Photoshop Power
I’ve always been disappointed with the photos I take whenever I go travel. For instance, when I went on a roadtrip from NJ to CA the photos did not do the actual sights any justice. So I decided to save up some cash and purchase an SLR—I’m getting the Canon rebel t2i next week!!! However, as it turns out, photography is not all about the camera, it’s also about the post-modifications you make to your images. Anyway, I was messing around with photoshop lately and I really wanted to tweak this image I had of torrey pines in San Diego. It was a nice shot but it had poor lighting. Here’s the before and after photos: [caption id=”attachment_131” align=”aligncenter” width=”1024” caption=”Torrey Pines - Before Photo”]
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[caption id=”attachment_132” align=”aligncenter” width=”1024” caption=”Torrey Pines - After Photo”]
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I basically adjusted hue, saturation, and lighting. Pretty cool huh? I know it might be overkill but I like it. =]
Rendezvous Review
[caption id=”attachment_138” align=”aligncenter” width=”1024” caption=”Red Rock Rendezvous - Chris, Elaine, and I”]
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Two of my good friends from NJ stayed over to visit me in San Diego last week. It was a pretty action-packed week filled with epic adventures around SoCal and Vegas. Over the weekend, we actually went to a rock climbing festival at the Red Rock Canyon in Vegas called the Red Rock Rendezvous. It’s the biggest climbing event in the US that’s hosted by mountaingear yearly. Climbers from all around the country come and gather to socialize, eat, drink beer, learn more about climbing, and of course… CLIMB!
Last weekend was actually my first time climbing outdoors; I also haven’t camped outside in years, and I must say… the whole experience of driving to Vegas, staying in a tent, meeting people with similar interests, and climbing a frikin’ canyon was such a life-changing experience. Yes, life-changing (I’m not exaggerating). What made the experience even more interesting was the fact that our first night there was literally the windiest night ever. As we were trying to sleep in our tent we could hear the wind rushing over the canyon, and after a few seconds, that same wind would twist our tent it in many different directions (the roof kept hitting my friend in the face). It felt like the end of the world. As we stepped out of our tent at 6am with about an hour of sleep—it was still windy—many campers left and decided to stay at hotels, others lost their tent cause of the wind, while the lucky few still had their tents up. Yeah… we were one of them! Ironically, although the climbing, drinking, socializing, hiking, etc. was really fun, that night was actually my favorite part of the trip. At that moment of misery (at least what others would consider as misery), although my body was yearning for sleep my mind kept me wide awake and well aware of what was happening. Yes it was windy, but at that moment I couldn’t help but smile and think to myself—”Wow, this is AWESOME!” It was that feeling of a newly found hobby that I can truly find myself being passionate about—not only for a few days, but for my entire life. I was ecstatic. Climb on!!!!!!