I’ve been procrastinating on announcing it, but, yes, it’s official and has been for more than a week. It started with checking the YouTube page and seeing congratulatory messages. I went over to Mally’s Facebook page and saw the official announcement:

Announcement from the Mally Beauty Team!!! We just want to thank you ALL again for entering our Makeup Artist Contest! It is so beautiful to see the support and bonding from you talented people; it truly shows your professionalism and class, and it makes the Mally Team so proud. The voting from Mally Beauty Team (based a combination of several different factors, including the comments and likes on each video) was so incredibly close, and the final choice was won by the slimmest of margins; it was a VERY close race!! Every single entry was AMAZING! Mally and the Mally Team are so proud of ALL of you!! So, without further ado, we’re very excited to announce that the winner of the Makeup Artist Contest is… Julissa Garcia!!! Congratulations!!

Love, Love, Love,
The Mally Team

I texted Julissa, YOU’RE GOING TO NEW YORK, and texted her husband Eddie as well. I think I was running errands when Eddie called and asked me how I knew that Julissa had won. When Julissa called she was crying happy tears. That week, she’d gone through a rollercoaster of emotions, and forced herself to stop checking it by stashing it away. On her break, she checked it and got the news.

We congratulated each other for the win, and then she invited me to have dinner with her and the family. We got to talk about future plans. Eddie mentioned that Julissa’s sister wanted to travel with Julissa to New York. I imagine, with all the busyness of fashion week, there wouldn’t much time for Julissa to be hanging out.

When I think about how it all turned out, it’s still hard for me to believe I had a hand in helping someone win a contest. I’m looking forward to seeing Julissa after her trip and hearing about her experience. Congrats, Julissa! You’re going to New York!

Her Candor Studios produced video is a top eight finalist for the Mally makeup artist contest. The winner will be announced January 26th, so please get to voting!

How do you vote? You leave a comment on the link below.

Julissa Garcia — Finalist!

For good measure, hit the “like” button. I’m not too sure on the rules, but a voter will be chosen at random for a New York trip. Whether you have to subscribe to Mally’s YouTube page, I’m not sure.

Anyways, please vote. Send Julissa to New York, and make me a happy filmmaker.

We filmed the tutorial, and then we filmed an interview a few days later at her house. There was a bit of miscommunication, and Julissa was worried that the added stress of waiting for me while I drove around Salinas doing errands and waiting for her call would affect how she looked on camera. She looked a bit nervous at first, but once she started talking about her passion for makeup artistry, she settled into that zone where she was natural and sincere — not that she isn’t sincere already, but she wasn’t playing for the camera and thinking about the contest; she was thinking about her love for doing something she really enjoys. I took that footage and made it the foundation for the video, cutting to the tutorial footage here and there with other examples.

I think the video came out great. I keep telling Julissa that she’s a superstar. She keeps reminding me that I edited and filmed it, but like photography, the subject is very important. I can take a picture of two different people in the same pose, but there could be so many differences because of their personality, physical characteristics, and attitude. I’m proud of Julissa for daring to compete in this contest. She might not win, but she tried, and I’m proud of her for taking a step. It’s something I’ve been thinking about this week. I know it might be a little geeky, but I’ve been throwing around this phrase I heard in a video game — He who dares, wins.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I know that by daring, it doesn’t mean we succeed totally with what we want to achieve. We might dare to climb a skyscraper with no equipment. It doesn’t mean we’ll get past the first floor. But I think that in daring to do something, we win over our fears and past failures. We cut ourselves loose from the chains of the past that tell us — Hey, you’ve screwed up before, and you’ll probably screw up again. I’ve been so bogged down by data. I’m the kind of guy that thinks there are two choices: Right and wrong. When things don’t go the way I want them to, I pore over the data to see what I did wrong, what I missed, and what I could have done better.

Eventually, I started to crumble under the weight of feeling like a loser. It got to a point where I felt like I always made the wrong decision. I felt powerless and ashamed because I took defeat personally. I don’t know many people who like losing. It affected my attitude, my relationships with people, and even my relationship with God. I talked with a friend of mine, Joseph. He encouraged me to keep going. He told me how he viewed me, which was different than the way I viewed myself.

Yesterday, I was listening to sports radio. I heard this quote — The worst disease is feeling sorry for yourself.

It’s hard, but I try to not look at myself as a loser. I started looking at myself as someone God has molded. He gave me talents, and He’s in charge. I pushed myself to focus on my talents as they are and not as they should be. Comparing myself to world class photographers — I can strive to achieve that level of quality, but I’m not there yet, and that’s okay.

I dared to keep trying. I dared to stop letting failures drag me down because maybe failures can teach me something. Maybe failures can make me better.

So, Julissa dared to enter a contest filled with other talented and passionate artists. One will win. Even if Julissa doesn’t get to fly to New York, she still dared to try. In less than 48 hours, this local Salinas artist has gained 643 views with 42 likes and no dislikes. Comments on her page show support for her — and would she have ever known if she didn’t put herself out there? I think she’s already won something. She’s gained ground. I hope she’s gaining confidence. I hope she goes for a career in cosmetics if that’s what she wants.

The entry deadline was Friday, and for the next two days, finalists will be chosen. In the event that Julissa is chosen, I’d like to ask those who’ve supported me to support my good friend Julissa. She’s been wanting to go to Los Angeles and pursue this dream she has of doing special effects. Winning this contest could be a huge boost to doing that. Stay tuned!

Julissa Garcia Mally Makeup Artist Contest Entry

Small world.

Monica explained to me that she didn’t want a simple family portrait to put on her Christmas card. She threw out some ideas, and we planned to talk again. We were under a tighter deadline because she wanted to have the cards ready for mail before Christmas day. Her idea was to have the family using tech with the caption — Stay connected in 2012 / From the Tovar Family. We took some pictures out on the Beach in Monterey. It was a cold day, but the waves were splashing, and there was a nice blue sky.

I’ll admit, I was feeling a little overwhelmed near the end of last year. A part of me was struggling with the business side of photography, and I wasn’t making as much as I wanted/needed. I often tell people that photography as a business is difficult because it’s not like selling cars or other products you’d see on The Price is Right. Ask 100 random people what they’d pay for a family portrait session, and I’d imagine there’d be a broad range of prices.

And there are the many packages and services. Do you want prints with that? What sizes? Just a CD? How long of a session? Poses? Just a few digital negatives? You want a picture on a mug? Yeah, I can do that.

Last night, I got a chance to follow a client of mine to the news studio. I was hired by Christopher Alliots, a local bankruptcy attorney, to help him with advertising and marketing. He and his team were invited on set for a special segment on each of the news shows to answer questions and calls about bankruptcy. I got to walk around set for a couple of hours and take pictures while they were on air.

Howard, the director, gave me a tour of the control room, answered some of my geeky tech questions, and showed off some of the amazing things they’ve implemented in the studio to push news out to cell phones and email, and gets news from other stations. The studio uses smaller HD cameras controlled by joysticks. They still have the big operator-controlled cameras that roll around, but they’re used for other purposes. The anchors use iPads instead of sheets of paper to read the news, and teleprompters screens swivel so anchors can move around set.

Even though the two stations have different owners, they use the same anchors and same studio. News coming from the studio is being pushed out south all the way down to Santa Maria.

Days like these, I really like being a photographer. The experiences, the people, the locations — exploration and adventure.

I think it’s clean now. My anti-virus isn’t showing anything, but it might be a good idea to scan your computer if you’ve visited my site in the past few months. I don’t think the virus will affect personal computers as the attack got pages to redirect to another site. Just in case, though — please scan your computer.

I had to write over some of the web files, and some of the page settings got changed. I’m in the process of redoing some of the pages and getting them to look like I want them to. If you see a page with a painted background, that’s a page that’s been reset. The pages should have a grid type of gallery with a unique background.

I’m adding watermarks to some of the pictures, and some pages will have more pictures than they did before. Some of the galleries, hopefully, will load faster because the newer image files are smaller in size.

Thanks and apologies.

I exclaim church because some people might say Jeff doesn’t look like your typical christian. He’s got tattoos and piercings and writes/performs punk music. Now, I love music and I do like punk with its fast strums, power chords and fight-the-power (the sentiment and not so much all of the different politics) attitude. I also love photography. So when Jeff started his band a few years ago, I asked him if I could come and take pictures at one of their shows. Stage photography interests me much with its dramatic lighting, movement and expression. Portraits are usually static with people posing, standing or sitting. Stage photography — dancers twirling, musicians flailing and pumping their arms, hair floating and waving in the air — the expression and movement lends itself for great artistic photographs.

Last year, I followed the band to Malaysia to do a documentary (now in the editing phase). This year, they came to visit me as one stop in their west coast tour that started in southern California, goes up to Washington state and ends back in SoCal at Pomona.

They played La Copacabana here in Salinas to a small but enthusiastic crowd. Jeff and the band roared through a set of fast and aggressive songs — a marked change from older songs I used to have on constant rotation in my car.

After the show, Jeff and his crew experienced a little bit of that Salinas hospitality. The owner of the club gave the band free drinks and asked them to come back. Others came to give compliments to the band and the bartender took pictures.

Hope you guys rock it out over in Washington and stop by when you head back to Los Angeles for your flights.

For more information on …Whatever That Means, check out their Facebook page.

Jim’s now a grown man with a wife and newborn baby. He’s been busy running a dry cleaners. Melissa teaches — yay teachers! — and Madison is the newest edition to the Song family. Melissa was worried that Maddie wouldn’t be up for her very first photo shoot but she surprised us all. I even got some pictures of her smiling!

Huzzah!

Melissa’s parents and grandparents were there for the shoot and one of the pictures showcases four generations of Eguchis. Wonderful!

Think about it. Take away the business relationships and networking becomes social networking. It’s what we do on Facebook, what we did on Myspace, what we old-timers used to do on Friendster.

So going out there and for the purpose of talking business to help get your business going, or started, or off the ground until it gets its wings back — it’s something I’ve taken advantage of. It’s helped me out because, in my experience, getting photography work gets me more photography work. I say it over and over to people. The more I do, the more people want to hire me.

Why am I talking about this? I met Connie through my networking group and did some photos for her granddaughter — see Creeanne. Connie showed those pictures to her employee who became a referral for me because that employee’s brother is a graduating senior at Alisal High School.

Daniel’s mother, sister and nephew accompanied us to Monterey to shoot some shots near the ocean. I asked Daniel what his plans were after high school and he told me he was going off to the military. I struck up some conversation with him about his interests.

He said he liked parkour.

Once he opened up, he was dashing around on the rocks and telling me what to do, where to go and how to get there.

I talked to Connie a few weeks after the shoot and her employee told her that Daniel’s smile was visible in some of the pictures. He never smiles, she said.

Networking. It’s business speak for making friends.

Creeanne and I ventured through Downtown Salinas to get some senior photos and she was a darling in front of the camera. A radiant young woman, I think Creeanne won’t have much trouble meeting new people and settling in.