Ayala Photography

Scabies

2011-11-06T11:56:00.001-08:00

The doctor just recently informed us that my 3 year old daughter probably has scabies. It is soooo nasty! I feel horrible, my daughter comes towards me with her arms extended looking for love, wanting nothing else than the comfort of a father’s hug, and all I can think is “eeewww gross!”

I want her to “love” me more than my ex (her mama) so I usually let her do whatever she wants. You don’t want to brush your teeth? Fine, whatever they’re just baby teeth anyways. You don’t want to bathe? Fine whatever, I t’s not like I bathe very often either. But now it’s different. There is absolutely no way I’m going to let her go to bed without taking a shower first. Get those nasty bugs off her. But oh my goodness. As soon as she realized that I was going to give her a bath, and that I wasn’t joking, she starting screaming like I was about to kill her. She was screaming for half an hour like she was getting tortured by the Taliban. I was seriously worried that my neighbors where going to call the police. It sounded like a horror movie inside my bathroom.

Oh my goodness! That’s all I can say is “Oh my goodness!”

I’ve created a monster.

Photoshoot

2011-05-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures from yesterdays photoshoot!

No Tengo Ropa!!!

2011-05-18T09:31:00.001-07:00

album

2010-08-08T16:21:00.001-07:00

Graphistudio is having a promotion for photographers where they offer an album for 30% off and a second studio sample album for free. Today is the deadline and I went ahead and took advantage of it. I decided to print my November 21st wedding for the first album and the second one is going to be my July 4th wedding. Here are a few pages from the first album… not too bad I think.

couple at windansea beach (san diego)

2010-08-05T02:14:00.001-07:00

this pictures is from Monday’s photo shoot, I tried using the pocket wizards again, this time with a 420ex instead of the 580ex and they worked without a hiccup. I got really lucky with the weather, we had the perfect amount of cloud cover. Just enough to add a little dramatic effect.

Sunday’s Photoshoot

2010-08-03T22:48:00.001-07:00

The latest official photoshoot of my daughter Camila, she was quite eager to let me take her picture but not very willing to follow directions, including the part about not eating chocolate during the shoot. Hence the gunk on her face.

Windows 7 sucks…

2010-07-30T04:28:00.001-07:00

I recently obtained a copy of Windows 7. I did this so I would be able to use Adobe Premiere and AfterEffects CS5. They only run on 64 bit operating systems so my 32 bit copy of Windows XP was apparently not going to cut it anymore. Looking back I should have just gotten an old copy of a 64bit version of Windows XP.

I used Windows 7 for one week before I just gave up and went back to Windows XP. One would imagine that when a manufacturer upgrades one of their products that it would be to add new features and increase reliabilty, but apparently that’s not how Microsoft operates. Anyways, enough of my whining, let’s get down to specifics.

-it takes a million extra steps to create a restore point

-won’t recognize my canon 20D

-constantly deactivates one of my video cards which means I’m regularly uninstalling it and having to restart the system to reinstall the driver

-won’t let me select and open more than 15 files at a time! According to Microsoft this was done on purpose and there is no way around it. Which means that when I have to edit a wedding, consisting of several hundred images, sometimes up to a thousand, I have to edit them in batches of 15 ! ! ! !

-it doesn’t include and won’t even run Outlook Express, and it’s replacement, Live Mail, makes it a million times harder to sync all of my computers for anything other than a hotmail account. I don’t use web based e-mail accounts for work so now I’m stuck having to check and reply to emails from a single computer. I was going to go into the details of why this is so but it was too long of an explanation.

-won’t let me grant network access to entire hard drives, I keep my images on separate hard drives so this was an issue, I got around it though by transferring everything into a new folder within the harddrive. This was a pain though because it meant that I had to change the path of all of my shortcuts and photoshop actions since all of my files were now in a new location.

-speaking of networks, I keep back ups of everything on a separate computer within my network. The folder where I keep all of my jpegs contains 155 image files and 85 folders containing many more images. Some containing several thousand. When windows 7 opens up this file it will very slowly begin to create thumbnails for each folder and file, about half way down though it just gives up. And although I could care less about the thumbnails, the problem is that anything without a thumbnail gets denied network access by windows 7. So I am forced to do all of the back up related actions on the non-Windows 7 based computers in my network.

I’m sure there is more for me to complain about but it’s been a while since I used that wretched system and the bitter memories are no longer as fresh.

photo shoot in balboa park

2010-07-26T15:38:00.001-07:00

Pictures from a recent portrait session. Not too bad I think. It was my first time using the miniTT1 and flexTT5 radio transmitters, so I had some problems since I didn’t yet realize the extent of the interference problems caused by the 580EX flashes. They did manage to work a few times though, as is evident in the first and last images.

hacked

2009-11-12T06:28:00.001-08:00

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about already, I just discovered that my website (sbaphotography.com) got hacked by spammers. It looks like it’s been like this for a little over a week. The only reason I even noticed was because I just happened to update my wedding portfolio today, and in the process, I did a quick Google search for my site and discovered that it had been completely dropped by not only Google but by all the search engines. Apparently spammers managed to access my htaccess file and made it so that all of the search engines got redirected to a viral site every time they crawled my site. I fixed the file but now I’m worried that they might have altered something else or that they might try it again, or even attempt something worse. Who knows how long it will take now for the search engines to start indexing me again.

Camila Sofia's first photoshoot

2008-11-02T21:24:00.000-08:00

Camila is doing much better. She was at Mary Birch Hospital for a total of 2 months... I think, or was it 3? Usually I'd check my pictures to see what day this or that happened but my hard drive had a total melt down whilst at the hospital, and now I'm missing most of the pictures I took from March to August. Anyways, here are some updated snapshots of the little whippersnapper (taken September 28th, 2008). Sept 28th!?!?! Wow, I can't believe how time flies. I really should start getting ready for another photo shoot.

Camila Sofia

2008-06-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you who haven't met her, this is my daughter Camila Sofia. She was born on June 3rd 2008 with a few complications. The first picture was taken when she was 4 days old and the second at 17 days. The edema is gone now and she is breathing room air on her own. The arterial line is gone and so are most of the IVs. The only thing we're waiting for now is for her to eat entirely on her own. Once that happens, they'll take out the last IV line and we'll probably be able to take her home.

my little dude (or dudette)

2008-02-08T23:58:00.000-08:00

check out my little dude. supposedly 14 weeks and 2 days old in this picture... i think he (she) kinda looks like a monkey a little bit, oh well, you win some you lose some :)

cable

2007-11-16T00:24:00.000-08:00

well, the cable guy came by tonight. Apparently they just now found out that I have been getting free cable for the last three and a half years. LOL! It took them long enough.

Mama Rat (a.k.a. Bonita Bonita)

2007-06-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

it's so sad. My mama rat is in her last dying days and I think it might be better if I put her down before I leave to go to Mexico. So so sad. She used to be such a vivacious little thing, now she's just a bag of skin and bones who can barely pick herself up when she falls (which is often).

DT's

2007-01-14T02:15:00.000-08:00

Damn, i think I'm having withdrawals. I ran out the door today at around 1:45AM to get a beer before the 2AM curfew and wouldn't you know it, my car battery was dead. Who would have thunk that that little door light would drain a car battery in less than 2 days. I looked around frantically for someone to give me a jump start but to no avail. I could feel my chest starting to tighten up and the cold air was making it more difficult to breath. I thought crap what do I do? What do I do?! Of course! I can probably get a spark if I roll my car down the hill and get the alternator moving. So that's what I did, I pushed the car back a few feet, jumped in and let it roll down the hill. The little Kia was accelerating quickly but still it wouldn't start. Come on come on! Start damn you. 20 mph and still NOTHING! The car slowed down as it reached the end of the slope. I turned the key one last time. Nothing. Not a peep. I looked around. I was on the road about a quarter mile away from my apartment and there was no way I'd be able to get that car up the hill. Looked at the clock. 2:02AM and still no beer. No choice now but to push the car into a safe spot and wait until the morrow, and as I struggled to pushed it into a parking spot it occurred to me, THE CAR WAS STILL IN NEUTRAL!!! Damn it, how was the alternator going to turn if the car wasn't even in gear?!?! Oh well, nothing I can do now except rummage through my medicine cabinet for some scope and a few ounces of rubbing alcohol which might together get me through the night.

Yosemite in November

2007-01-01T03:43:00.000-08:00

Alright so here's some of the stuff from Yosemite (November 24th, 2006), I can't post them all up, way too many for that, here's a couple though...

All right I think that's enough, I also have a panoramic image on my home page which I probably won't leave up for long, so don't be surprised if you look and it's no longer there (www.sbaphotography.com)

My Hero Lester Young

2006-12-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

The demise of Lester Young (Prez)

...he sheltered himself away from the world with a wall forged of empty bottles of gin and bourbon. Racism, the constant criticism of his sound and his music, his best friend’s death, and his traumatic experience in the military were painful memories that would haunt him throughout the remainder of his life, he had lost his ambition and whatever passion that he might of had for life had all but faded away. He entered his hotel room and sat down in front of the window overlooking Birdland, moving only to refill his glass, and to finger his imaginary sax, playing along to Frank Sinatra until his hands could no longer move. When the doctor arrived it was already too late, all he could do was confirm his death, and so, fifteen years after leaving Count Basie, Lester Willis Young died on March 15th 1959 of a cardiac arrest brought on by malnutrition and cirrhosis of the liver. A few months later, Lady Day followed suit.

newton's third law and personal responsibility

2006-12-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

I was remembering today some photographers complaining about other photographers not paying their taxes. It's not fair to the rest of us they said, wah wah wah. This isn't what this is about, but it brings a few things to mind which I think I'll share right here.

Just about every step that we take in life has both a positive and a negative reaction, and it's up to us to put the pros and cons in a balance and determine if the possible reward is worth the possible price. Take taxes for instance, to pay or not to pay, pay it all or pay a little?

pros of paying ~ avoiding possible fines or even jail time, the satisfaction of knowing you played a small roll in maintaining both our physical and social infrastructure and the continued benefits one might get from those two entities, and in some cases (depending on ones upbringing and our prevalent cultural bias) the piece of mind of knowing you did the "right" thing.

cons of paying ~ a loss of income that might have been used for any number of things including higher wages to employees, advertising, equipment, or even a few more rocks and a new pipe.

and associated to each of these possible consequences (both pro and con) are its value to the individual in question and the likelihood of occurrence. What are the chances of getting a fine or jail time? What are the chances of receiving an audit that might lead to that? Is there a paper trail? How valuable is that income to that person? Will that money be necessary to avoid eviction or will it be spent on get rich quick schemes and other internet scams? Now the decision becomes personal and deeply subjective, and is not (I think) for others to judge. Instead one should think, "does this person's actions affect me or my loved ones?" If so, how? Are we just trying to find a "rational" excuse for judging someone based on our own socio-cultural biases?

The moral of this story? Don't judge, but always be ware of other peoples intentions, what might others have to gain by doing something that might harm you, what do they have to lose? How exactly will their decision affect me or my loved ones? Will I have to intervene to change the course of events? If so, what will be the consequences of my intervention?

To those of you who know me and might have ever wondered what makes me do the seemingly impulsive and irresponsible things I do, there was your answer. While it is true that I am a little impulsive (maybe even irrational at times) my decisions aren't always entirely so. When I joined the military in '96 at the age of 17 it was not impulsive, it was simply the best option I had amongst many lousy options. When 2.5 years later I got out of the military it was not completely impulsive, it was simply that the idea of getting a dishonorable discharge (and maybe doing a few months or even a year in the brig) was more appealing to me then spending 3.5 more years locked up inside an underwater, titanium prison, babysitting a bunch of nuclear warheads and waiting for the end of the world while sinking deeper into depression. More recently, the decision to leave a stable job with a decent wage to start my own business while still heavily in debted and without a dime to my name was not on impulse. It is simply that I would rather risk a financial catastrophe rather than spend my life trapped in a dead end job stressing out about things I should of cared less about. I'm happy now. I love what I do, and I have faith that I will sooner than later be able to carry my own financial weight. Who knows, in a few years I might actually be able to afford to pay my taxes : )

en el principio...

2006-12-10T22:30:00.000-08:00

So here it is, Chavidas' much awaited much talked about blog. As my first act in bloggdom I figure I should probably provide a bit of an introduction. So here's a little somethin' somethin' about myself. Nothing long winded just a quick intro. I reside in san marcos, california and here are some pics of my current immediate family. The sleepy one's name is Bonita Bonita, and the black/white one is Chiquita Bonita.

See, well that was painless. I guess I'll smell ya later, don't hold your breath though, chances are I'll probably forget this blog exists. Yeah I don't exactly have the greatest attention span in the world.