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

I'm baaack!!!! =)

Alrighty then, I can finally start blogging and updating this thing again. I'm so excited! Lots of things have been going on since the last post. The first big, and mos recent, thing is that I got a new computer. My old mac wasn't cutting it anymore. Although I loved the thing, I have owned it for 10 years and it was time for an upgrade. After years of saving, I finally bought a 15" Mac Book Pro. Now I can keep working anywhere. My turn around time for photos should decrease, since I can practically do a shoot, go to a coffee shop (or bar), edit, and publish right away.

Work has been good also. I'm getting to do a lot of things I love doing, including videography and film editing. I recently went to Austin, TX to do a video interview with the help of a very dear friend, Jason. I'll be editing that down to a few minutes then post it for a website we are working on at CURE. Also, I have been cleared to post the photos I take for CURE. My awesome boss told me that since we let the other photographers post their images before the magazine is published, why not me? Did I mention I love my boss yet?? =) So expect those to come in the next few days.

Anyway, work has been very rewarding, but I have been missing doing what I like doing afterwords and this new computer is going to allow me to do just that on the fly.

Another thing is that I'll be going back home to the Philippines with my dad and my brother in October. We'll be there for 2 weeks. I was dreading the 18 hour flight to Korea, but with the new Mac, now I'm looking forward to it. Gotta get a cool video game and see if I can finish it before we reach Korea lol. Anyway, I plan on blogging and vlogging my entire trip. I will be acquiring a Kodak Zi8 very soon to start taping the events in my life. It will help me get faster with video editing. So when I start getting bigger video projects, it won't take me no time at all to edit and finish a project.

So, new things coming up:
1) A new website for GZamora Photographie (a customized website showcasing my best photos... a portfolio if you will, and also, a place for future clients to order prints and items online)

2) Vlogs (video blogs to post here, or maybe a youtube channel, who knows? I feel like a new kid in a big playground.)

3) More blog updates

4) More photos

There are a ton of things I will be doing in the future. It won't happen overnight, but they'll get there.

GZ