Holi (Colorfest), 2009

Yesterday was the annual Festival of Colors at the Krishna Temple. It's a celebration of spring and it's most famous for the participants throwing colored chalk at each other. At the end of the day, people are covered in it.

The festival started off at 4:00 pm with performers singing and dancing, followed by the ceremonious color being tossed at 5:40. We left my house at about 4:00 pm and hopped on the freeway. There were two accidents on the freeway which means between rubber neckers and the festival traffic once we hit Spanish Fork, we were stuck in stop and go traffic for well over two hours. As we were waiting in traffic, we started seeing people walking back covered in colored chalk. We missed the main event. When we got there, it was pretty much an anything goes concert. All the performers were on the stage singing, playing instruments and/or dancing. There was still the occasional color war, but for the most part, it was pretty much people dancing and crowd surfing. I got what I could. I've posted my favorites below, but you can see the whole set here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hypnoeyez99/sets/72157615966493195/

Marilyn Manson on Donahue

In the 90's Marilyn Manson appeared on Donahue to provide input on the topic of "moshing". People generally take Manson at face value and don't anticipate him having a brain. This was less an issue with Donahue than other shows he's been on, but this is still pretty entertaining...

Best line, "I went to a nice private Christian school. Look how I turned out".

Also, this is classic Manson right before AntiChrist came out. I miss those days.

In the Beginning...

I've never much on blogging and stuff like that. I've posted a few to my myspace account, but I never really pay attention to that any more so I figured I'd start a respectable site.

So, what's new? Mushna and I celebrated a month of marriage on march 19th. Our paperwork is off to the immigration attorney so he can start processing all the green card, travel and work authority documentation. That's been the only real point of stress (and finances) so far.

As for me, I picked up photography last year and have since purchased the much coveted Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L IS USM lens. Last year I was shooting with the 70-300 mm f/4-5.6 IS USM on the telephoto end and I was happy with the results. The 70-200 is a professional lens so I'm really excited to get it out this summer.

Right now, my main camera rig looks like this:
Canon 40D
Sigma 10-20 mm f/4-5.6
Canon 28-135 mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Canon 70-200 mm f/2.8 L IS USM
Canon EF 2x II Teleconverter
Canon 430 EX Speedlite with a Sto-Fen diffuser

Eventually I want to replace my 28-135 with the excellent 24-70 mm f/2.8 L USM but it will probably be next year when I seriously look at it.

Anyway, here are the photos I consider my favorites from last year:

Top 10 Photos from 2008

The first big outing this year will be Holi or Color Fest which takes place on the grounds of the Krishna temple in Spanish Fork, Utah. I photographed an event last year called India Fest and my photos were featured on their site with a link to my flickr account. Here are those photos. That was shot with my 70-300 lens before the sun went completely down and my 50 mm f/1.8 when it got dark. I'm excited to use my 70-200 because I should be able to shoot with it and get amazing results through out the evening.

Getting near summer, this blog will pretty much be a photography blog with bits of other stuff mixed in, for instance, my favorite albums (so far this year they're Napalm Death - Time Waits for No Slave, Mastodon - Crack the Skye, Cannibal Corpse - Evisceration Plague with a shout out to Lamb of God's -Wrath. By the way, Devin Townsend has new material coming out, too.).