Simple kind of shot

Today I shot a portrait of a local high school wrestler who is going to compete at the state meet. I used two lights and had him sit in a chair in-front of the teams logo in the wrestling room. It was a simple way to make an interesting image, anyway here's my favorite shot from today. To view the full story go here

Girls CIF Water Polo Finals

I spent yesterday covering two local high schools water polo teams in both of their final games. Here are a couple shots from the days coverage, and to view all of them click here

CIF Finals

Every fall, and spring I end up traveling out of town to cover local high school athletes compete in CIF finals for their respective sports. Yesterday I covered two such events, one was a cross country final at Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, the other was a division two water polo final match, in Irvine. I'm not gonna go into the details of the events, other than the fact that it was raining all day, and I got completely soaked covering the cross country, it did manage to stop raining for the water polo though. Anywho here are some images, hope you enjoy, and to view more from these events go here.

Wild one's

Where the wild things are, is one of the most iconic children stories from the past fifty years, and the other day I covered a group of first graders reciting the book word-for-word. I am normally terrified to cover any type of performance by elementary school students, not because they're bad, but because they're awful! These kids on the other hand did an amazing job. They read the book and at the end, all the kids jumped off stage and ran around their parents in the audience acting like the little wild things they are. Here's a link to a couple more shots from this wild event!

Dirty day

Here are a few images from an event I covered about a month ago, it was the Lake Elsinore Gladiator run. Basically it was a mud run, where runners got a chance to soak themselves with a bath of nice refreshing mud after running a 5k. I personally think a dip in the Jacuzzi would suffice but some people really love mud. Anyway here is a link to more images from the event, enjoy! Mud run

Its gettin hot out there

Well its that wonderful time of year again, when school starts, the nights start getting cooler, and the hills of California catch fire. Today was the first real brush fire I have covered this season, but there have been a few already. Its always sad to see the destruction these blazes can cause, but luckily this fire was limited to consuming brush. Here are a few images from the fire that burned around 85 acres near the La Creasta, Santa Rosa Plateau area.







To view more images from the fire click Here

Gods love

Sometimes being a member of the media is hard, keeping your own opinions to yourself and covering events without letting your own views get in the way of the stories you are trying to tell. Today was one of those days. I live in a relatively small town called Temecula, sometimes we do have big events, but for the most part its a sleeper community comprised of young family's, retired wine drinkers, and some right wing supporters ( not that being right wing is bad, its just that they tend to be less compassionate to others view points). With those facts the diversity in this town is very meek, so when the Temecula Islamic Center planned to get permits to build their new mosque on land they purchased ten years ago, right next to a baptist church, lets just say it didn't go over to well with all of the less than open minded people who comprise this valley.



So today a group of anti-Islamic protesters set out to ruin the centers Friday prayer services. They attempted to do this by bringing dogs with them, having women dress in reveling clothing and also by having women sing. None of these attempts really came to be for them however. They ended up with two dogs, and maybe about thirty protesters, I was told by one of them "the lack of turn out was do to an Islamic e-mail sabotage that was sent out to trick the protesters into thinking the protest wasn't going to happen".



The low turn out didn't stop them from protesting though, they came out with megaphones, signs, and a few chants. I guess one of them even decided to drive up and down the street shouting profanities at the existing Temecula Islamic Center.
Now I have nothing against protesting, its what makes this country great, you don't like something or someone, grab a badly made cardboard sign and stand on the street corner shouting at other people to let them know how you feel. This group however, was only about one thing, HATE! Hate for a religion they know nothing about. Most of them talked about love, and how much their "God" loved everyone, but really the only true emotion I felt coming from them was hate!



The most interesting thing for me was how on one side of the street there were protesters talking about how evil Islam is, and how all it teaches is how to kill all those who don't believe. Then on the other side of the street were the Islamic supporters sitting very peacefully and then at one point a few of them came over to the anti-Islamic protesters with roses thanking them for coming out to voice their concerns. This is not the image of hate and evil the protesters painted in their signs and words.

After the events of September 11th this country lost a lot, and one of those things we lost was trust, and one of the biggest groups we lost trust in is Islam. However Its been almost ten years, we have destroyed two country's and lost thousands of our own soldiers lives invading countries we have no business being in. Isn't it time to learn from our own mistakes and stop blaming a religion that just so happens to have some fundamentalist who dislike the amount of freedom our country has to offer.
To view more images from this event go to http://bit.ly/9Dh0rb