The First Post!

Where to start.......

A little about myself, I am currently attending Millennium High School and live in Piedmont, California. I also have a small cabin in South Lake Tahoe on the edge of El Dorado National Forest Land, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

As of now my life consists of various activities,

Photography

Biking

Long boarding

Sailing

and much much more.....

I am dedicating this post to mainly my photography but will also keep you updated with my crazy life! I started taking pictures when I was a little kid with a small camera that used film and started moving up to bigger and more advanced cameras. My friend and I own a Canon Rebel Xsi and have taken many wonderful pictures. We also started a photography company, Aperture Photography, http://www.aperturephotographs.yolasite.com/. We do events for our school all the way to portraits and also sell our own prints. Feel free to contact one of us and we can order some prints for you.

I am starting to break off from the business and go my own way. I now know that the company is going well and surviving. I will still continue to work with Aperture, hopefully for the rest of my life. Anyways I have kept all of my photos in a separate folder so I know which are mine and which are my friend's. I own two cameras right now, the Canon Xsi and the Olympus 5050zoom. I use the Olympus because it has excellent picture quality for its time and it has a fold out screen allowing it to get into small places and weird and hidden angles while still being able to see the screen.

These are some of my favorites.........

I took a trip to Point Montera Lighthouse and this is a view of Hwy 1 with some construction during the night.

This is a Cairn, it marks the path in which you should take. It was on the coast below Point Montera Lighthouse.

A view of an over pass right above Grand Ave in Oakland.

Fire marbling off of a torch soaked in white gas.

Morning dew on a lawn.

The back of a leaf with the sun shining through it showing all of its main veins.

A shot of a rose in the sun.

Right now photography is my life and I love it to death! It has givin me so many amazing and fantastic opportunities. I will start back about a month or so ago because everything is starting to get exciting and this was the beginning of it. During winter break my very good friend and main inspiration Amos Terry came back home for the holidays. Amos has helped me get where I am today. He has taught me so much and helped me out through the last few months with everything that I have done. He has also been available whenever I need him for advice or a completely random question that I would have while I'm in the field.

Anyways, He told me that he was taking his friend Jessica out to do some shooting around the bay and he told me to come along. It was a very hazy day to be shooting and was a challenge but I am happy with the shots that I got. We first ventured out to Treasure Island. We went into some old barracks used by the military but are now abandoned. The walls are covered in so much graffiti that you would never be able to see all of it in one day. We went up to the top of the building and shot down into the middle of the complex which was covered with broken mirrors and a ton of trash. On the surrounding walls there are windows which are covered with all sorts of different designs and writing, some of which I don't know how it got there........ The designs around the inside of the building and at the level we were on were some of the most amazing pieces of artwork I have ever seen. I was able to capture them with a setting that wouldn't make the colors look fluorescent and fake, 1/200, f7.1, iso 100. The lens I was using for most of the shots I took at that location was the kit lens, 18-55mm.

A look into the center of the barracks and with all of the windows covered in graffiti.

A circular window covered in years of graffiti giving it the stained glass effect.

After we shot inside the barracks we moved out to the edge of the island where we had a beautiful view of the bay and the 2nd half of the bridge entering San Francisco. I was also using the kit lens so I could get a very wide angle. The clouds were starting to get thicker and darker so I moved to a slightly slower shutter speed and lower aperture. The sun was shining through a less thick patch of clouds and creating a sunset affect behind the bridge. I then used a faster speed to focus on the sky, but also bumped up the aperture to focus on the background and get more depth of field.

A view of the Bay Bridge and the city from Treasure Island.

Amos making his panoramic view of the bay.

After we finished shooting on the island we debated going over to Baker beach but concluded that it was too hazy and cloudy and decided to go back to the East Bay and test our luck over in the hills.

Once we got back over we went up to Tilden and went to inspiration point and tried to shoot up there but there was a combination of fog, clouds, haze, and it was getting dark unfortunately. We then ended with Amos making a ring out of a quarter....... don't really know where the idea came from, but it was really freakin cool!

Well I think I have said enough for my first post. I think the next few will be focused on some of the trips I have taken during the past few months, or maybe just some cool places I found to shoot at.

- Kellan