During the pandemic time I got my drone pilots license with the idea of creating some virtual tours of our college. That was a lot of learning about weather and stuff but not a lot of flying. Along with my coworker we created some assets for the college but I haven’t had a chance to do anything commercial with it until now.

This advertisement is the brain child of our marketing team and we had a fun time creating the story board for this 30 second commercial. The commercial will be played during the 2023 Women’s World Cup on the Spanish language station, Telemundo48, a television broadcasting company owned by NBC Universal.

These are our own soccer players along with our own staff as actors in the crowd. It was fun to see the film production crew come shoot and assemble this video. They didn’t have a drone person to shoot the spot that comes in at the 15 second mark which is where I come in. Another drone pilot shot a clip of my drone and then the footage switches to a fly-in from my drone. Don’t blink though – you might miss it!

In addition to the drone footage there is some static slides that come in with with some photos of our campus and student life. Some of those photos are mine as well. Nice to see my work being used

And a little update! My coworker shot a little behind the scenes during production day getting direction from the director. I have to post this too

I recently posted on social media a closeup detail of a dead dragon fly I saw laying in the dirt. I marveled seeing the construction of this insect that that I read evolved over 300 million years ago.

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Since I posted that, several people commented that I must have a fancy macro lens to get this shot and the truth is it’s just an iPhone shot with a $14 video ring light from Ulanzi.com and a $14 lens kit from Amazon that clips over the the existing lens. Neither one of these links are affiliate links. I don’t know if this is the best choice or not but it’s what I got.

For the dragonfly above I just positioned the iphone on the back looking through the circle to give the subject a nice even bright soft light. Cheap and easy to do!

When I got the lens kit I played around with textures to see how sharp I could get it. From what I can tell the sharpness is not edge to edge but where it is sharp it has good clarity. I could certainly use some of these images in the background of designs or perhaps as a texture in a 3D art project or something. It was even fun to point the macro at a far away object and get a nice soft focus effect.

Collection of more macro details

This website is primarily about my photography, web design and graphics but being a photographer I think there is this natural love of nature that we feel compelled to document. When I finally saw a monarch (now on the endangered species list) flutter around my milkweed plants I was ecstatic!

I live in a very arid environment with well water that can even kill morning glory. Yes, the gardeners at the garden club looked at me like I had an alien disease when I said that and moved away from me. These city water drinkers had no concept of what a California well water can be like! Nevertheless I want to do what I can to help these little beauties so even though this is a design blog I will document what I find out on this post as I learn.

I used to see monarch butterflies every Summer as a kid but at some point I realized I wasn’t seeing them anymore. I actually didn’t see many butterflies at all in this desert landscape but I made sure never to chop down a milkweed knowing it’s the only plant the migrating butterflies can lay their eggs on to survive.

The other bugs!

Tarantula Hawk

The monarch is not the only insect that loves the milkweed. This glossy blue/black fella I see a lot more often! According to Wikipedia the tarantula hawk “has been awarded second place on the Schmidt sting pain index, beaten only by the South American bullet ant). The pain from a bullet ant sting lasts up to 24 hours, whereas that of a wasp usually only aggravates the unlucky victim for five minutes.” I sure don’t want to find out if that’s true! But he seems gets a little high on the nectar and flies around clumsy after feasting for as while, even so, it actually helps the monarch by aiding in the plants pollination.

The wasp below I believe is a male because the antenna are straight instead of curled. As I approached him the wasps circled around my body at least 4 times before settling back on the milkweed as if to say I checked you out and you are not a threat.

Apparently not a threat to a monarch but pretty yucky to read about what happens to the poor tarantula that gets near one!

Milkweed bug

Here is the explosion I am dealing with. From what I read it’s not a problem if you don’t have very many but that is not my situation. Too much for pesticide or the dish soap technique. I am toying with the idea of just vacuuming them up. Anybody got any other environmentally friendly ideas?

I couldn’t help but show off the background remover in Canva using my favorite subjects! I hope you enjoy this video.

There is nothing like being asked to photograph a group of people in 110 degree heat with a splitting migraine only to realize your fill flash isn’t working and everyone is waiting on you. Like a true professional I acted flustered on top of the ladder and dropped my camera on to the hard concrete below. I got some good gasps out of the lovely men and women in uniform before me though!!!

Thankfully I was saved! I wasn’t complete dunce that day because I was lucky enough to still have my SmallRig cage on my camera! I used this device on my Nikon Z50 so that the tripod mount was in a better location than was originally intended. Little did I know that it also acted like a bumper protector and after dropping my camera from 6 feet in the air onto the pavement I had only the teeniest tinyiest scratch on it. Everything else was totally fine and I went on shooting! I am am now a huge fan of SmallRig.