Cypress College Student Show Entries

This year I entered ten pieces in to the Cypress College Photography Department Student Show. With the judging done I only had one that did not get into the show. Here are the shots that got in.

Leaving San Diego

While waiting for my train I when out side of the station and took a couple of shots of some of the skyscrapers around Downtown San Diego.

Easter Weekend

I went down to San Diego to visit my friend Shawna for Easter. While I was down there I took a couple of shots of the family and the Easter egg hunts that Josephine went on both Saturday and Sunday.

Learning to Fly

Grace wanted to learn how to fly for her birthday and decided to use this as an opportunity to give me a late but great gift too. When we got there Grace flipped a coin and I won so I was going to be the first to fly. After a looking over the aircraft and learning about some of the controls, I was taxiing down the runway to get ready for takeoff. Our instructor, Daniel Wotring, was the one that did all the take offs and landings, but we were allowed to have our hands on the controls to feel what it was like. After we got to a high enough altitude I was able to take over the controls. Flying was no where near as scary for me as just being a passage in a car. It was really fun to be up there with the great view. While I was flying I was able to experience some good updrafts where the aircraft was pushed up by the warm air. After a while of flying we landed at Brackett Field in La Verne to switch out who was flying.

Now Grace was in the pilot seat and I was in the back with my camera ready to shoot.
She loved to turn the plane at steep angles usually more then 45 degrees. It made for some great shots and a fun ride. We then decided to fly over Cypress College for fun. While doing a couple of circles around the college I got a couple of shots that I like from over head. This was the first I had done any kind of aero-photography and it was great. Grace then decided that see wanted to go out to the coast and fly over the beach for a while. We went out over Seal Beach and then headed down the coastline to the Huntington Beach Pier. During the turn back to Fullerton Municipal Airport, Grace and Daniel were watching a sporting event and missed seeing a pod of dolphins swimming by the pier. The rest of the flight back we took Beach Blvd and it was nice not having to stop at red lights and having other traffic around. After the landing we both were very happy and loved the experience.

I just started to play around creating some HDR images this week. Grace showed me Photomatix a while back, but I never really got around to playing with it. With the photography department’s annual juried contest coming up I decided to work with some of my old photos. I picked a couple of my El Toro shots were the sky was overcast and there was almost no detail. When I corrected then in photomatix it was able to bring the cloud detail back. I probably over did the affect but I still like the graphical illustration of the images.