Edwin Villanueva

I love my family. How could you not? Happy New Year everyone!

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.

The US National Men’s Volleyball Team played their second Red/Blue scrimmage in as many weeks as preparation for the World Championships later this month in Italy. The Red Team were victorious winning 3-1 over the Blue squad. Most of the players that suited up today are part of the 19 player preliminary roster that will be trimmed down to 14, including two liberos, with 12 being chosen for each match. The team leaves for Italy in the following week and will be playing in the Pool with Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina. Best of luck guys. GO TEAM USA!

The following are some shots from the scrimmage today held at Golden West College in Huntington Beach, CA.