A Weekend In Guatemala - Pt4. Morning On The Roof

Thanks for checkin' out the Bsombin' blog! It's interesting, when you go back to a place that you have been to before and see it differently. The place doesn't change, but the things you see are looked at in a different way. Or from a different perspective...

 Every time I have gone home, to my Grandma's house in Guatemala, I have always loved to go up on the roof and play. But it wasn't until this trip that I saw the option to climb on top of the exit to the roof to be at the highest point possible. And, that's just what I did, when I woke up to the hangover that the night before left me with. My head was throbbing, and I could barely remember anything from the night before, but the first thing I thought to do when I woke up was shoot! I went upstairs and, despite my fear of heights trying to prevent me from doing it, I climbed up on top of the staircase exit and shot the following...

A Weekend In Guatemala - Pt3. A Night In The City

Hello Earth people! Thanks for checkin' out the Bsombin' blog!

I am not a fan of flying! ...With that said, the flight went as good as it could, from Mexico to Guatemala. The plane landed in the middle of the day (Guatemala Time). The weather was overcast but the air was warm and humid. When I got to the baggage claim, I found that "The Guatemalan Welcoming Committee" had welcomed themselves to a bunch of the gifts that I had brought for my family. One of my bags was torn open and the bag was a lot lighter than it had been leaving LAX. The time I spent waiting for the Customs agent who "looked into the matter" for me was the only time that time didn't fly extra fast, my whole time in Guatemala. But, after the extended welcome, I found my dad, we made our way to the car, and time started to go into warp speed. From the airport, we took off to meet up with my Abuelita, Auntie, siblings, and cousins for lunch & a long awaited reunion!

It was an amazing lunch, needless to say! Seeing my Abuelita and siblings again was awesome. And getting to know my cousins and Auntie again was like being a little kid all over. I was real happy to find my cousin Mark to be an amateur photographer who was also eager to explore and shoot, too! After lunch we went back to Abuelita's house where my other cousins (from mom's side) met up with us. We all spent hours catching up and remembering all the times we spent together when we were kids, before the cousins & I decided to let Abuelita get some rest while we went to check out the nightlife. It was one of those moments where I had to pinch myself, seeing all the little kids I played with as a kid as grown men and women (some with their own kids).

...The whole time I was there, my family kept warning me to keep my camera and phone out of sight. They told me that people gettting killed for their phones was very common and that it was very dangerous to have a phone out. But my cousin Mark (who grew up in Guatemala before moving to the UK with Auntie) said we would be okay shooting. So we took our cameras with us and things weren't as crazy as I had been told. Unfortunately, going out drinking with my cousins and brother did turn out to be dangerous! I'm luck I didn't loose my camera, as wasted as we got. I honestly don't remember a whole lot of that night. But, I know we had a really good time! I even shot a lot, but apparently I forgot how to use the settings on my camera in my intoxicated state. Most of the pics look like what I was seeing after the chemical brew that I ingested took effect. So, the nightlife shots are limited...

A Weekend In Guatemala - Pt2. Airborne Android

I ended up taking a lot more pictures with my Android, during the journey, than I did with the DSLR. But I hardly used the Android once one the ground. Here, I'm sharing some of the architecture shots from the airports, as well as some arial shots over Mexico and Guatemala...

  

A Weekend In Guatemala - Pt1. Flying

Hola Mundo! Thanks for stopping by and checking out the blog! Last year, for my Abuelita's 81st birthday, my father's side of the family decided to have a reunion. It was a little last minute, in the planning. And we were in the middle of getting our Summer '15 line ready, with ILUMN8 Co. So I was only able to go for the weekend of the party. But, with family flying in from all around the world, I couldn't miss the chance to see everyone again. I was excited to see all the family, especially my brother, sister, and cousins Rob, Mark, & Becky. I'm always happy to see my siblings, since I don't see them often. And I hadn't seen my cousins Rob & Mark in over 20 years. Becky wasn't even born, the last time I saw her brothers, so it was going to be my first time meeting her!

I got to LAX late, so I was in too much of a rush to take an pictures. By the time I got to the terminal, the plane was already boarding and I flew out of LAX late around 1AM destined for Mexico City. We landed in Mexico D.F. early in the morning, and I had to wait the for 3 hours before my connecting flight was scheduled to board. After going through customs, I got a bit to eat and then walked around the terminals taking pictures of the architecture. After about 4 hours in D.F., I was back up in the air and on my way to Guatemala. Below are some of the pics I took on the trip. As usual, I will be posting the DSLR camera pictures and the Android pictures separately. So, to start, here are the DSLR pictures first. Check back soon, for more travel adventures and Bsombin'!

Return Of The " Hopeless Romantic"...

Thanks for checkin' out the Bsombin' blog! I didn't write too much poetry, while I took time off from the blog, but I did manage to get a few things written. I've actually been a lot more prolific lately. But, tonight I will share something I wrote last year, since I'm catching up. Hope you enjoy. Be sure to check back soon for more Bsombin'!

"Day Dreaming In My Sleep"

I fell asleep and 

Awoke in a dream...

Welcomed into these 

Lucid moments by

Smokey Chai kisses

Placed on my aura by

Chocolate covered lips...

Submerged in my quite orchestration of

Wishes and wants,

I was beached on her warm sweet ivory coast,

Hidden from the cold grey yonder,

Beneath the satin waves that witnessed 

Our jubilee...

Silently,

I melted into memories of how 

We swam...

Me in her currents &

Her in my tide,

She was the ebb &

I was the flow,

She swam in my ocean while

I swam in her sea.

...As we were both being pulled on by 

The moon and the star's gravity

But, when sunshine found it's way 

Through the grey and onto 

What moon beams could not see,

My paradise turned and said to me,

"If only this could be...

Sadly this is nothing more than your 

Dreams of memories..."

Then I cried myself to sleep, 

In her arms as

Smokey Chai kisses were

Placed on my aura by

Chocolate covered lips...

As I fell asleep in my dreams of her

I awoke in tears

...Sitting awake,

Drowning in dreams

About what used to be,

Sinking in  thoughts,

Since my heart's 

Still so heavy...

-Bsomb4

Portraits Of My Illuminated Ninja & I

So, pretty much, everything I am going to be posting for the next few months is me playing catch up and teacher. I'll be sharing all the adventures I've been on over the past year, and teaching tutorials on light painting and long exposure photography...

To start things off, I'll share the beginnings of my portrait photography. It took me a while to develop an interest in portrait photography. Actually, I first started shooting people for ILUMN8 Co. adds and promotional material. Funny enough, since I was shy about shooting people and didn't know who to ask to model, I turned out to be my first model. I set everything up, jumped in front of the camera with my silver mask on, and had my little ninja click the shutter for me after I set off the smoke bomb. Lol. My modeling debut was a success, though. I got a lot of good feedback from ILUMN8 and the images got ILUMN8 a good amount of attention. One of the pictures even made it onto the ILUMN8 Co. website!

I decided to have the little ninja be my next model, since I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of trying to direct a model or sure of how I was going to do it. I opted to have her dawn the silver mask that I wore in my shoot, to go along with the images we shot of me. The experience proved to be good practice and helped me realize how much I needed to work on my "directing" skills. Still, I think we managed to get some decent shots. And we had a lot of fun shooting and acting silly, in the process.

Below are my 4 favorite shots... So, now,  you can monitor the progress of my portrait photography from it's infancy. Lol. Hope you enjoy. Thanks for checkin' out the Bsombin' blog and check back soon for more Bsombin'!

Slow Exposure Spins - Pt.3 (...finally!!)

Hello world! I'm finally back. ...I'm not even going to get into all the reasons (excuses) why this has taken so long to get around to. Instead, I'm just going to get right to it... So, how do you spin an orb?

In my blogging hiatus, I found that there are actually several ways of creating an orb effect when light painting. I'm just going to cover the basics here, to get you started. But, once you understand the basic idea, you can get creative and find other ways to create the effect.

The first thing you are going to need is a light source. There are a lot of different options, but your best bet is some sort of LED light, ball, or stick that you can attach to a rope, string, chain, wire, etc. In the future (hopefully not the distant future) I'll post some D.I.Y. ways to make light brushes and light painting tools. But, for now, I'll keep it real basic. I got everything I used to spin the orb shown above at the 99 cent store...

I just got a cheap little flashing LED stick and tied it to a 3' length of nylon rope. The LED bike light is what I used as my target. if you look at the image of the orb, you will notice that I have the LED bike light sitting under the center of the orb and I did this to help illustrate my point...

As far as camera gear goes... As with all long exposure photography, you'll need a tripod (or something solid and sturdy to position your camera on) to shoot orbs. Your settings will all depend on your environment and the type of light you are spinning with. I'm shooting with an old Canon 40D. So I usually keep my settings at a 15 - 20 second exposure, with my ISO around 600 - 1000 and my aperture around 4 - 8. But it's hard to say what will work best with the environment and LED variables. So my best advice is to just experiment and play with your settings till you get the color and intensity you want out of your LEDs.

The main idea behind spinning an orb is that you need to spin multiple circles while moving around a central axis that all the circles connect at. It's almost like winding a piece of string around a ball. The best way that I have found to do this is by standing on the edge of an imaginary circle on the ground and spinning the LED light over the center of the circle as you walk around the edge of the circle. I drew a not so beautiful illustration of the process, to help clarify what I mean.

What you have in the illustration are 2 views of the path you need to follow in order to create the orb effect with just 4 spins. The view on the left is a head on view and the smaller one on the right is an overhead view. I used different colors to represent the 4 angles that you need to spin the LEDs in. The numbers, with the corresponding colors on them, indicate where around the circles edge you need to stand as you spin. The number sequence is to show the different points along the path that you need to stop at as you move around the circle. 

So, basically, what I do, as I spin, is take a step to the left after every spin until I have moved all the way around my center point and I try to keep the LED spinning in a vertical path. If you let the LED spin in a slightly horizontal path, the circles won't meet at the axis. The crooked paths take away from the orb effect and make orbs look sloppy. You can see in the example I used above that the orb has some crooked lines in the middle that almost look like the letter V, and that the last spin pulled far away from the axis point. Too much of this will turn your obr into a blob. Which is why I came up with the idea of having a target light to help me practice spinning. What you do is spin your LED and try to make sure it crosses directly over your target on every spin, as you step around the circle. 

As soon as I can get my little ninja to help me, I will make some video tutorials on how to spin the different types of orbs that I have learned to create. Then you can see how silly I look in the process. Lol. If your orbs don't look like an orb, when you start trying to spin orbs, don't get discouraged! It takes some practice to get control and a good understanding of how to step while spinning the LEDs, before you'll get a perfect orb. But it really isn't about spinning the perfect orb as much as it is about having fun and being creative. So just have fun and experiment. Who knows... you might even stumble across a new way to spin an orb or a new type of orb all together!

I'll be posting a lot of the light painting that I did over the past year, soon, and will continue to teach what I have learned, here on this blog. So, check back for more Bsombin', and more light painting and long exposure photography.