Sailing on the Bay

We went sailing with a couple friends on their sailboat this past weekend and had a great time! Also got to meet our friend's brother, Mike, and a mutual friend of theirs who has an identical sailboat a couple sloops over. Anthony got a little seasick, but he managed not to throw up, and is looking forward to going sailing (and doing some fishing) out on the open sea. Click any of the pictures to be taken to the gallery.

Anthony waiting to set sail on the bay

Hanging on for dear life while the boat leans

Richard steering the boat back home

L-R: Frank, Beth, Gena, Jesse, Richard, Chris
(Anthony fell asleep downstairs -- the fresh air knocked him out)

Schmooze, the Chargers, and Testing a New Lens

Just posting a couple pics that I've taken since the last update -- I've been in a photographic funk lately and haven't really felt inspired by anything. Hopefully that will change soon.

My friend, Rex Castor, of the musical group "Schmooze", performing at Rebecca's Coffeehouse

Watching the San Diego Chargers take on the New England Patriots

Testing out my new lens, a Nikkor 55-200 f/4-5.6 VR

Is it hot enough for ya?

Below is a screen shot from my phone of the temperature in Mira Mesa, San Diego, California at 11:56 a.m., September 27, 2010. Mira Mesa, a community of San Diego, is about 8 miles from the coast, close enough to still be considered part of the coast, but only two miles from being considered "inland". I don't remember it ever being this hot in Mira Mesa/San Diego as long as I've lived here! But, considering the extremely mild summer we've had, this heat wave was kind of to be expected. On the bright side, we're actually expecting a litte rain this afternoon from a storm coming up from Mexico...

Leprechaun of the Seas

My friend, Joe, finally took his new surfboard out on its maiden run at Torrey Pines State Beach last Sunday and I was there to take pictures of it before he waxed it up, which I've compiled into a short slideshow. CRANK UP YOUR SPEAKERS AND ENJOY THE MUSIC!

Surfboard and Cellphone Designs

A couple months back I was asked by my "brother", Joseph, to come up with a graphical design for a new surfboard he was having shaped. He initially wanted something to reflect his Italian/Irish descent, but after not being able to settle on an Italian theme that appealed to him, he decided to go with something that would display his Irish heritage instead. As he was conferring with me over lunch about what he wanted, the little designing gears in my head started cranking and I had a design all planned out even before he finished talking to me. Later that evening, I created a rough sketch of the design in Photoshop and emailed it to him -- he loved it! After a few touch-ups here and there and some drop shadows, it was ready to go to the printers and then on the board. He finally picked up the finished board yesterday and sent me the following pictures for now -- we're planning on going to the beach next week to take some better photos, so check back after next weekend for the updates.

I even made him an iPhone 4 skin to go along with his new board:

Please leave feedback about the designs and, if you have any, suggestions for an Italian-themed board.

My First Post from my iPhone!

So, as the title suggests, this is my first post from my iPhone. I thought it would be a great idea to be able to update my blog with information and pictures while "on location" without having to wait until I get home (or close to a computer). That being said, the only pictures I will be uploading while "on location" will be those taken with my iPhone; others will be posted as before with links to my website. For those who are curious about the app I'm using to blog, it's called BlogBooster and is available in the iTunes app store absolutely FREE! Well, now that we have the words out of the way, let's see if I'm able to insert a picture into my post. The first picture I'm posting is of the red sky at sunset behind some palm trees taken from the pool.

UPDATE: after about eleven attempts to upload the sunset picture, I finally succeeded! I'm not sure, at this point, whether the fault lies with the BlogBooster app, the 3G connection, the Wi-Fi connection, or a combination of all three, but it's definitely gonna take some familiarization with this app to figure out its nuances. The screen capture below shows the error message I was receiving:

Playing with (a) Light

Recently, when sticking his hand between the sofa cushions while watching TV, our son, Anthony, found the little LED ring light we had received when we attended Comic-Con 2010 and promptly "lost". This evening, as I was playing with it, I got the idea to suspend the light from the livingroom ceiling, position my camera directly underneath it and pointing up and, using an exposure time of one minute, decided to photograph it and see what it would look like. The first couple of attempts yielded poor results with the light just going in a circle that gradually got smaller and smaller and smaller. I then tried pushing the light just off-center to see what would happen, even adding a few puffs of air -- the results are below.