Aaron Riveroll | Photographer

Okay, so my problems have been solved! No, I haven’t gotten a life…but I have a brand-spanking new MacBook Pro, courtesy of my grandma…the silent partner of NGS Media. Okay, well it’s not so silent anymore since I spread it all over the internet…but yes, my grandma saved the day. After my PC went kaput last week, I was slightly irritated. I had all these things to do and didn’t quite know how I was going to get them done. Now I can do all that…and more.

I took to editing a video for the Simple Glam Girls calendar release party next week. We had shot about an hour or so of footage from our shoot a couple weeks ago..and needless to say, I cut, transitioned, and edited everything in about 30 minutes. I took an hour of video down to about 6 minutes. Granted, I was using iMovie…and I’m used to more complex editors…but I have to tell you, for a simple movie with one video source, iMovie is definitely the way to go. I have never clipped video that fast before in my life. And this computer not only clips, but renders as I go…and it renders faster than I can blink my eyes. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration…but it’s pretty damn fast. I am seriously still amazed that I was able to procrastinate and get this video edited in the time it takes to watch a sitcom. Ridiculous.

I will be getting the CS3 production suite on this machine too and my life will be even sweeter. I can’t wait!

So yeah, definitely good news to blog about. I also have some fun shoots planned, so stay tuned! I headed out to Hooters tonight and hung out with Emilie, who is only one of the coolest chicks in the world. She was definitely rockin’ the orange shorts tonight! But we’ve got some schemes in the works, so that’ll be fun. Saw Stevie too…and it’s pretty much awesome every time I see her too. And the fried pickles were divine.

Hope everyone is staying cool! Summer is actually winding down…and it’s sad to see it go.

I like big butts…and I cannot lie.

But apparently these guys don’t.

This commercial literally cracked me up the first time I saw it…and it continues to get a chortle out of me every time:

I’ve cooled off a little since my little rant last night. Life throws stuff at you sometimes and there’s nothing you can do about it but suck it up and deal. And that’s what I’m doing.

Besides, today was a good day. Chill, but good. Went out for breakfast with AJ and tooled around the house doing miscellaneous crap. My morning shoot was cancelled inexplicably, which is a bummer since the model is such a hottie…but we’re supposed to be shooting next weekend, so it all works out. ;) I did, however, set up a last minute shoot for the afternoon with a gal named Julie.

Julie is SUCH a sweetheart…genuine, sweet, beautiful, and fun to shoot. This was her first official photo shoot, and I think we did well. The sunset was just TOO beautiful to pass up, so we snapped some as the big orange ball tucked down behind the horizon. And with Julie standing in front of all this, you just KNOW the pictures came out good.

But don’t take my word for it…here are a couple samples:

Anyway, it was lots of fun with Julie. We’re shooting again next week, so that oughta be fun. :)

And on that note, I’m going to run out and grab something to eat. Hooray for 3-day weekends.

And I’m watching Hitch for the second time…I think I really need to change the channel. :)

Well, I don’t think it’s the best idea to write when I’m so pissed off…but against my better judgment I’m going to, since I have nothing else to do.

So I headed out to the Padres game with Doug tonight, which was cool since a grand slam by Cameron in the 5th put the Pads in an excellent position. We won 7 to nothing. Sweet game.

So I come home to do a little editing and such and, well, found out that my tower that has been faithful to me for the last 5 years fizzled out. Kaput. Nothing.

When I left it this afternoon, I was running a diagnostic on one of my external drives and trying to restore some information that had been corrupted…and was pretty successful too…but now I guess that doesn’t matter since my machine isn’t even working now. And I’m frustrated because I have projects that were in the works, projects that were soon-to-be in the works, and general garbage that was on that machine. And now I can’t even do anything. And it’s frustrating. I may seem really calm on the outside…but if you know me, you know that I internalize a lot of stuff and I’m frustrated to the point of picking up my computer and literally throwing it THROUGH the window onto oncoming traffic and watching it smash on the street into a million pieces. It would be a welcome addition to the busted up car that’s already parked in front of our building.

But that wouldn’t do any good. What I REALLY need to do is buy a new machine instead of put money into this one that has lasted 5 long years…but I will probably have to see if I can salvage this one somehow, or at least the information on it. I’m sort of at a standstill right now…and that’s the annoying thing.

But enough ranting. It was a long-ass week with no end in sight…and now the weekend is here and I have some time to relax (a little).

I never told you about my adventures last Friday. I shot with a crazy cool girl named Anastacia. Not only is she strikingly beautiful, but she’s adventurous and sexy as heck. We wanted to do some uninhibited implied shots on the beach, so we decided to trek Blacks clothing option beach in La Jolla. And for being a gray day with crappy weather and no sun, we got some AMAZING shots.

Quite honestly, this is the only one I have to show to prove how awesome our shoot was. But there are many more. (just a side note, this photo generated something like 25 comments in the matter of just a few days on my Model Mayhem profile…I guess people like it. :) )But Anastacia rocks.

Okay, so the rest of the story…in order to get to the clothing optional part of the beach, you have to trek down a paved road from this residential area and then about a mile or so down the beach. It seriously is a walk. And the road is crazy steep too. So anyway, we got done shooting and saw where the “other” way to get down to the beach was. There are a few ways to get to that part of the beach, and one of them is this STEEP (and I mean STEEP) trail and stairs that someone created. And I kid you not when I say it’s treacherous. And steep. Did I mention that? So we decided that we would try hiking up that way instead of walking a mile back down the beach and then walking up the paved road. Big mistake. First of all, this hike up the make shift trail is steep. I don’t think I mentioned that yet. We had to stop several times because of running out of breath and my legs feeling like jello. At least the view was breathtaking. :) Anastacia is from Colorado, so her lungs are fine. :) But wow…it was amazing when we made it to the top! I felt like I was going to die, but I didn’t. However, I seriously felt like dying when I realized that our cars were WAY far away from where the trail spit us out. After hiking that long hike, I didn’t feel like walking anymore…but we ended up walking a couple miles or so back to our cars. I tell you, it was interesting to say the least. We were both tired and wet, and desperate enough to start calling friends to see if anyone could take us to our cars…we were beaten down, but not out. As a matter of fact, it was nice getting to bond a little…would have been better if I wasn’t so exhausted…but it was still cool. But dude, the pictures were worth it!

On Saturday, of course, Tara and Aleck got married. Saturday was pretty much awesome.

And Sunday…was pretty much awesome too. A buddy, Mike Crouch, called me up and asked if I’d like to help out him and his partner, Jon, with a calendar shoot they were doing. I said, “heck yes!” and drove out to this awesome house in east country…complete with spa and infinity pool in the back yard. It was a grueling job setting up lights in the smoldering heat…but easily forgotten when you realize you are basking in the smoldering hotness of 10+ bikini models. ;) I captured some pretty awesome frames (which I can’t share until the calendar comes out, of course…so stay tuned…and buy a calendar ). I also got to meet some pretty awesome girls too…they were ALL sweethearts and I hopefully will be shooting more with all of them soon. I also got to shoot alongside two of the COOLEST photographers ever. Jon and Mike definitely get two thumbs up as being two of the coolest guys. I’m looking forward to shooting more with them in the future too.

And that brings us to today. It’s ending on a frustrating note…but what can you do?