
November 1, 2008
Last night was Halloween and for the first time in about 6 years I 
got to dress up. We decided to hang out with our good friends Claudia and Jimmy while they took Jimmy’s younger siblings out trick-or-treating. I had a costume that I bought 3 years ago from Hot Topic that I had yet to wear, so I was very excited to finally get my chance. I bought Bryan a Dark Knight costume this year and I think he really enjoyed it. While trick-or-treating, he was constantly on the look out for trouble so that he might swoop in and save the day. We walked around a few blocks in Chino, there were a lot of nicely decorated houses, it’s always nice to see people in the Halloween spirit. I remember back in the day when I used to trick-or-treat the whole neighborhood would be decorated, it was like Christmas, but with monsters. We walked around for about an hour and then all went back to our place to watch Diary of the Dead, a great zombie movie by George A. Romero. We even got a couple of trick-or-treaters at our condo! It was an awesome night and so much fun to dress up. Happy Halloween from Shez Photo!
Galvan Studios
October 11, 2008
Photo by Yvette at Galvan Studios
This past Tuesday, Bryan and I visited Galvan Studios in Whittier with our Portrait Photography class. Galvan Studios is owned and operated by the husband and wife photography team of Yvette and Roman Galvan. It is located in Historical Uptown Whittier set among unique shops and boutiques. Yvette and Roman welcomed our 20+ student class very graciously. They began by showing us some of their work. Their work consists mostly of portrait and wedding photography. By viewing their photographs you can tell that they have a very unique style. They specialize in capturing real moments in their images. Upon discussing this in further detail, they revealed that they rarely pose their subjects but instead observe their subjects interacting and shoot when the moment is right. They also have mastered the art of composition and using available light. Because of this, their pictures are usually always perfect straight out of the camera and very rarely need tweaking in Photoshop afterwards.
Photo by Yvette at Galvan Studios
Following their work presentation, they answered a lot of the classes questions and showed us their equipment. They shoot with all Nikon equipment and have been for the majority of their career. The important thing they said that I thought I would mention is that the camera you own is not the most important thing when taking good photos. They said that you do not always have to have the most expensive, high end camera to take great pictures. The most important thing is knowing your camera inside and out and also understanding composition and knowing how to take advantage of the light that is available to you.
They also showed us how to set up a portrait shot of a couple with their studio equipment. Of course being the photogenic person that I am, I volunteered Bryan and I to be the couple. Now of course Bryan and I didn’t exactly dress to have our picture taken otherwise we would have worn more neutral colors, but I really thought the bright colors that we were wearing really made the photo pop. We’ve never had professional portrait photos taken in a studio so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I think Yvette did a fantastic job. Not that I would have expected anything less of her, I mean look at their site, their photos are amazing!
Photo by Yvette at Galvan Studios
Listening to Yvette talk about how she and Roman run the business, especially about what has been successful and what has been not so successful has inspired me to try new things with Shez Photo. One thing I hope to do is to blog more about what’s going on with Bryan and I and our photography. This will coincide with our articles that we normally write with events, I hope to at least have a new entry every week even if we are not covering an event.
Once again I would like to thank Roman and Yvette Galvon at Galvon studios for allowing our class to visit them. I hope to one day do a shoot with them again. If you would like wedding photography, great portraits done of you or you just want to check out their work, the website is www.galvanphoto.com
New Stuff!
September 16, 2008
If you haven’t already noticed we have put up a few new things on the site. As you can see we have completely changed the look of our home page. It is still a work in progress, we hope to be adding more features to our page. We have also added a video that we made in one of our classes, enjoy a few of our photographs and listen to the sweet sounds of our friends Last American Buffalo.
I have also added a few new-old pictures in the gallery. You can find them in the Black & White and Horse galleries. We will be quite busy the next few weeks. We have several triathlons we will be covering locally and in San Diego, so keep checking back for updates. Also Bryan has been writing a few articles for our friends at Amateur Endurance, check out his article Weekend Warrior and his series on Mountain Bikes.
That’s all for now, see you next week for the Long Beach Triathlon!
Imperial Beach Triathlon/Duathlon 2008
August 26, 2008
Hey everybody! We just finished covering another endurance event, this time we did the Imperial Beach Triathlon/Duathlon. Imperial Beach is located very far south in San Diego County, very close to Mexico in fact. We saw alot of familiar faces at this event, we are starting to get to know some of the San Diego triathletes, it’s amazing how often these people compete. Once again we covered this race with our friends at Amateur Endurance, in fact Bryan even did the race report for them. Check it out here.
Other exciting news of the day…Team Amateur Endurance came in 1st place in the mixed relay! Check out all the pics from this weekends event in the gallery.
Chino Hills State Park
April 8, 2008
This weekend Jamie and I had the opportunity to take some photographs. We decided to go all out here. We took three cameras and used all three of them. Jamie and I took our film cameras with b&w film loaded and we took our Canon Digital Rebel XT as well. In this post I’ll show you two of my favorite shots from the XT. I concentrated on landscapes of the beautiful hills and portraits of Jamie. We also got a few portraits of both of us using the remote.
The grass was really overgrown in the park. There were wildflowers everywhere. Some of the wildflowers were taller than Jamie. The only thing that went against us was the color of the sky which was somewhat overcast. The open shade makes for easy photography but it also doesn’t make for as dramatic landscapes.
Jamie, of course, being the model that she is gave me a lot of shots to work with. I like this one the most, it really pops out at me because of the contrast, the focus and the pattern of the flowers.