A couple of weeks ago, a coworker and I headed over to Oceanside to take some snapshots of the Pier during sunset. I realized I hadn’t been back since moving to Carlsbad last October, which is weird considering it’s just a short 10 minute drive from where I live. Anyways, it was my coworkers first time taking photos there so I was happy to show him key locations to be at as the sun was setting.

Here are a few of my favorites that I took. Enjoy!

Beautiful weather, great scenery, and 25,000+ people showing their support for a great cause – what more can you ask for? Below are some of the images I captured throughout the day. You can check out the full set here. Enjoy!

The start of the walk.

The memorial wall.

There was entertainment throughout the walk.

I love the interesting people I met.

It’s not AIDSWalk without the outrageous people. The guy on the right did the walk in heels!

And since this was at Golden Gate Park, there were alot of unique buildings, plant life and beautiful scenery.

Last Saturday, I participated in Scott Kelby’s 2nd Annual Worldwide Photo Walk in San Jose. It was a historic event as 32,000+ photographers attended 900+ similar walks around the world. In some of the larger cities and locations, there were multiple walks scheduled throughout the day. San Jose was one of those cities.

Our group was led by Frederick Van Johnson – Photographer, Writer, Instructor and Host of This Week in Photography Podcast (TWiP). Based on some of the gear fellow photographers were sporting, I’d say we had a good mixture of professionals and hobbyists.

The walk began and ended at Gordon Biersch, a well known brewery in the heart of downtown San Jose. From there, we were left to explore the wonders of downtown San Jose. There were so many things to shoot from modern buildings, art museums, parks, shops, clubs and even a cathedral. Throughout the walk, I got a chance to observe and speak to other photographers. It was a great opportunity for me to see first hand how other photographers shoot and compose shots. The pictures I’ve seen from the group have been fantastic. You can checkout some of the photos in the San Jose Flickr Group. Also checkout this short highlight video put together by Ni Ki Cruz Photography.

Personally, I had a blast even though I couldn’t attend the meet up afterwards at Gordon Biersch. Below are some of the photos I captured during the walk. You can checkout the full set here. Enjoy!

What a great weekend for shooting and being outdoors. I was back in San Jose this weekend to attend a couple events. The first was on Saturday for Scott Kelby’s 2nd Annual Worldwide Photo Walk in downtown San Jose. The second event was AIDSWalk San Francisco 2009 on Sunday held at Golden Gate Park. I’ll be blogging and posting more pictures from both events soon.

For now, I wanted to share my favorite picture from Saturday. This is one of my entries for Scott Kelby’s Photo Walk contest where he will select a Grand Prize winner and 10 Honorable Mention photos from thousands of participants all of the world who participated in this historic event.

While doing the Journey Into Africa Tour a couple of weeks ago at W.A.P, we had a brief encounter with this little guy on the trail. He was actually “outside the fences” so I’m not really sure he was part of the attraction. Nonetheless, he gave us a great photo opportunity.

Next to the Lion Camp and Cheetah exhibits, I love watching the Gorillas at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. I’ve always been fascinated by them since I was a little kid and being able to see them in such a close proximity has been a dream come true. I can literally sit for hours just watching them interact with each other.

Here are few facts about Gorillas:

- Gorillas are the largest of the living primates.

-The DNA of gorillas is 98%–99% identical to that of a human, and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after the chimpanzee species.

-Gorillas live in tropical or subtropical forests.

For more information, check out the Wikipedia on Gorillas.

Day 1 – I Love My Chucks

I bought my first pair of Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars this past weekend and I love them!. It was sort’ve by accident that I purchased these since I was going insane trying to find some Crocs Flip Flops. I never did find what I was looking for. So when I came across a sale at one of the shoe stores, I decided to buy these instead. I wore them for the first time today and I have to say they are extremely comfortable. Why I never had a pair before is beyond me. I’m thinking of getting multiple colors!

As they walked away, I was a little upset at myself for not having my dslr with me to take a better picture. I brought the camera but left it in the car thinking I wasn’t going to see anything worth photographing that I haven’t taken at the beach already. Lucky for me, the couple turned around and headed back in my direction. When I saw this, I rushed back to my car to get the dslr. The owners were nice enough to allow me to take a few snapshots of their beautiful and well trained bird.

I finally got the Canon 50D. I was actually saving for the Canon 40D. But after playing around with the 50D at the local Best Buy, I decided to spend a little extra and purchase the newer model. I couldn’t resist the 15 megapixel sensor, the higher resolution 920,000 dot LCD and the newer DIGIC 4 image processor.

I can’t wait to test this bad boy out!

Since being bitten by the shutter bug last year, I knew that I would out grow the Canon XTi that I owned for a little over a year. To be honest, I wish I had spent a little more and purchased the 40D when I first invested in a DSLR. I would’ve saved some money now considering the difference between a 40D vs. 50D is not as extreme as a XTi vs 40D. Anyways, now that I have a camera body that will allow me to be more flexible and creative, its time to start saving for better glass(lens).

Hopefully I can purchase my first L series lens sometime in September. It would be a great birthday present to myself!