What I Want To Do With My Life

3 Things:

1. Spend as much quality time with my family as possible (mom, dad, brother, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins).
2. Live my dream of making films and writing novels, while traveling around the world.
3. Have a family of my own and spend as much quality time with them as possible.

That's why I do what I do, and I wish everyone could do it.

Knight To D7 - Short Film - Behind The Scenes

I shot these videos, behind the scenes on a short film by Greg Wilson and Angelo Restaino, produced by Emily Moss.







Very good experience. I think it's going to be a powerful short film. Find out more on the film's website here.

Asked About My Faith And The Film Industry On Formspring

Fellow video blogger, Josh Leo, whom I admire, asked me, "how does your faith inspire the kind of videos you make?"

This is what I answered:

When I first consciously became a Christian at 19, I contemplated dropping my film ambitions and becoming a missionary. Then I saw a TV show called Travel The Road, which was about missionaries and I saw the potential to merge the two. When I graduated from college, I took a job in commercial post production. I spent my vacations going on international mission trips and making short docs about the trips. A production company next door saw a film I shot in Brazil and asked me if I'd like to come shoot a TV show for them in Europe - and that's how I got started as a camera operator. Later on down the road, I was shooting a "bikini travel show" for the same company. Recently, I'd felt morally convicted about some of the content I'd been producing, so I decided to just stop working on certain projects. I lost a lot of money in the process but I gained a lot of free time. Basically, I want to be deliberate in what I produce, not necessarily only making evangelical content, but deliberately making content that expresses my integrity and the things that are important to me - specifically travel, enjoying life, inspiring children, choosing to be happy and preserving and cherishing the natural environment. It's really important that believing people work in the film industry among unbelievers and share the light of Christ by working hard and being nice, trustworthy people.

Sigma 50mm f/1.4 - Wide Open - Quick Lens Test

I shot this on July 1st at Pardees Cameras in Sacramento, CA. I was in Northern California shooting commercials for apartment complexes and stopped into the camera store to buy something. They had the full line of Sigma lenses, which are much cheaper than Canon L-series and fit both full-frame Canons such as the 5D, and APS-C cameras such as the 7D and T2i. So I grabbed the 50mm, popped it on my Rebel T2i and opened the iris. I really liked the primes, while I wasn't so keen on the Zoom/Macros.



If you don't care about cameras or lenses, but do care about my face, here's a nice close-up of it.

For a very fast lens under $500, I was very impressed with the depth of field. However, you absolutely cannot shoot handheld while wide-open with this lens. Not only is the DOP too shallow, but the jello-effect of the rolling shutter in really amplified while wide-open.

Here are two still shots of my EF-S 18-135mm (taken by the Sigma 50mm, not of the Sigma...):