Annamarie Rhyne's Graduation Party images, October 19, 2013

I'm very late on uploading this, so blame my crazy schedule runs.

I had the privilege to attend my friend Annamarie's graduation party back in October. She completed a Nursing program that she's been taking and I went to congratulate and show support for her culmination. While being there, I was talking to her friends and her family members and having great conversations with them, and they also served Tamales that were delicious. Here are some of the few images I took with my Nikon 35mm film SLR. Must respect and thanks to Annamarie.

Growing and Going So Fast

Obviously, I don't like deaths. I don't like to hear about celebrities in the news that much more. I don't even like hearing about celebrity deaths.

But Paul Walker's death last Saturday was tragic. His life abruptly ended from a car accident at Santa Clarita that he was riding. The worst part was that he was riding shotgun instead of behind the wheel. I do not know him personally and I've never met or seen him in person, yet, that dude was in several well known films, as well as the Fast and Furious franchise for the past 12 years.

I vividly remember the first ever Fast and Furious movie that dropped when I was in 7th grade (going on to 8th grade) back in 2001. I didn't watch it until two years later during my sophomore year in high school. My homeboy Cory was planning to bring a brick of DVDs to class on this one Friday in homeroom when we weren't scheduled to read books on that day. However, there was no DVD player in the classroom, so I volunteered to provide my brother's Playstation 2 to be used as the DVD Player. The following week, just as I disconnected the Playstation 2 to take to school, both of my parents got very heated and started going off about viewing movies in school, especially at the part when I told them that my homeroom teacher wanted me to bring a DVD player since there was none in the classroom. So my parents made me take the DVD player from the big screen TV instead so that my brother's console wouldn't get jacked or something. That shit was heavy.

So I brought the unit to class and Cory selected the first Fast and Furious video to watch in the class. Again, that was my first time watching this film and already, it got me entertained. We only saw the first 20 minutes of it cause that's how long homeroom lasted. After school, I went back to my homeroom to pick up my family's heavy-ass DVD player to take back home. I had to walk home by carrying that shit. I placed the unit and connected it back to the big screen TV as I got home later. Then afterwards that evening, my pops called me and found Cory's Fast and Furious DVD that was left in there. I thought that he was gonna flip when he saw that, but he just gave it to me without saying a thing. I had to wait till Monday to give it back to Cory, so I figured I watch the rest of the movie during the weekend until them. I thought that was a cool ass movie, with alot of street racing action coming from Paul Walker and Vin Diesel's characters in the film.

I didn't think that this film would keep having countless sequels later throughout the forthcoming years. I watched the Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift which was just fucking shit. To me, I kept thinking that the producers should quit making these Fast and Furious films since its showing that Hollywood is out of creative ideas and just turning hit movies into brands and franchises as financial gain. Again, it was very sad to hear about what happened to Paul Walker. They were still in the middle of production and Principal photography for the seventh Fast and Furious film which is scheduled to be released sometime next year. My guess is that they will have to continue production by alternating the script which "writes off" Paul Walker's character from the movie or just re-shoot the entire seventh movie again. From a filmmaker's perspective, that shit is alot of money and time to re-shoot a film. Very emotional to many just from hearing this. Hope the best for Paul Walker's family and the Fast and Furious cast and production crew.

That, along with hearing about motherfuckers getting jumped and ran over for a $75 big screen TV set at various stores during Black Friday, was the only downfall of that Thanksgiving weekend. The rest of that weekend was mostly positive.

During Thanksgiving, I mostly spent it with the family, just the pops and the siblings. I picked up the little brother from LAX, with my step-mom's Benz instead of the Taxicab, since he was visiting for the weekend from his University in the east coast. Haven't seen him since he left back in August. It was great catching up with him again. I was planning on going to my homegirl Amber's house for Thanksgiving again this year, but my pop's wife is out of the country for now, so I stayed home to keep my pops company for Thanksgiving. We had the usual blessing and Thanksgiving dinner in the dining table. Its been forever since we've done that. The next day on Friday, I worked at the airport and it was fucking slow. Spent hours in the taxicab holding lot waiting to be sent to a terminal. I picked up a few trips from LAX that entire Friday which was alright.

On Saturday, I went to the bank, the car wash for the Prius since it rained the previous day, and then to Primitive Shoes and Apparel to pick up some t-shirts. I was there the Saturday before for the release of their collaboration pack that the did with DJ Clark Kent and Nike SB. I originally was gonna pick up some of Primitive's Holiday '13 gear that Saturday, but I figured I'd give it a shot to try out for obtaining those Nike SB's. After standing in line for an hour, I went in only to find out that all the large sizes (I'm a size 12) were sold. The only had a 11.5 left which was the biggest. I tried it on, in which it fits. The disadvantage was that the show was too damn tight and a bit light for my feet. Instead, I just copped a t-shirt and a Primitive X New Era that goes with those shoes. Not to be confused, I got the hat and t-shirt two Saturdays ago, and I was at Primitive the recent Saturday just to some more shirts. I'm always there.

The line from the DJ Clark Kent X Nike SB X Primitive 112 collab release. I showed up late which is why I wasn't able to get my size.

Like I said, instead of those shoes, I picked up a Primitive X New Era fitted with a 3M reflective bill and one of Primitive Apparel's new t-shirts from the Holiday '13 line, featuring the "Paint Splatter" design.

Another Primitive Apparel t-shirt that I purchased two days ago. This is the "Lazy Sunday" t-shirt. I decided to get this in the Sea Foam color since I have several black t-shirts featuring Primitive's sexy models. 

After that I stopped by Mulberry Street Pizzeria to get a quick slice of Pizza and then I drove off to Pacoima to my highschool classmate Marissa's place for her oldest daughter's birthday party. Before I landed there, I stopped at Target to get some coloring books and crayons for her kid, as well as some balloons for the other kids that were gonna attend. This was my second time being there. I was there two months earlier for her other twin daughter's birthday party. But this one for her oldest daughter was great. Had some conversations with Marissa's family members and ate alot of the food they provided. I didn't take too many photos there, but here's one of them:

Marissa getting a pretend glitter tattoo by her daughter during the birthday party. 

Later that night, I went to my friend Natasha's crib, another old high school classmate of mine, at the other side of the Valley. I brought my copy of the Pirates of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Blu-Ray video to watch with her since she's never watched it. I also hooked her up with the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides movie poster that I got from the private World Premiere viewing at the El Capitan Theater a week before it officially came out two years ago and I lent her the DVD version of the film since the video is a Blu-Ray/DVD combination pack. Also in attendance was her boyfriend and her daughter. Its was great catching up with them again. Thank's again Natasha for inviting me.

I'll end this post here. I'll got another tight week ahead of me in this last month of the year. I'll update this blogsite whenever I have some fresh extra time. Thanks for your time reading this.

Weekday Update

As of right now, I'm currently in the middle of a packed agenda for today. I just came back from the YMCA in Porter Ranch, courtesy of the 1 week free guest pass, and now I have to drive over the hill to pick up customers at LAX Airport for the rest of this Tuesday. I haven't been into the Y (as they now call it) in 12 years. I went to take advantage of their gym by lifting weights and running on their treadmills, cause I don't want to build up calories by sitting on my ass in a Prius for about 12 hours a day, so I'm only doing this just to keep the body active. The uninteresting part is that I have to stay away from fast food joints and Mulberry Street Pizza for a while and focus on a consuming healthier stuff and drinking lots of water.

I thought that I would take the time to keep this blog relevant and update y'all on some quick things. I have been very busy as usual for the past several days. I just got a new printer/scanner/copier at the new Wal-Mart in Simi Valley, which is across from the Walgreens that I used to do security at 4 years ago when it was being built. I was actually coming from Ventura Country to escape the Valley for a bit and then I chilled at the San Buenaventura State Beach as I was there. Man, I used to go there all the time when I lived in Oxnard back in the Summer of 2006. Before I went to the 805 (Ventura County's area code), I was in Malibu, and then I was planning on taking the Pacific Coast Highway all the way up to Ventura County, but the tires on the Prius were almost and I didn't feel comfortable driving on the PCH in that condition, so I just stayed on the 101 Freeway to get to Ventura. After that on my way back home, I took the 23 Freeway to the 118 Freeway and then that when I decided to cop the printer. It's kinda unusual for Simi Valley to have two Wal-Marts within a 2 mile radius, but to each is their own.

As far as the new printer, I really like it. Its extremely fast in printing Microsoft Word documents and scanning the images is alot clearer than my old printer/scanner. I got it for $60. They had one for about 40 dollars I think, but I wanted a printer with a bit more performance. I could've got that same model for a lower price during Wal-Mart's "Black Friday" sales next week, but I don't feel like staying in a long ass line and risk getting ran over by some mothers who only live off their ex-husband's credit cards once the doors open. Plus, nowadays, the stores now open on Thanksgiving Day instead of the following Friday morning at 6AM. Well, all I can say is that the economy for the past few years has done some interesting shit in corporate businesses. Now that I got a decent printer, my schedule is gonna be more compressed than before.

Here are a few images I photographed from that day..

Stopped at Malibu for a bit while driving on the PCH from Santa Monica.

The Pacific Ocean along with the sunset from San Buenaventura State Beach

An Ansel Adams-ish type image of two women strollin' along the coast

Seagulls just flyin' and chillin' as usual

The HP Deskjet 2542 printer/scanner/copier and some I picked up after coming from Ventura, along with some photopaper (which I got from the Target behind the Wal-Mart) and regular printing paper. 

Some of the images I tested out printing of some friends I photographed.

I also copped a desk lamp from Wal-Mart as well.

Here's a video I took demonstrating the printer by printing out a high resolution image I took of Miley Cyrus at the Bolt red carpet premiere I covered 5 years ago, back when I doing paparazzi work.

Speaking of which, here's another video of I took on the red carpet covering the Bolt world premiere. Damn, already 5 years ago this week. Time fucking flies.

Anyway, like I said, just wanted to give a brief update so far. I still have several photographs I'm working on. Just halfway there finishing up on Allegra Figueroa's's baby shower which I'm currently touching up, then to scan and touch up two birthday parties I photographed this summer, and finally to develop and process my friend's kids Halloween parade photos and a my friend's daughters birthday party I took pictures at. So much work, but it gots to be done. If you're not doing something, do anything. Thanks for your time reading this.

Tim Middleton Lifestyle Photosession

Recently, a few weeks ago, I did a photoshoot of my friend Tim in around Encino and Lake Balboa. I met him on Twitter around two years ago and then in person a year later at Primitive Shoes and Apparel, which we both have the same interest there among other things like women and sneakers. Its been a while since I did a legit photosession.

The only difference with this session and my previous ones is that these photos were taken with my iPhone 5, because due to my busy schedule, I didn't have time to drive down to Samy's Camera or any other photography store to by some rolls of film for my Nikon N70 camera, which I was originally going to use for this. Anyway, the photos turned out great and it was also great working with Tim on capturing these images of him.

Support and follow up on Tim at these links 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tim_818

Instagram: http://instagram.com/tim818

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/tim818

Tumblr: http://freshavenue.tumblr.com/

Those That Unlikes The Rest

As unsurprisingly always, I haven't been updating this blogsite for almost the past month. October has been such a packed month that I haven't had at least 2 full days of rest. My sleeping pattern had gotten fucked up and also I find myself still averaging 110 miles a day while driving. Fuel consumption wise, I know that's nothing since I drive a Prius, but shit, I'm somewhere stuck in traffic everyday. Also I'm at LAX picking up people every five days and that is one of the busiest days for me. Its weird cause everytime my assigned airport day approaches, it felt like I was just at the Airport the previous day. In this taxicab job, time goes by VERY quick. Again, I'm only doing this as a side job for now while I'm still focused on photography.

Speaking of LAX, there was shooting incident that just happened over there a few hours ago today as they reported a TSA employee was shot dead at the Virgin America terminal inside the airport. Then all kinds of shit broke lose as the FAA had to ground arriving flights and evacuate passengers who were about to board on their flights to start their weekend vacation or whatever business travels they have to do. I had to mention this cause again, I'm always at that airport every week picking up people (or dropping them off sometimes) and I even typed about my dispute with one of the security there last year.

The Los Angeles International Airport is one the biggest and most important airports in this country, if not the world. Its a gateway entry to the United States for those coming from various countries around the world. In the eight and a half months of picking up customers from there, I got more appreciated at LAX as much as I use to dislike going there before I started driving taxicabs. I've met all kinds of different people from many different states and countries. Hell, I've driven people who have never been to the United States before and I'm one of the first people that they encounter in this country. I've had some who don't even speak a word of English which was very challenging. But to have an incident like the one that just happened there earlier is the very last headline you do not want to hear. From reading the updated news (from various different sources), they said that the bloke just started firing at the security checkpoint and as I'm typing this, the announced that the shooter himself was killed.

It really sucks to hear and discuss about this. Everywhere you go, there's always some type of person that unexpectedly crashes the party and destroys the fun for no unanswered reason. There's all kinds of different people out there, with different personalities. Some desperately want attention while there are some that do not want to be bothered. I was planning on creating a blogpost this past week, but this shit just unexpectedly happened and I wanted to bring it up. Thankfully, I'm not working at the Airport today, yet, that shit blows if I was assigned to work there today.

Aside from all that, I haven't been writing or uploading photos on Facebook too much. I still have hundreds of images that I planned to share on there, but it just that I need to find the right time to work on them due to my crazy schedule. Working on photos to scan, retouch, process, edit and upload takes up so much time. There are time when it even takes me a full day just to work on one event. So keep a lookout for those photographs. I'm also mostly on Instagram and Twitter alot more, so stay in touch with me on those two social networks and please leave some supportive feedback, which is great.

Twitter: @justforsneaks
Instagram: @justforsneaks07

I'm planning on creating two more instagram profiles and a possibility of returning to Tumblr again just to showcase and promote my work. Stay tuned for that as I discuss that later this month. Since its now November, there's gonna be at least 3 different birthdays everyday and corporate companies are gonna push the shit out of manipulating.... I mean promoting and flooding everyone with the "holiday spirit". I don't even wanna talk about the holidays right now, cause as seriously dull as it sounds, I have work that needs to be finished so that I can take my own holiday break.

I'll end this post here. I have to go take the little brother's Ford Taurus to get it serviced right now. Thanks for your time reading this and have a fun, safe November.

That Holy Water Thirst...

Wow. No comment. 

Speaking of films, I saw Gravity last night. I'll discuss it along with the rest of the weekend recap tomorrow or Wednesday. 

That Was The Same

After this past weekend, Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook is all like: "These fucks bought the same phone... AGAIN!"

Apparently, the new iPhones, the 5s and the 5c models, were released last Friday. Both of them replaced the iPhone 5, which is the current mobile device that I have. I watched the keynote presentation that introduced the devices and to be realistic, there wasn't that much of surprises. 

Most of the features on the phone were already mentioned and leaked out by the Apple rumor sites since the iPhone 5 was introduced a year ago. They were spilling out stuff like Apple is supposedly making a cheap plastic version of the iPhone, which incase is the iPhone 5c. Then they also said other stuff such as the next flagship iPhone is gonna come in gold. I didn't believe that part at first, but apparently, Apple did released a gold version of the iPhone 5s. In other words, about at aleast 80% of the information on the rumor sites are legit nowadays. I remember back when the late Steve Jobs was around and back during my days working at the Apple Store 5 years ago, rumor sites were just rumor sites. At that time, if they did leak something from Apple that was legitimate, then they would have to scrap that design prototye and start on a new one. It mostly coincides with their notebooks and iPods, but with their cell phones, they have to show the actual products months in advance so that the Federal Communications Commission and the government have to approve it before it sells. 

I checked out both iPhones the day after it was released and to me, they were pretty much the same as my current iPhone 5. I think the difference makes more sense if you're into fast graphics First Person Shooting games on the device now that it comes with the new A7 processor, but other than that, its still the same device. The only new feature that got me interested was the ability to shoot slow motion video on the camera app thanks to its ability to shoot video footage in 120 frames per second. That shit was tight. 

The iPhone 5c in person does look like a kids toy, and it also looks like an iPod Touch with a big ass case. I really don't see too many people using the iPhone 5c. I think they should've released that phone to lower end, affordable no-contract providers like Metro PCS or Virgin Mobile, so that it can really distinct itself from the high end, rich-looking iPhone 5s. I think what they also should've done is make the Gold color only exclusive to one cell phone company like AT&T, who were the original providers for the iPhone since day one. Yet, that won't happen cause according to Tim Cook, he and the company wants that device to be accessible and used by more people thank before. In other words, he just wants to kick Samsung's ass alot in sales and numbers now that Samsung is significantly popular and releasing a different device every other week or some shit like that. Finally, the Touch ID feature is very suspect. Imagine being passed out and your girl takes your thumb like a detective and uses it to unlock your phone, just to see all the half naked chicks that you liked on your instagram profile. It can be done. 

Would I purchase the iPhone 5s? Not right now. I'm still cool with my iPhone 5. The only think that fucked up the interest were the predictable leaks and the lack of features on the 5s. I really don't anyone should jump ship from the 5 to the 5s (or the 5c of course). Hell, the 4s is still a good ass phone, but to each it own for those who want to stay on top of technology nowadays. Time to get used to seeing alot of fake looking rich women holding the Gold iPhone 5s as if it were some fashion accessory.

So what else happened this month?

-The Los Angeles Dodgers clinched the National League West to become the division champions. Then they went adult swimming at the swimming pool in Chase Field after defeating division rival Arizona Diamondbacks to clinch the title that day. Why the hell would Chase Field have a swimming pool at a baseball field? For those rich fucks who aren't interested in watching the sport? 

-Miley Cyrus still making headlines by dressing up as a methamphetamine experiment gone wrong from an episode of Breaking Bad during one of her live performances and photoshoots. Her pops seems cool with it, I assume. 

- The video game Grand Theft Auto V released last week, which made a billion dollars just three days after it dropped. Not into video games that much anymore, but I'd rather have that game be launched at the same time as the upcoming Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 to make it more special. Now fools will be delaying homework assignments and date nights in exchange for pretending to hi-jack numerous cars by driving them off the cliffs and rivers. 

-Drake's Nothing Was the Same record came out today. Like the iPhone 5s , that album was leaked weeks before it dropped. I was playing as I typed it, and it was really decent. I liked the progression and creativity of the beats and rhythms more than the lyrics that will be re-quoted more times than the transcript of The Big Lebowski. His crew had opened up a pop up shop on Fairfax last week to promote the album, by giving away free t-shirts. I didn't plan on attending this, but I had to drop off somebody in Hollywood and I thought I check it out just for the hell of it. When I got there at around 3, the time that it was scheduled to be opened, I knew there was gonna be a long line, but NOT A LINE THAT WAS EXTENDED AROUND AN ENTIRE BLOCK.That shit was like camping out for a pair of Supreme Vans down the street or something. Majority of the kids in line came from Fairfax High School across the street. After wasting two hours with the line slowing moving, we were all informed that the t-shirts were sold out. Later on, we also learned that Drake himself made a brief appearance and everyone started going to the back and chasing the black Chevy Suburban that he hopped on with his posse. I didn't see him that day, and like I said, I wasn't planning on seeing him that day. A brilliant marketing publicity stunt pulled off well. 

Anyway, thanks for your time reading this. Enjoy the rest of Autumn.