Culminating Blog Reflection

       Overall, this opportunity that the Capstone gave me to expand mu knowledge was amazing. Having photography as my topic definitely worked both my critical and creative thinking, because there's a lot of situations and thinking in order to capture a master piece. A lot of organization came into this project, mainly because I had to somehow shove in some hours of photography into my booked schedule. When I am out getting some hours done, I am always asking myself "Is this scenery or object worth being captured on my camera?" During my first few hours, most of the time went into communicating with my mentor. She gave me a lot of ideas and paper that gave me a good insight into photography. Later as a I got more hours, the communication died slowly, this was a method my mentor gave me in order to practice and improve. The communication increased slowly as my mentor and i met up again. She saw how my skills of photography has improved so much from the first day I used a manual camera.
      My experience from the capstone project expanded my creativity. I grew up thinking that building things with legos would make me really creative, but photography made me even more creative than I thought I could be. Photography didn't improve me socially, but it definitely increase my intellectual mind. A lot of factors had to be thought through in order to decrease my chances of making mistakes. The main thing that the capstone essay did to me was help me think outside the box.
      The main challenge I encountered with throughout the project was my lack of patience, because photography is extremely time consuming. Especially using a manual camera, having to adjust the aperture and the shutter speed made me extremely impatient. If anyone was to see my common mistake, it would usually be because I would just take the picture, rather than manually adjusting the camera. This was a silly mistake that could be fixed easily, because the more I went out, the more I became patient. Improving my patient was way more simpler than I thought it would be, because it  just took time for me to adjust to this new experience.

The Final Hours of Photography April 26, 2014

For the last two hours of taking pictures, I drove around South San Francisco and shot some pictures around the areas.  Specific sights that I went to finish up my business were orange park, my school, and a small area near my house. I have to admit, I put a lot of effort and energy into these final hours, because I learned how to love and appreciate what a camera can do. During these final hours, I realized how amazing photography is to me, because it will be a hobby that i'll definitely be doing throughout my life.

Time logged: 2hrs
Total Time Logged: 25 hrs

Adventuring around UCSB April 20, 2014

     Not much happened during this hour except for some photo shooting around UCSB. The campus was definitely gorgeous with all the trees and lakes around me. The hour went by really fast, but I got a good amount of photos in that sixty minutes. I mainly practiced my blurring technique with plants and flowers I thought would be pretty cool. I wish I had more time to take the pictures,  but this gives me to do more adventuring and photo shooting.

Time logged: 1 hour
Total time logged: 23 hours

White Waves Makes Clear Skies Through My Lens April 20, 2014

        Finally Spring break has began! This meaning I can take some photos farther from home! During this time, I went down to LA with my sister for spring break. When we got down to LA, my sister took me to Santa Monica to eat and also to take some photos. We spent two good hours going around the area to take some pictures and eat. I took all sort of photos over there. Pictures from food to gorgeous pictures of the ocean. The area was really cool, especially how there was an amusement park right next to the beach. My sister and I went around that area to take pictures of the roller coaster and the ferris wheel. After taking pictures around the amusement park, we went down to the beach where we took photos around the beach. The area was huge, so we didn't go too far with the pictures, but I was able to take some remarkable pictures. I have to admit i thought my photos wouldn't come out too well. Problems I had to overcome was dealing with large crowd. There were so many people and cars in the way, which created some frustration and impatience feelings inside of me. Now with the hours I have though, I've grown more experience with these type of situations. Patience definitely enabled me to take the pictures I took during those times.

Time logged: 2hrs
Total Time Logged: 22hrs

A Day of Absolute Productivity March 30, 2014

      Man, I have never done so much walking like this in so long... Pretty much I spent my morning at Church, which is located in China Town near North Beach. After worship, I went down to pier 39 to take some pictures and to do some adventuring. I even took pictures on my way down to the pier because the weather was gorgeous and the community was just presentable. Finally when we got the the pier, my sister brought me around to the harbor, which gave me a pretty good scenery of Alcatraz and both the bay bridge and golden gate bridge. Continuing on our adventure, we then stopped near this place where there was a numerous amount of seals tanning and doing what seals do best. I definitely took this opportunity to get some pretty good shots of seals playing and tanning. After doing some photo-shooting, I then had a basketball tournament to play at for my church. I had to walk back to the gym, and while doing so. I took pictures of everything I saw. When I wasn't playing during the tournament, I would take action shots of the people playing basketball. Some pictures came out better than others, but it was pretty fun taking pictures of people shooting, dribbling, and just playing in general. These hours I spent definitely got the best of my body, but hey! It was worth every single minute of the experience.

Time logged for this session: 3 hours
Total Time Logged: 20 hours

Nature Brings Peace March 29, 2014

      On this wet day, my parents brought me to a really nice place called Muir Woods to get some good hours. This place was literally filled with tall red wood trees and nice looking greens, which gave me the opportunity to practice some photo-shooting. The only problem about the area was that it was drizzling a bit, that then made me cautious, because I didn't want my camera to be ruined. On the other hand.... I really enjoyed my time out there working on blurring photos and zooming into objects. The goal of these few hours was to experience taking photos in some sort of "wilderness," because I was out there and it felt like I was taking pictures at the forest. The only good part of the wet weather, was that wetness created a pretty reflection, which gave more details and light to the objects I took photos of. Overall these hours I obtained from Muir Woods expanded my knowledge of taking in-depth photos. I was able to take pictures of flowers  while adding more texture and color to it's appearance.

Time Logged: 2 hours
Total time: 17 hours

Adventure Time! March 22, 2014

       Man where do I even start.... Well I guess I can say that I went on a trip to Reno, but on my way we stopped by various places to go adventuring and take pictures. First we stopped by for breakfast in San Francisco, thus gave me the opportunity to take pictures. I have to admit long car rides definitely sucks, but what can I do to kill time? Take pictures of course! I took pictures of the bay bridge, down town San Francisco, and the hills we passed by.
       We stopped by Sacramento State to check out the campus and to go exploring. I took so many pictures, but mainly of squirrels running around and doing what they do. It was so cool seeing the squirrels react to my whistle and actually, these squirrels have the guts to walk up to anyone including me. It took tons of patience to get the squirrels to stand the way I wanted them to stand. Moving on to the other things in that campus, I took pictures of a very cool bridge, which was designed as a "miniature"-size  golden gate bridge. There I took pictures of my family and everything around the bridge. There was a river that flowed under the bridge, which made the bridge look even more legit. I spent two good hours around the campus being adventurous and put my camera to good use.
        On our way to Reno, I took some pictures of some snow that we passed by and some other pretty scenery up on the mountains. Having a sister that cares, she pulled up to the side where tourists or anyone can stop to enjoy the nice scenery. I played around with the shutter and amplitude to obtain the best filter of the snow and the trees up on the mountains.
        Overall, I spent seven good hours taking pictures in the car and everywhere I gone in this trip. I finally had the opportunity to be away from home not only to have a small trip, but to get some hours done and to enjoy my time taking good photos. Every hour I would take around 10- 20 pictures of anything that seemed amusing to these eyes of mine.

Time logged for this session: 6 hrs
total time logged: 15 hrs

Splash! March 15, 2014

         Swimming is a huge part of my life, I pretty much grew up swimming competitively and for fun. Pretty much the swimming pool is like my second home because I spend hours in there swimming and working.
        On a nice sunny day, I decided to take advantage of the nice weather to go shoot some photos at my school's pool during practice. It was awesome mainly because the weather was nice and the pool just looked gorgeous from the lighting of the sun. I went around the pool taking different angle shots, playing with my camera's features, and just enjoying my time capturing shots. Action shots were definitely the main core of this hour, because every small move that a swimmer makes is worth the moment to take a picture of.




Time logged in for this session: 1 hr
Total time logged: 9 hrs

Photography Up and Beyond February 2, 2014

         Though Saturday didn't have the best weather to take some pictures, it didn't stop me from wanting to take advantage of my free time to go get some photography done. I drove and walked up to sign hill holding all my equipment that I would need to get work done. The walk was quite miserable, but it was definitely worth the view I got up there. I could get the whole view of South San Francisco easily by looking down. I quickly went to work taking all sorts of pictures. I was amazing having this opportunity to take photos of a city with so much different culture. Next time when I go back up there to take photos, I hope the weather will be sunnier than it was that day.



Time Logged for this session: 1 hr
Total Time logged: 8 hr

Quad Game Frebruary 13, 2014

Because I am a huge fan of basketball, I decided to go to one of our quad games which was against El Camino. This mainly focused upon my ability to take action shots, which took a lot of patience and precision to do so. It was hard at first because everything was coming out blurry or slow, thus became quiet irritating because everything seemed to challenging to do. I took a lot of time adjusting the amplitude and shutter speed of my camera. Finally when the boys varsity game started, I was able to adjust my camera to the way I want it to function. My feelings was definitely great as the boys varsity was playing. It was quite unfortunate though when my camera ran out of batteries, because that's when the game got exciting and emotions were high. Taking pictures of a basketball game had it's sweets and sours, but it was  definitely a good opportunity to take some awesome pictures of basketball. 

Time logged for this session: 3 hrs

Total time logged: 7 hrs

Adventuring January 25, 2014

Today my mentor came over to my house and reviewed some basic information that I learned from the last session. After a bit of reviewing, we went to my backyard where we put the camera to some good use. My mentor gave me a good half an hour mastering some techniques into taking some pretty cool pictures. It took me quite the time though to figure out how to balance out the lighting when I was standing in a sunny side. After that, my mentor showed me how to change the shutter speed of a camera. This gives the camera to take an action shot, like a picture of someone jumping. This pretty much tested my reaction skills, because I had to take the picture at the right timing, or else the picture would look really awkward. After fooling around with that, I decided to drive down to Orange park to review some technique work I've learned with the camera that day. I pretty much just walked around the park taking pictures of different areas. I think my photography skills are improving bit by bit, but I still got a long way to go!


Time logged for this session: 3 hrs
Total time logged: 4 hrs

Great Way to Start the Project!

       Today was the first hour I completed for my Capstone Project! I went out to Skyline College to get a nice scenery of the pacific ocean and the environment around me. I probably spent a good half an hour there taking some photos and getting use to the camera. It's a lot of work at first trying to adjust the camera to take a picture, but it was a great first experience!

       Later on today, I had the chance to meet up with my mentor. She gave me some notes on basic vocabulary about photography and it's function. These three words all had to do with adjusting the camera to different lighting, so that it would be easier to take a photo. At first it was quite a challenge to adjust the Aperture for the lighting (controls how much light comes in through the lens.) Overall, I'm really excited to go more in depth with the use of a camera! This is going to be a really fun project.

1 hour