Edwin Villanueva

I’m here at the San Jose International Airport waiting for my delayed flight back to San Diego. I had quite a busy weekend as I attended a karate tournament, anniversary and baptism.

Most of Saturday was spent at my nephews karate tournament at Gunderson High. It was my first time attending a karate tournament and I have to admit, it was a little nerve racking. While growing up, my parents would always tell me they hated watching me play sports because they were always nervous. Well, I got a taste of how they felt watching my nephew, Tobey and my godsons, AJ and Brian at this tournament. It’s definitely worse as a spectator. Maybe its because as a participant, you have control in the outcome. As a spectator, you’re helpless and can only watch. My nervousness was all for not as Tobey took first in his division and AJ and Brian took second and third in theirs. Congrats guys!

I spent most of today traveling back and forth from Berkley to SJ and then from SJ to Fremont to first celebrate my parents 41st Anniversary and then the Baptism of my cousins daughter, Charmaine. One word describes how I feel right now—STUFFED! I ate so much today that I probably won’t eat for the next couple of days.

After a long work week, this weekend has been all about relaxing, decompressing and catching up on things. One of the things that I needed to catch up on was my Tivo. I was behind a couple of weeks on all of my shows – Hawaii Five-O, The Event, Criminal Minds, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Caprica. I spent pretty much all day Saturday getting caught up on all of these.

Today, with the weather being so nice, I headed out to the Wild Animal Park. It’s been awhile since I last photographed anything so what better way to spend my afternoon at one of my favorite places with my camera.

This also gave me the opportunity to use the 70-200mm lens again. I’m absolutely loving the images coming out of this lens.

I finally got around to looking at the Hoover Dam photos from my little photo walk with Drew a few weeks back. The whole experience was awesome since it was the first time I visited Hoover Dam and the first time I met Drew in real life. We went early evening just before sunset to avoid the large crowds and to take some pics of the dam at night.

Below are a few of my favorites.




I was really hoping to get a frontal photo of the dam at night but there was really no place to take that shot from.

Next time I’m at the Dam, I’ll try this photo again but from a higher vantage point.

So I just got done looking through the pics I took from the UC Irvine International Tournament. Considering this was only my second attempt shooting indoor volleyball, I’m okay with how the pictures came out.

Indoor volleyball is regarded as one of the toughest sports to photograph due to the combination of (typically bad) lighting and speed at which the game is played. ISO’s of 1600-3200 and shutter speeds of 500 and greater are usually required to “stop” the action. Fast lenses of f2.8 and below are a must. My poor Canon 50D was pushed to the limit and quite honestly it shows in the quality of the photos. Because I had to shoot at ISO3200, there was quite a bit of noise in all the pictures I took. I’m starting to realize if I want to continue shooting sports and indoor volleyball, I’ll have to start saving for better equipment.

Anyways, here’s a few of my favorites from the tourney this weekend.

I don’t even know where to begin. This past month has been extremely busy. First, I’ll start off with work. A couple of my co-workers were on vacation at various times this month so I had to step up and cover for them. This of course meant long hours at work. Although on some occasions, I had to stay late at work, it wasn’t as bad as I initially feared. With both of them back, it’s back to normal starting tomorrow since I took the day off today.

This past month, I also traveled to the Bay Area quite a bit. Three times to be exact. Once was personal, the other was for a wedding and third time was for AidsWalk SF.

After going home at the end of May for personal reasons, I wasn’t planning on returning to the Bay Area until July 18th for AidsWalk SF. I found out that my Mom, Dad and two little nephews were part of the wedding entourage for my cousin Edna’s wedding. My family wanted me to be there so they paid for my ticket so I could attend the wedding. I’m glad that I did. The wedding ceremony was beautiful and I had a great time at the reception. It also gave me the opportunity to use my DSLR, which as you’ve noticed by my lack of blog posts, I haven’t used lately. Below are a few of the images I took from the reception which was held at Hiddenbrooke Golf Club in Vallejo, CA.

The Bride and Groom – Edna and Jay

Maid of Honor Speech

(Yes-She’s reading her speech from her iPhone. )

Dad, Tobey, Joshua and Mom

Fairway at Hiddbrooke Golf Club

You can see the complete set of pictures that I took from the wedding here.
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