Downtown LA is always an interesting place to visit.  The area has a lot of rich history tucked away in various corners, and yet there are also modern developments happening in the city.

Took my son on the Metro and headed into the Union Station on our last day of mini vacation.  We've always came during the weekend so the station has always look emptied and deserted, during Friday's high traffic hour, the place was actually bustling with passengers.  I'm sure it isn't like its glory past, but I allowed myself to imagine how this place looked when trains were the main mode of transportation between cities.

There are always soft light filtering through the various windows and interesting people to watch.  I was limited to the 35'Lux I had mounted, but I think next time I would like to try a 90mm for stealing shots of people, and maybe a 21mm so I can capture its grandeur.

Across the street from Union Station, there's the Olvera Street, which is a permanent market full of Mexican restaurants and shops.  Also around there, is the Pico House, which was hosting a gallery of photos taken around the place.  The Pico House has an inner courtyard which was glowing red by the sunshine reflecting off the brick wall and floor, and even though it was closed to general public, the lady in charge was nice enough to let us in to take some photos.

Of course, I couldn't resist visiting the Bradbury Building again.  What an amazing place that continues to challenge me to photograph all its beauty with a single image, still can't do it though.  Then we went up the Angel's Flight and walked our way east to the Civic Center Station and eventually back home.  Here are only some selected images to show, and the full set can be found [HERE].

A new lens is not tested until I've taken it to Disney for a spin.  Being a normal-wide angle lens, shooting with it should be a breeze, not to mention its low-light capabilities and excellent sharpness.  However, if you factoring watching a 5 year old by yourself, then it's not so easy :)

Well, I seized the opportunities when I had it, and came away with a few keepers.  I took the rest of week off from work so we can spend some quality time together before his school starts.  We spent the first day mostly in Disney California Adventures and the second day in Disneyland.  The full set can be viewed [HERE].

Living in Southern California, we don't go to the beach nearly as much as we should.  Aidan's summer school ended this week, and that gave me a signal: it's time to catch up on all the fun before summer's over.  It's probably my bad luck, but for some reasons, when we go to the beach, it's usually pretty cloudy and feeling much cooler than I thought it'd be.  Nothing would stop the kids from jumping into the cold Pacific waves, though.

The sun did peak through once in a while to provide some dramatic light rays, but most of the shots I got had this blue/gray tone that lend themselves to be processed as black and white.  For a gloomy day like this, I got a few more keepers than I expected.  The full set of images can be viewed [HERE].

Once again, it's better to bring your camera and not use it, than to not bring it at all :)

I've been feeling a bit of shooting drought lately, both on and off the basketball court.  I don't know if it's lack of inspirations, opportunities, or just the drive, but I think the best way to get out of the funk is the same: you gotta shoot your way out of it.  Just keep shooting.

Today, after coming home from playing basketball, I saw this nice light glowing on the plants we had in the backyard.  Before I change out of my dirty shirt, I put on the trusty 50'Lux and went out to take some shots.  Nothing earth shattering happened, but it did get me thinking and shooting again.  I played with different angles, shooting into the sun and got a few crazy flares.

During post processing, I played with some VSCO film presets again, but decided that I liked the images just as the 50'Lux had rendered.  The next two look particularly nice in black and white to me.

Oh man, I'm in trouble here...  Since I haven't been out shooting lately, I've started going through some old favorites and played with the VSCO film presets.  This one is again with the "Fuji FP-100c Negative - -" preset.  It worked great with my previous landscape shot, I think it also look good with this portrait.  I have originally developed this image with a cream tone BW look... but I do like this color version, too.  I think I'm going to add a "VSCO" tag for future posts... :)

The above shot is actually an outtake from our trip to the Valley of Fire State Park.  I took the shot from the passenger side window while my wife drove.  The clouds were very interesting that day and I liked the setting sun falling on the red rocks.  However, after we came home and when I reviewed the images, it didn't feel that special to me so it ended up on the cutting floor, so to speak.

Then... I was trying out some of the VSCO Film Presets and happened to pick this image to try it out on a landscape shot.  I simply went through a variety of film presets and when I landed on the "Fuji FP-100c Negative --", I was immediately attracted.  Perhaps it's the mixture of warmer color, contrast, and even some nostalgic link in my mind, but it really spoke to me.  Here's the unprocessed version:

I'm still unsure about the idea of using film-look presets because most of the time I still prefer the color straight out of the camera.  I guess they're just another tool in the bag, and it's nice to have something to play with when working with an image that's lacking certain "je ne sais quoi" ;-)