year 29 || day 58 – back on track, now with elephants!

by Luke Hodsdon · 31 Oct ’10

Ahhhh, finally, all caught up on the blog. Now to stay on track. Just need to keep telling myself that the Candyman will get me if I break blog form again!

“So, what did you do this weekend, Kristen?”
“Ohh, you know. Went inside Weird Al’s brain, drank vineyard select wines and rode on the back of an elephant.”
“Hmm, acid trip?”
“Close. The OC Fair!”

Kristen and her entourage decided the last thing they wanted to do before checking the OC Fair off their bucket list was to hop on top a Hawaiian lei’d beast. Personally, I feel sad for any animal that gets treated like a ride at the fair, but at $10 a head I have to believe these animals are being treated to the best peanuts since George Washington Carver.

Camera: Canon T2i
Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 1/50
Aperture: f/3.2
ISO: 1600

year 29 || day 57 – mischievous, no?

by Luke Hodsdon · 31 Oct ’10

This photo is a little bit deceiving. She looks as though she’s got a mischievous plot cooked up in that young brain of hers. Ready to cut left and make a mad dash towards the popcorn machine. Or maybe a bolt into the maze of air filled fun jumps where she can hide from her mother who waits patiently at the exit. In actuality she was playing a game of tag with some of the other kids at the iJam concert and this was her chance to refrain from being “it”. I’m sure with all the running, that Jamba Juice ended up being a washing machines nemesis later that night.

Camera: Canon T2i
Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 1/3200
Aperture: f/2.0
ISO: 100

year 29 || day 56 – School Gyrls rock out

by Luke Hodsdon · 31 Oct ’10

Despite my ignorance of having never heard of School Gyrls every little kid with the Disney channel was way ahead of me. Singing their teeny-bopper tunes on the IPSF iJam stage, the crowd of children was going crazy. In this shot Mandy Rain, somehow I doubt that’s her real name, reached out to one of her fans as she belts the chorus to their most popular song. I can only imagine the feeling those young ones got when they got to meet and see their Mickey-eared pop star idols. I remember being a fanatic too … but mine was more for G.I. Joe and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Beat that Gyrls.

Camera: Canon T2i
Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 1/800
Aperture: f/4.5
ISO: 100

year 29 || day 55 – nom nom nom

by Luke Hodsdon · 31 Oct ’10

Busy taking photos the whole night, I missed my opportunity to #nom on one of these delicious looking carrot cake samplers. The buzz from the crowd was enough to make me miss the sweetness too, as I watched multiple people going back for seconds, and some, thirds. Luckily I’m not a huge desert fan (I know, who doesn’t like deserts! freak!) so I can tell myself I didn’t miss out on much. Now, chocolate chip cookies and/or brownies … that’s a different story. Not quite falling into the “desert” category I let them pass my test. They’re more of a “lifeblood” category. Nom nom nom!

Camera: Canon T2i
Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 1/60
Aperture: f/1.8
ISO: 500
Note: To get this shot i didn’t use a flash, just the natural light from a nearby window. Without a nice lighting setup, finding ways to use natural light will produce a more “realistic” looking image, since it’s what the viewers eye would be normally seeing.
Tip: Use a large aperture (smaller number) so that you can get a nice depth of field to the images, focusing on one singular item.

Falling behind

by Luke Hodsdon · 31 Oct ’10

With the sickness in full effect these last 7 days, I’ve been pretty out of commission. Laid up on a couch with my BSG (Battlestar Galactica), loaded with NyQuil and soup of the day, can-style. Without the sickness it sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Now that I’m feeling slightly human again it’s time to get this blog back on track. I’ve got about 5 or 6 posts to make up for and freelance to follow. TO THE BAT CAVE!!

year 29 || day 54 – green team award

by Luke Hodsdon · 27 Oct ’10

This year’s OCMETRO “Green” issue was accompanied by the first-ever Green Team Event. When searching for awards the OCMETRO team wanted to find something environmentally friendly, but still unique. They found these recycled glass awards made from melted down glass and formed into these etch-able pyramids. I’m not sure if there’s an added dye or if it was the process itself, but the blue hue of the glass was a perfect offset to the etch marks made into the face.

Camera: Canon T2i
Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 1/60
Aperture: f/1.4
ISO: 100
Tip: Use a large aperture (smaller number) so that you can get a nice depth of field to the images, focusing on one singular item.

year 29 || day 53 – mushroom mushroom!

by Luke Hodsdon · 26 Oct ’10

No badgers here, just a delicious looking mushroom salsa of sorts. I personally don’t eat mushrooms because it’s hard for me to get past that whole “grows directly in poo” things, but I can appreciate a fine looking platter just the same. Maybe someday I’ll change my ways, but until that day I’ll keep my mushroom hating ways. This spread was part of OCMETRO’s first-ever Green Team event held at the Great Park or Irvine.

Camera: Canon T2i
Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 1/60
Aperture: f/1.4
ISO: 100
Tip: “Food shots” are a different breed of photography, and not being a professional myself, my amateur tip is to use a large aperture (smaller number) so that you can get a nice depth of field to the images, focusing on one singular item.

year 29 || day 52 – dexxy midnight clover, #1

by Luke Hodsdon · 25 Oct ’10

Dexxy Midnight is the queen of the ottoman at the Clover’s house. By far the most energetic pug I’ve ever seen, but when she’s not bouncing from couch to couch or throwing her toys across the room, she’s a really sweet little dog. Once she’s had her fill of play time, she’ll curl up right next to you, lay her head on your leg and fall right asleep. When i lived with the Clovers, Dexxy and Frankie were the dynamic duo with a total love hate relationship. One day you’ll see them sleeping next to each other and the next their chasing each other up and down the stairs. I think Frankie misses her. Sad.

Camera: Canon T2i
Focal Length: 36mm
Shutter: 1/30
Aperture: f/4.5
ISO: 3200
Tip: When shooting in low light situation it’s possible to use a higher ISO setting, although the trade-off is image quality. Higher ISO settings will cause more camera grain in your images.

year 29 || day 51 – winner winner chicken dinner

by Luke Hodsdon · 24 Oct ’10

Day #2 of our little Palm Springs gambling expedition and we have a winner! On our way home from the old Sinatra stomping grounds our last stop was Morongo Casino. After a few hours of up and downs on the penny slots my parents had to leave to start their 2 and a half hour drive back up the the other desert, Antelope Valley. Don’t be fooled by the name. There’s no Antelopes there and no greenery to support them … all desert. I digress. Wandering the casino alone, listing to all the bells and chimes of the machines and the chip clatter from the tables, I stop at a machine called 50 dragons and get set to pull my wallet from my pocket when a little old man cuts right in front of me and drops a $10 bill into the machine. Secretly praying for him to go broke on that machine I begrudgingly set up post on the machine directly to the right of him, also a 50 Dragons game. No sooner than 8 pulls or so later my screen fills with dragon faces and starts pouring out flying gold coins. A quick $66 and some odd change win. I tell the little guy next to me thanks, hit the cash out button and walk away with a nice triple up on cash.

The moral of the story is that sometimes an asshole can turn out to be just a speed bump in your road to riches … or in my case, gas money.

Camera: iPhone 3Gs
Focal Length: —
Shutter: —
Aperture: —
ISO: —
Tip: Despite being one of the most awesome inventions ever, the iPhone 3Gs is not the best camera in the world. I know, shocker!

year 29 || day 50 – zoltan! … errr Zoltar!

by Luke Hodsdon · 23 Oct ’10

Time to play some catch up. I didn’t really plan this whole “post a day, everyday” thing very well when planning out of town trips. Next time i’ll have to schedule my posts (Thanks WordPress!!!). For now i’ll just roll back my post date. Hey, my blog, my rules.

Remember the movie “Big” with Tom Hanks. Well, if you were alive in the 80′s you should! It’s one of those feel good, love who you are not who you want to be, type of movies. Basically Tom Hanks wants to be older so he find this fortune telling machine that ends up granting him one wish. Yadda yadda, boom he’s older and now has to do grown up things. Man, I should be a movie reviewer. haha.

This was the fortune teller from the movie. Found it tucked away in the corner of Morongo Casino this weekend on my way back from Palm Springs. So excited to se this memory-sparking relic i eagerly put in my $1 to get my fortune. Waiting … standing, staring … nothing. The damn thing stole my dollar. Not sure if i should take that as some kind of doom and gloom message from the gods, but i chalked it up to faulty wiring and went on with my day. So, hope i’m around to keep this blog going … muha ha haaaaa.

Camera: iPhone 3Gs
Focal Length: —
Shutter: —
Aperture: —
ISO: —
Tip: Despite being one of the most awesome inventions ever, the iPhone 3Gs is not the best camera in the world. I know, shocker!

year 29 || day 49 – determination

by Luke Hodsdon · 22 Oct ’10

Lining up for his shot at the dunk tank, determined to nail the target and soak an Irvine teacher. Readying his grip, timing his shot and taking his stance he lets the first ball fly. Slightly low, but still determined. The second shot comes with some heat, but still not followed by the metal twang of victory. At that moment, one thing was on his mind … dunking the elder. Knuckling down on the third and final ball the windup begins. Reaching way back into form, the ball comes flying through the air. Watching the laces spin closer and closer to the center of the target, ultimately a miss is in the horizon. A moment of defeat is all that is saved and then it’s quickly off to one of the other activities like it never even happened.

Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 1/4000
Aperture: f/2.0
ISO: 100
Tip: When wanting a high depth of field in your photos, use a low aperture setting or increase this distance between your subject and the background.

year 29 || day 48 – press check

by Luke Hodsdon · 21 Oct ’10

The smell of fresh ink on damp pages. The whipping sounds of paper flying between junctions. Quite the sight to behold. Running a press check for OCMETRO’s 20th anniversary cover gave me a great opportunity to take some shots around the facility. Luckily the guys on the floor gave me free reign of the area to express my creativity. This shot in particular was the cover passing by the registration check right before entering the heaters to dry the ink. The little box attached to what looks like a bike chain is actually a small camera that slides left and right taking images of the registration marks and sending the information to the press check station so they can make any necessary adjustments. Pretty rad to see the process if you’re a geek like me. From my brain, through the interwebs, burned into a plate and finally filled with ink and set to stock.

Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 1/60
Aperture: f/1.4
ISO: 100
Notes: Wanting to keep some visual of motion I used a medium shutter speed for the situation. Normally a 1/60 shot would “freeze” the frame, but since these presses were running by at such a high speed a setting of 1/300 would have been more likely to completely stop the presses.
Tip: Simple adjustments to shutter speed can have some drastic effects on your shots, depending on what you’re shooting.

year 29 || day 47 – Irvine rooftop overpass

by Luke Hodsdon · 20 Oct ’10 · 2 comments

a calming nightly stroll atop the parking garage of our apartment building led me to a series of shots which I’ve aptly named ‘the rooftop’. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “but Luke, a parking garage isn’t a rooftop,” to which I can only agree, but remain steadfast in my ignorant naming scheme. So there’s that. But there’s also some amazing shots I got form the night life in Irvine. My original plan was to shoot the old hangars that still remain from the retired military base, but in an unexpected turn of events I got some even more intriguing shots, although the long exposure help to do that to pretty much ant night shot.

Setting up my tripod, prepping the cameras timer and blasting King Charles from my iPhone, I frame the shot and let the camera do the rest. After a couple ill-exposed images I got the right exposure and the series was underway. I’ll be posting some more from this shoot later, so enjoy. Or don’t. Its really your prerogative.

Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 30sec
Aperture: f/9.0
ISO: 100
Notes: When setting up for the long exposure shot, I had to find a sturdy, even shooting area. There was a slight breeze and my tripod isn’t the best thing in the world (hey, it was only $17, I can’t complain), so i had to find an area that i could steady the camera so that my images could stay crisp.
Tip: When shooting any type of long exposure shot it’s very important to keep the camera steady, otherwise your images will be blurred. For fun, try some setting while purposely moving the camera with the shutter open. You can get some pretty unique shots.

year 29 || day 46 – countdown to splashdown

by Luke Hodsdon · 19 Oct ’10 · 1 comment

Vincent is the fearless one. The middle child in a set of three brothers and he has energy of all of them combined. Despite his lack of skill in swimming, he wasn’t going to back down from the flying leaps into the waters. Even after hours of swimming, with a quick pause or two for a cheeto recharge, the boy was up and down from the cement walkway barely long enough for me to snap some mid-air photos of him. Clearly you can see that his day in the sun was all the things that make being a kid great.

Trying to bring a bit more info to my photo blogs, I’m going to start trying (the key word) to post some camera settings along with each photo. Maybe they will help someone or, if nothing else, they’ll help me to recall so I can reproduce the shots in new settings.

Focal Length: 50mm
Shutter: 1/1000
Aperture: f/2.2
ISO: 100
Notes: Shot outside on a sunny day, so I used the highest ISO for my Camera (Canon T2i) and a very fast shutter speed so that I could keep my aperture at 2.2 for a nice DOF (Depth of field) effect and freeze the subject in the shot with no motion blurring.
Tip: Lowering my shutter speed would have allowed me to catch the subject in movement and give a more realistic sense of jumping/falling. The downside would be that to achieve a slower shutter speed you would need to adjust your aperture to a much smaller opening (smaller = larger f number), such as f/18 or f/22. Some lenses may have higher f-stops, but it all depends on your equipment. This would also cause you to lose some of the DOF effect, as smaller apertures will reduce the amount of DOF in relation to the distance of your subject.

year 29 || day 45 – Getty flowers

by Luke Hodsdon · 18 Oct ’10 · 1 comment

Living in the world of my pal, Macro, opens up a whole new set of possibilities. Clearly, less gravity would be awesome. Flying around on flower petals like you were Aladdin himself … but be careful of the birds. Setting up home in the pollen-laced walls of a bud with stamens to climb and harvest. Traveling the dark caverns of an abandoned anthill with nothing more than the light from your cigarette ash torch to guide you. Yeah, I’d vacation my mind in that world. Just me and my pal, Macro.

year 29 || day 44 – behind the scenes

by Luke Hodsdon · 17 Oct ’10

Taking a moment to catch Eugene “Gene” Ku and Michelle Pulfrey off-guard at an OCMETRO magazine cover shoot. Not quite sure what their doing, but they look like their having fun. The story was a combo between a fashion layout and our list of Orange County’s 5 most eligible bachelor executives. Outfitted from head to toe in South Coast fashions our photographer, Challenge Roddie, set the studio with a behind-the-scenes stage and a plethora of antique cameras to prop the shoot. I took the role of the back stage photographer to get some “b-roll” footage for the magazine and websites.

year 29 || day 43 – the crow’s nest

by Luke Hodsdon · 16 Oct ’10 · 1 comment

Finding myself on the deck of the Queen Mary in long beach, staring up the support ropes to the crow’s nest, I couldn’t help but wonder what ship life would have been life when the voyages were in full effect. Was there a group of crow’s nesters? Was it a rotation? Was it just one old man with a huge white beard and a propensity for doom and gloom? Without some serious research or some well placed phone calls I doubt I’ll ever know the answer. But in my mind, Gus, the closer-to-death, surly man still lives on as one of the ghosts of the Queen Mary.

year 29 || day 42 – girls boys books toys

by Luke Hodsdon · 15 Oct ’10

Just like any other nice SoCal day with an even temperature in the comfortable 70′s, Kristen reads her books out on the balcony. Slightly startled by my paparazzi training, she quickly goes back to her pages. Either studying for her Master’s Degree or reading up on children’s books for her OCFAMILY “Storytime” videos, Kristen’s always got a bookmark somewhere.

year 29 || day 41 – flying purple people eater

by Luke Hodsdon · 14 Oct ’10

Lets take a little trip. Think back to what you were doing when you were 11. I was probably scrounging up red and purple ant colonies with my friends to pit against each other in an all out war in one of my mother’s pie tins until there was a group of victors that would inevitably meet their doom under a pinpoint precision burn of the magnifying glass. Spoiler alert: the red ants always win! Well, not this little guy. At just 11 years old he’s out there screaming down 40+ foot high vert ramps and flying through the air landing tricks some of the guys double his age hadn’t mastered yet and eventually ending up with a place of 3rd in the vert challenge I witnessed at this year’s Maloof Money Cup. My hats off to ya kid. May the world ahead of you be paved with fishbowls, lined with rails and stacked with stairs.

slashdot /. the magazine

by Luke Hodsdon · 13 Oct ’10

Prepping my team at Churm Media for the big switch from Quark 8 to InDesign CS5 (Hallelujah!), I assigned the project for everyone to design a magazine cover using exclusively InDesign and supporting Adobe products, for photo retouching/manipulation. They were given free reign, with the one caveat being that it had to look like a magazine cover, not an art piece. Being a team player I to took part in this exercise. Drawing inspiration from, quite possibly, the best news site on the internet, I set my goals at creating a cover for slashdot. Their tagline says it all, “News for nerds. News that matters.”. Being a long time follower of the site, and getting 90% of my conversation topics their as well, I knew that I wanted a cover subject that would ‘fit’. John Stewart immediately jumped to mind and my search of google images began. Maybe not the obvious choice for a “nerd news” magazine, but the guy has brains and wit to match … I knew the fit would work. Once I had the idea, the rest was a breeze.

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