Lake Arrowhead 2010

wahoo! I finally figured out how to extract videos in 1080p. anyways here's a summary of our weekend staying at the Lake Arrowhead Resort Town home. Spectacular view of Lake Arrowhead every morning made it very relaxing. It was the perfect getaway combined with snowboarding on fresh powder! =)

Chinese Lunar New Year

Asian Garden Mall

I went to the Asian garden mall yesterday to buy gifts for the Chinese New Year which happens to land on Valentine's day this year. I feel sorry for people that live remotely close to that area. Trying to find parking was madness!!! Luckily OCC trained me well to stalk people for their parking spots lol. I actually wanted to buy my mother this pot of cool looking orchids, but when she told me the price of $450 I choked and gawked at the scene. Not to mention, these flowers only bloom once a year... You gotta be kidding me!?!?!? So your telling me, I have to water this thing 365 days a year for just a month or so to stare at these mini flower things? Some people are nuts. They even had this exotic carnivorous fly eating pitcher plants. I think I'll take the $10 potted orchids. haha =) Anyway, random people were singing on stage and the dragon dance people had their little performance at the front entrance. I wonder why little kids love to feed these guys money. I bet they could make a killing on the streets of Santa Monica! I remember as a little kid, I always wanted my own dragon costume. I ended our visit with the traditional tet game of "Loc Bo Cua" which translates to "shake cow crab" or something like that? It's a board game that consists of 6 squares. the dealer has under a bowl 3 dices and each side of the dice has a picture of one of the 6 squares(deer/crab/shrimp/rooster/fish/sake bottle). The idea of the game is you make your bet and hopefully one of the 3 dice will roll your number. You can bet as much as you want to win or loose =) but you have to know when to quit. This year they legally got the city to approve of it only on the day of(feb 14th), so when the dealers see a cop they quickly fold up the boards and pretend that they're not doing anything. It's a funny scene to see because these guys are super fast. I ended up winning like 30-50 bucks. Nothing serious but just enough to have a good time and that's what Chinese New Year is all about to me! =) Chuc Mung Nam Oi!

Environmental Portrait

So for my portraiture class I got paired up with William. Our first class assignment was to take an Environmental Portrait of each other. This was a little difficult for me because William didn't play any sports so we had to think of something. He used to take karate lessons when he was a kid so he put on his gear, and I told him to hold a sword as a prop lol. Apparently his mother is japanese so the house was very oriental. We took a few snaps inside but I then took the set to the front of the house where the big bamboo trees were which gave it an asian karate kid theme hehe. All in all, it turned out pretty good. Now it's time for my turn either tonight or sometime this weekend to take a picture of me.... what to do....

Nike Zoom Kobe V Bruce Lee

Me and Bui lined up this morning in LA at the Beverly Hills Center Mall to get a pair of the new Nike Zoom Kobe V Bruce Lee's. They only sold them at 3 stores in the US so they're somewhat rare. This is probably my first pair of shoes that are more for a collection that to wear. I then had a mini photo shoot with them. I really need to finish up my studio instead of editing all of it in photoshop. lol

Tomorrow is Superbowl! I'm hoping Peyton Manning will win it for the Colts!!! woot! woot!

Poster projects

So Andy had me design him a poster for the door of his room. Being a Jersey shore fan, he wanted it to have a fist pump theme that said "Enter fist pump here." I used my roll of Epson single weight Matte paper and programed my epson stylus pro 4880 to cut it at 17"x22"
hehe its so cool!


It turned out pretty good, so I decided to make a poster for myself. Tiffany had posted a picture up on facebook of a poster she wanted to buy of a corgi, so I decided to make my own version of it with Ryder's bath picture. =)

Totally Rad Photoshop Actions

Wahoo I just bought 2 of the 3 Photoshop action packages from TR. Can't wait to shoot & edit now! =)

however, this kinda puts all my photoshop classes to waste.....
I hope I don't get too lazy in the future and rely too much on it...

In the mean time, it is pretty fun to play with hehe.

this is actually one of the demo effects for the tr2 package.

one of the effects called rusty cage.


For this picture, I tested out the dirty picture actions along with some ez burn & contrast.