We arrived in LA less than two hours ago, our friend Oleg picked me and Martin up from the greyhound bus station in downtown LA. After 7 hours of sleeping on the bus we are finally here, at the Tempest Pro Takeover. 

The Takover is an event hosted by the Tempest freerunning and parkour gym every year. Hundreds of professional athletes come here from around the world to train together around LA and in the Tempest gym. 

After breakfast with Oleg's family we are off to go and train with all the guys in LA!

Sadly, I did not have any time nor opportunities to take (worthy) pictures. Yet I still had some awesome experiences.

I trained with the founders of the APEX parkour gyms on Tuesday. They made a surprise visit to Palo Alto and we ended up training from eight in the evening to one in the morning! Last time I met them was at an international parkour gathering about a year back. The training was super fun but iv been super sore and sluggish the rest of the week. 

In other news the parkour community in Palo Alto is growing! Every Tuesday and Thursday beginners sessions we have at least two newcomers. It really nice to see a group that was once only 5 members grow to over 100.

This week I mainly worked on helping Martin sell his glass pieces by organizing sales and photographing his artwork. We managed to get 150$ by selling 10 glass penguines, money that will pay for our trip to the Tempest Pro Takover in LA. 

The Pro Takover is an anual gathering of the best parkour teams from around the world, and it is held at the tempest freerunning acedemy in Los Angeles.

We will be going there in two weeks!

On another note, I am planning another camping/backpacking trip over spring break. This time we are going to go up to the granite plains outside yosemity valley. 

This weekend me and three friends drove up to the Pinnacles National Park. Upon arriving there we were met with a sign attempting to stop us from camping in the wilderness. Nevertheless, we were able to convince the park rangers to give us permission to park over night. With a backpack, sleeping bag, and rope on each of our backs we made our way up he mountain. We went up the mountain off trail. Each of us had scratches all over our arms and gashes on our backpacks. It took 6 hours to get to the top.

We had our sleeping bags under a pine tree and we slept with the condors!

This past week offered so many opportunities for good pictures. Sadly I missed many of them because I have been at home recovering from an ankle injury. Nevertheless I want to share all the moments I was been able to capture.

On sunday I went to Berkeley and trained with one of the most experienced tracuers in russia. Nikolay is a 13-year parkour athlete, stunt choreographer and a theater performer. He is on a tour around the US looking for sponsorships from different sports companies. He wants to move to California, and is looks for jobs and places to stay. I was able to help him out by introducing him to a friend of mine who works as a cinematographer for GoPro. In return Nikolay introduced me with a few of his friends around Europe with whom we (me and my friends) may be able to stay during our summer eurotrip.

This weekend's adventure will be a camping trip to the pinnacles! 

As I'm getting more familiar with my camera, editing techniques, and photography in general I'v been searching for things to photograph.

I found inspiration in 3 places; professional photography albums, a photography lecture hosting photographers from around the bay, and the world around me. Particularly clouds.

Clouds are interesting, they have a sort of vibrancy that, if captured on camera, looks amazing. The issue has been the capturing of said brilliance. I had a few successful attempts, but I was forced to play around with the contrast in order to make the pictures more radiant.

NOTE
A fun thing I noticed about photography: Every time you don't have your camera with you, you regret it. I'v been forced to lug around all my camera gear, cause I know I'm going to want to punch myself next time i see the perfect shot but don't have my camera to record it with.

I (more or less) learned how to use my camera. My photographer friend went over all the basics and the instruction manual came in handy.

Playing with the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed I was able to get a number of nice shots, but I have yet to learn how to capture the whole vibrancy and feeling of a moment...

I'm having fun with this project, I'v already learned a lot about photography, and thanks to to Ms. Angell I have an excuse to get away from home and go on some adventures!

P.S. I need some more lenses.

Inspired by Google's 20% time, our english teacher assigned us to use 20% of our class time and out-of-class effort to do, create, or learn something new!

I chose to make photo album. I want to capture all my memorable travels and adventures as a way to remember my last 3 months in high school.

First off, as a good photographer knows, "It's not the camera; it's the photographer!". So instead of searching for expensive camera equipment with which to record my adventures, I have armed myself with a rusty EOS 350D Canon and my beloved GoPro (as well as a pair of good climbing shoes, a hitchhiker's backpack, and lots of bandaids).

I have already found a few stores and websites which are ready to make my album for me (for a hefty sum of money), but the real first step is to get all my equipment working.

While I'v been really sick this past week and didn't even have time for my daily video's I have been able to start gluing the old Canon back together. While waiting for the glue to dry I made progress in reading the manual and i at least partially understand how this thing works. 

The second step is picking the right playlist and stepping out the front door!

Sick jam at Berkeley today, slammed my ass against a ledge but still got some epic photos and footage.

Today, I took a 20 mile bike ride around the south bay (Palo Alto --> Redwood City). Along the way I stopped by Woodside High School with the hope of finding new parkour spots. I had struck gold. Unfortunately, I attend Gunn High School, which, to put it nicely, doesn't have shit on Woodside in terms of trace-ability. "Woodside High School has a lot of rails" is an understatement. Everywhere you look there are rails extending in all possible directions. I thought it would be really cool to just balance around the whole school on the many rails circling the campus. Either this school has a lot of handicapped people, or the architect who designed the place was an undercover traceur. Anyway, this is in fact a very beginner friendly place for people looking to play around on rails. If only it were closer to me...