Choosing a career of my own.

This summer I took my time to explore myself. I let myself open up to new experiences and somehow discover the person who I wanted to be — apart from writing obviously. I decided to explore — with help from my cousin Krizia (@kriziaxlo) who is a photographer and model in California — photography and photo editing tools. Prior to this, I had gone out to El Boulevard in Asia with a friend who is a photographer from Somos to accompany him to take some pictures, this was during two nights. The Friday after new years and the day after that. We went out from around 10:30 pm to 3:30 am. These days I learned quite a few tips and tricks as I followed him around places such as La Cachina and Café de Mar. I learned the angles certain people should be photographed from, and how to make them pose — although it did seem like some people were born with the talent to pose and look picture perfect 24/7. I learned about the incredible importance of background and contrast. Clothing, make-up, and hair was a must as well, although some exceptions were made for well-known people mostly from “La Farandula” which in some odd way could be seen as the Hollywood(ish) part of Perú.

I applied this knowledge (minus the photographing people part, and mostly only focusing on the landscape) in an about five+ hour helicopter flight where we had been able to overfly Vegas and Arizona and have a snack at the Grand Canyon.

I edited around 25 to thirty pictures from the 120 to 130 pictures that were taken. Out of them all I picked only 12 photos that I would use. As the one above. Some were similar but others were quite different like the one above which was taken from the inside of the helicopter therefore you can see some of the panel between other things.

Afterwards we landed on a flat area in the canyon (where we were served some snacks) we were able to explore, letting me take some pretty cool pictures from different angles including a picture of the helicopter just after we had landed.

I took this picture after going down a rocky — side — of a hill, about fifty meters or so away from where the rest of the group was. The river was right next to it but because of the level of exposure it is almost not seen, although that also gave a really cool effect to the picture, most people were amazed by the picture and how the exposure made the plants that there were almost look like snow had fallen on them.

This picture taken from about the same spot as the picture above (yet looking as if it were from a completely different space [the right corner of this picture is what the picture above shows]), although the pictures are completely different you can see some kind of resemblance between both.

When we were heading back, we had to make a stop for fuel and everybody had to leave the helicopter until it was refuelled. The sun was setting behind the helicopter and since the contrast between the sky and the helicopter looked so cool and the added effects made the sky look even cooler with the helicopter looking as almost a shadow in the sky.

That was the end of our trip and the beginning of a new task, editing all the pictures which altogether took about four to four and a half hours total which then lead me to being able to pick the pictures that I found that would enthrall people the most.

We also went to the show O by Cirque du Soleil where I — sneakily — took some pictures, although you were kind of not allowed to. Most pictures came out somewhat blurry or even didn’t come out at all from the movement of the performers but I did get the chance to snap a picture almost at the end of the show where all of the *main* performers were standing basically still and that was my shot for the night, overall it took me about an hour to get the perfect photograph — although I did get some pretty cool snaps (snapchats) and about twenty to twenty five minutes to edit.

I also took a picture at a new restaurant in Vegas called Tao. The ambient was perfect and the dim lighting made the picture look even better. I had to take the picture from an angle since from the front it just looked odd and I believe the angle made it look as if it were more impacting. I also waited for everybody to clear the area since I cannot express how annoying it was to retake basically the same picture over and over again with people’s heads in them. Overall it took me around thirty minutes to get the picture and edit it, and these were the results.

After all my weekend in Vegas was probably most productive than most people’s. But it did somewhat interest me further in photography therefore when my cousin asked me if I wanted to join her for a shoot with Jack Garell (best known as @JackNewport on Instagram) I was completely on board.

Before being able to even wonder what the shoot could’ve been about we were already on a plane to Hawaii. We stayed at the Disney Resort Aulani in Oahu.

I wasn’t able to photograph much of the beautiful hotel because of the amount of kids running around and parents going crazy looking for them but I was able to get some pictures of the island while zip lining (which was about a three-hour long excursion around the island where we learnt about its past, present and what they want for the future). They were all somewhat similar, overall most just green and blue, but the bridges and zip lines giving it a special touch. After editing for a couple hours and thoroughly picking out the best pictures I came to have around nine pictures — not including the one I took before leaving Hawaii at the airport.

The day of the shoot I was still completely unaware of what the shoot was all about, at around noon we found out that it was a bikini suit, which was completely out of my comfort zone. We arrived at Jack’s house at around 3:30pm completely exhausted having taken a train from San Diego to Irvine that morning and left his house at around seven. He explained the shoot to us and it was actually so much more different than what I’d pictured.

He had kind of dug a ditch in his yard and covered it with a plastic wrap from preventing the water to mix with the dirt. He then threw a bath bomb from Lush called Intergalactic which dyed the water a deep blue. My cousin went first — thankfully he’d hooked up the hose to some source of warm water since it was 16ºC outside plus it was extremely windy. I somewhat learned from her what I should do when it was my turn. And then we were both able to shoot together or be in the same shot.

Overall from getting ready to preparing for the shoot and actually shooting we took around three and a half hours, plus the time it took us to shower after he had thrown golden glitter on us and the dirt that had finally overran the water we were in.

This was the end result of it. I also took around an hour and a half to edit to my liking the pictures he’d sent me. Overall this “photography” unit took me basically around thirty hours. It was a new experience and it opened my eyes to new and different things. I explored different parts involved in photography, being the photographer and becoming the somewhat object (because that’s what I felt like, mostly) being photographed, which was not my favorite thing overall but it let me see things from a different perspective. I loved this unit and I would like to dive deeper into this once I get the chance and time to. After all I once again continued to further focus on my writing.