Hercules, Hercules!!

This is a late post. Its been crazy the past month. I've been on the go almost non stop. Anyway, at the beginning of August, my friend Jerome asked me if I could do a photo shoot for him for his fitness modeling portfolio. He wanted some head shots and some shots while he's working out. So I met him up at LA Fitness, where he works and took some shots and had a little fun.

I got a background system a while back for a shoot for work. So I figure, since I have it, use it. Its nice to be able to get studio-type shots just about anywhere. Here's how a few of them turned out.

Birthday fun

Well, yesterday I turned 30... yay! ...sarcasm. Aside from leaving my 20's behind, it was a pretty fun day. Usually I'll go out and party and such, but tis time around I decided that I would tone it down and just relax and spend time with family. Oddly enough, dad and my brother had to work, my mom left for Las Vegas, and my twin sister is in Florida. By the way, this is the sad part, this is the first birthday that my sister and I have been apart. That's a 29 year streak, broken! Oh well, it was bound to happen eventually, and there's always next year. Miss you Mina!!

Anyway, so that said, I hung out with the Mark, my Godson, his little brother Lui, and Sig Sauer Zamora. Yes, he's a Maltese. My brother got him a couple of Friendsgivings ago. He named Sig after his favorite brand of guns. Sig is kind of a sissy dog, but he's cute and has a tough name.

We had a lot planned for my birthday, playing arcades, eating all sorts of stuff, but instead they came with me to a photo shoot I had to do for work, and hung out with me while I processed the images and uploaded it to my boss so she could work on it. In retrospect, it would have been alot faster if I went in to the office and just handed them to my boss when I finished, but that would have defeated the purpose of being on vacation. Anyway, I did get a few shots of Mark, Lui, and Sig before we headed off to my photo shoot.

I got a background system a few weeks ago with a white and black muslin backdrops, which I have been using alot lately. Its fun and makes a great portable studio. Mark had asked me to take his graduation photos since he never got them done when he graduated high school last year, and I was happy to oblige...


While he had everything set up, I figured it would be great to get shots of every one. Here's Siggy's set.




And even though I'm against anything OU(sucks), I let Lui wear his jersey for the photos. By the way, thanks Kari, if you are reading this, for enabling. You're an enabler!!! Get him something awesome next time. Maybe something with a Longhorn on it. lol just kidding!!!




Of course, Mark being Mark. Silly. Just silly.




Anyway, over all I think the photos turned out well. They are well lit in my opinion. I think I'm really starting to get used to getting the lighting just right when I'm using my lights. I did buy a 5 foot reflector to bounce around light with. That was set up on the opposite side of the frame. The main light was to their left and the reflector was to their right.

GZ

Worth waiting for

I didn't take this image, hence there's no watermark, but I just wanted to share. This was taken a couple of weeks ago during one of our happy hours. These are the wonderful people whom I work with—the staff at CURE Magazine. The best staff ever.


These are by far the most passionate group of people when it comes to doing their job that I have worked with. Informing people about the latest in the world of cancer isn't just a job for us, its a way of life.

I know, for a lot of people, there are days when they don't want to wake up to go to work. I know I used to be that way, but when you truly enjoy your job, there's less of that. Working on CURE is one of the blessings in my life. Its not just getting to design, going on photo shoots, and making videos. It's getting to do something meaningful, producing something that affects other people, something people clamor for, and something that might change a person's way of thinking about his or her cancer experience is such a wonderful thing to experience. It's something that is worth waking up for. A meaning in life. We do this at CURE on a daily basis, and that is a blessing. Sharing that experience with the folks above in the photo is just icing on the cake.

Each one of us has our own cancer story (or stories for a few) that motivates us to do what we do. A story that we remind ourselves each day when we start our work. The story of the people who we do this for—the people we love who have experienced a bout with cancer, the people we lost, the people who read our magazine. For a couple of the staff, its a personal thing. Two of them are cancer survivors, and one of them going through a recurrence. For me, she's the one who is motivating me to do the best job I can.

Its kind of funny when I think about where I was almost 4 years ago. When I was an unemployed 26 yr old. Two years out of college, trying my hardest to find a job, with little or no luck. Then came an email, which I first I thought was spam, that changed my life. I was fed up with interviews that led to nowhere. So quite honestly, I didn't even try that hard. I started a few weeks later, laying out medical journals about cancer. Then a year later, a position opened up at CURE, so I thought I'd apply. I ended up getting the job and starting what I would consider the best job I have ever had.

I consider myself blessed for this experience. As you can see, there's only a handful of us that work at CURE, producing the actual magazine–not including all the amazing freelance writers and photographers and illustrators we use that make the content one of a kind. We are like a big family, and that's something you won't find in an everyday work place. I don't mean to brag, but its pretty amazing. Seriously the best staff ever.

GZ