Since my name means "King" and Zara also means princess, my second daughter had to also be a princess. Kaja (pronunced KAH-yah) when spelled with a "J" instead of Kaya with a "y" means the princess of gods in Polish. I know I'm setting her up for a lifetime of constant mispronunciation and misspelling of her name, but every Mananquil has to go through it - (Jenny realized it when she said "I never had to spell Adams"). Her middle name is a combination of my grandma's name Lorenza (although I always called her Ima) and Fauna, which is the name Zara picked out after one of the fairy godmothers in sleeping beauty.
I'll be updating this gallery from time to time while I am working on my next Project 365.
I've been getting pretty involved with the Indivisible movement and joined Indivisible East Bay (IEB). As part of IEB, I work on the Senator Harris action / research team & we've been in constant contact with Daniel Chen, the Director of Constituent Services and head of her SF office. One of the items that we have been pushing for was for the senator to hold a town hall. During her first recess we were told that it was too short and that she wouldn't be able to hold one and we were okay with that. Now that she was in her second recess and it was longer, we were determined to find out if she was going to hold a town hall. After constantly contacting her office in SF and through networking with other Indivisible chapters throughout California, we found out that she was holding her town hall in LA. I immediately jumped at the chance to get a ticket just in case it sold out, which it did.
Since it was on a Friday at 3:30 in LA and most of our members in the Bay Area wouldn't be able to attend in person we planned a viewing party so that people can watch the Facebook Live stream. We also planned to have a videographer record messages from attendees who wanted to ask Senator Harris a question. I planned to go there myself because I wanted to try and connect with other indivisible groups in southern CA and I also wanted to hear her speak in person and get a little shot of photojournalism as well with her as a subject. I was speaking with my wife's cousin at a family party about how I'm trying to use my photography to spark my political activism and how its hard to do one job effectively without compromising the other. Here are a few shots from the Event:
Senator Kamala HarrisSenator Kamala Harris speaking to the crowd at Holman United Methodist Church
Kamala Harris Listens as a member of the crowd asks a question
170421-REX_2865Indivisible Los Angeles passed out "agree" "disagree" cards that the audience can raise when they liked what they heard.
An audience member asks Kamala Harris a question
It was pretty good turnout and she was received very well. The crowd was made up of a variety of people, some school aged children, other Indivisible groups and activist groups, people from the Holman United Methodist Church, people from the Service Employees International Union, and other concerned citizens.
Kamala Harris spoke about a lot of issues and answered a lot of questions that everyone agreed with. Here is list of questions that IEB had prepared with my notes on her position or answer to a similarly asked questions.
I was able to stream it via Facebook Live Part 1 & Part 2, which was our backup plan if their stream failed (which it did). It wasn't the best since the audio was from a cell phone mic picking up what was being played through speaker and I am terrible at anything facebook. I guess that is one of the reasons why we want her to have a town hall in the bay area - so I don't have to take time off work and drag my family down to LA to hear her speak.
Here is a link to the gallery of the pictures I took from the event and here are some photos of the viewing party that IEB hosted with some pictures from Pro-Bono Photography (another group I've been getting involved with).
Here is a link of the video that IEB produced from the questions asked at the live viewing party.
She told us that we need to think of this as a relay race and not a sprint or marathon, which I need to remind myself so that I don't burn out - as it took me almost a week to finally write about it.
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The Organizers of this EventDex, Camilla, Kayla & Arya
I couldn't explain why I was so outraged at hearing that Trump passed an executive order that essentially was a Muslim ban. But after seeing the signs and when one of the speakers, Kat Ngo told her story it made me realize that this is not just about Muslims.
Kat NgoHer speech literally brought me to tears
She spoke about her family being a refugee, and that if it wasn't for her family fleeing for America, then she wouldn't be here. I realized that I probably know more people that are here because their families are refugees or are immigrants and what my life would be like without them. Growing up you never ask your friends "hey why did your family decide to leave their home country", because it was just normal to have friends from different backgrounds. I digress.. She also spoke about how refugees are already heavily vetted and are the ones running from terrorists.
One of the organizers Dex, spoke about stepping up and becoming more involved.
DexTaking the stage to give his inspirational speech
It was also nice to see that there were lots of people helping to get their message out. There was a group of people that had postcards and stamps for people to sign and send their message to the White House.
If you want to get involved read the Indivisible Guide. It has a lot of useful information on how to make a difference.
Here's a link to my Gallery from the protest.
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My next protest I will shoot is the #NoBanNoWall Protest in SF.
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Here's a link for my gallery of photos from the Women's March - Oakland.
If you have any links or resources to some of the groups you are involved with I'd love to hear. I know there were a few out there that I wasn't able to get info on.
10 Actions for the First 100 Days
Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Alliance of South Asians Taking Action
Swing Left (Getting back control of the House)
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This time I do not want to wait and see which one of his horrible promises he intends to keep and which action I would have to protest. I decided to try and be proactive, I finally jumped on facebook and social media to find out what other people are doing to resist / protest this presidency. I ended up getting involved with the #D19 movement to try and affect change in the electoral college and to say that we are the majority. I volunteered to make signs and to photograph the event. Some may say that the protests on Decmeber 19th were a failure since Trump still got the electoral college votes and won the presidency, but I would like to think different. We were able to organize a nationwide protest that occurred at the capitol in every state on the same day for the same cause - 7,000 people gathered across 50 states to share the single message, this is our democracy and we will not sit back and watch it be destroyed. Although we did not get 37 electors to become faithless and not vote for Trump, 6 electors did vote with their conscience and went faithless. To me that is a win, we proved that it can be done, we were able to affect some change when usually no electors go faithless. The 4 democratic electors sent a message to the DNC that they wanted Bernie, and the 2 GOP electors said that they do not stand behind Trump.
And We sent a message that we will stand up because:
we have been marginalized,
we love our veterans, POWs and all military families,
we believe in science and climate change,
we do not approve of a government that violates human rights,
we respect our differences,
we want equality,
we tell our kids to stand up for what they believe in,
we are united,
and our voice counts and our votes should count:
What I took away from this experience is that there still is hope. There are people out there that are willing to speak up for those who can't or don't know how. The hope and change that we were promised is still there, but we just have to make it happen for ourselves. There are a number of grassroots movements rising up trying to make a difference and hoping to fix what's broken. I don't know much about politics or social activism (or social media for that matter), but I'll continue to do what I can when I can whether it be volunteering in whatever role I am capable of, sharing something on social media or just showing up at a rally for what I believe in. Hopefully we can inspire or motive others into action as well. The next rally that I am getting involved with is the National Womens March on January 21st. Hopefully you will attend.
The people who attended the last march are everyday people like you and me. They are your brothers, sisters, moms & dads, family and friends, your coworkers, your students, your neighbors.
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The photo below was taken with a regular color camera and converted to black and white in photoshop:
The photo below was taken with my IR converted camera and converted to black and white in photoshop and nik silver efx
I also took the image from the IR converted camera and did a channel swap in photoshop, then I converted it to black and white.
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I will usually try to scout out my locations so I can previsualize the shoot but with this being Disneyland I wasn't able to scout out the location. Luckily Roxanne and Joril have season passes and love going to Disneyland so they had already scouted out the spots that they wanted to use during their session. I had looked online to get a sense of what to expect considering it has been a very long time since I've been to Disneyland, and last time I went I wasn't really thinking of it as a place for an engagement photo session. Looking online helped me prepare for the shoot by giving me an Idea of what situations to expect.
One shot that I wanted was one inside the buildings to make use of their creative backgrounds and lighting. I thought that if I use flash it would bounce all over the place, light up the entire room and be annoying for other visitors. I decided to use a small handheld video light so that I can have better control of the light and isolate the couple. My brother held the small video light just out of frame and made a spot light on Roxanne and Joril.
And here is the obligatory castle shot:
We took this shot on the side bridge so that we wouldn't have so much foot traffic right in front of the castle. This shot was a happy little accident. As I was trying to pose the two, Joril backed up to let some people pass over the bridge and I loved the composition of the two of them just standing and looking at the castle. Check out the rest of the Disneyland Photo Session
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Materials Needed:
Camera Body Cap
46mm Lens Filter
Sink Plunger
Gorilla Glue
2" Hole Saw Bit
Clamps
Drill, Hacksaw & File / Sandpaper / or Dremel
Old lens with manual aperture and focal distance adjustment. (If you have a newer lens without manual aperture adjustment you can use it but it will take a few extra steps, and basically destroy it for use on other cameras. fstoppers shows you how to take apart an old broken lens so you can adjust the aperture manually.)
Preferably use a medium format lens, but a 35mm lens could work if you are not using a full frame camera. You want the lens to project an image larger than the sensor, so that you have a little leeway when you move the lens around.
Step 1)
Drill a hole into the body cap with a 2" drill bit and sand down the edges so they are smooth, using a dremel, file or sandpaper.
Step 2)
Cut the end off of the sink plunger using a hacksaw and sand the edges. Cut off enough so that you can press the end off lens flat to your camera.
Step 3)
Test that the length of the plunger / body cap is right. Put the body cap on the camera and set the focus on the lens to infinity. Put the lens in the plunger and hold it up to the camera and make sure that you can get the image to focus properly. (I used a glue gun to set the cap and plunger in place while I figured out the proper length of the plunger to use.)
Step 4)
Permanently attach the lens to the body cap using the gorilla glue.
Step 5)
Place the lens filter into the end of the body cap so that no dust can get into the camera. Make sure to press the lens filter all the way in so that the camera mirror does not hit it.
Set your camera to Av. You can now tilt the lens and push or pull the lens to change the focal plane and get that Lensbaby effect.
Here are some sample pictures using my new toy:
My dog Kali. The orange plastic had a cool light leak effect.
This is what the photo looks like when I blocked the light from leaking in.
Not bad for about $10.00
Here's a couple photos I took using it during a Disneyland Engagement Session
