Health, Happiness, and Longevity

Every so often, I have to write about health - without it, you won't be able to enjoy all my other posts.  OK, forget that reason.  You won't be able to enjoy your life as much, if at all, if you are always sick and tired.  I know, because growing up, and until the age of around 30, I was sick all the time, or so it seemed.  Once, when I was around 20, I went 6 months without a cold and I couldn't believe it.  Then I got really sick with the flu.  Now the last time I had a cold or flu was over 10 years ago.  How did I get these changes to happen?  Through a healthy diet and after much study and experimentation with supplements.

It seems every few days I hear about or talk with someone who has health problems a lot worse than colds.  Heart problems, diabetes, arthritis, pain in general, and the drugs they take sometimes cause side effects worse than the original problem.  Or the surgery does, if they make it that far.  One guy who played paddle tennis left the courts and diet of a heart attack at 55.  My advice is to at least follow the guidelines below and boycott all junk foods (foods with chemicals, artificial ingredients, sugar, or GMO).  For more on good foods, check out foodbabe.com.

Below is a good way for you to get started.  The only thing I would add to the guidelines is to buy organic food when you can.  Organic food in not GMO, so organic corn is OK.

The above is not complete.  If you eat meat, only eat it from grass fed animals that have not been given antibiotics, growth hormone, or GMO feed.  Buy organic chicken and organic eggs.  If you are vegetarian, you can skip this part.

Back to paddle tennis on one of my next posts.

Venice Beach Paddle Tennis Tournament - September 27 & 28, 2014

Watched and photographed the paddle tennis tournament, but did not play in it.  Did play 6 sets on both Saturday and Sunday.

In addition to photographing some of the action, I also photographed a couple of groups.  These were not planned ahead of time, so had not reflectors nor flash to fill in the harsh midday shadows and sun.  And the photos had to be on the courts where there was no shade and no natural reflectors, other than the court surface.  For situations like this, it is best to use the RAW setting on the camera - it gives a little more leeway on the exposures, and with post processing software, you can still get useful photos.  For the best unplanned group photos, open shade with a building to reflect the sunlight works great.

Anyway, here are some of the photos.  If you are in the group photos, I hope you enjoy them.  For the action photos, I hope everyone enjoys those.  More will be coming in future posts.

I think the above two photos are my best two action shots of the tournament, although got some other very good ones.  The photo on the right were the winners in the open division.  Below are some more action shots taken during play, through the fence (so as not to distract the players).

And some individual shots of players and spectators.  The top two women played in the tournament, the bottom two were there to watch and play.  All are a lot of fun to play with and wonderful people.

And finally, the group photos.

The finalists of the open division with Mr. Paddle Tennis in the middle.

The bottom photo is of the finalists in the open division.

As always, hope you enjoy the photos, have a wonderful day, enjoy life, and stay healthy.

Last Day of Summer

On this last day of Summer, 2014, thought I would post the last of the Bikini Contest photos that I hadn't yet posted.  Some paddle tennis photos, too, from this past Summer.  I am going to miss the long days and short nights until next March 22.  But am hoping for a drought busting Winter here in Southern California.  Hope you enjoy one last look at the beautiful bikini women of #musclebeach #venicebeach.

And the grand winner from all the contests is this beautiful young lady.  I'm sure the voting was close with the runner-ups.  There were many who could have been chosen #1.

Almost forgot the paddle tennis photos.  In an earlier post I had a photo of Maria Sharipova playing at the Venice Beach courts.  After a loss at the U.S. Open tennis, Sam Querry showed up at the courts in Venice, and was very nice to pose with some of our local players.

And so this concludes this past Summer's photos.  Hope you've enjoyed viewing them.  Until next Summer, I'll see what other photos to post here - probably some past beach photos, some new portraits, and perhaps some photo tutorials.  Meanwhile, Happy Fall (Autumn).

Muscle Beach at Venice Beach Final Bikini Contest of 2014 - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

OK - there was no ugly, I just always liked that phrase ever since Clint Eastwood's movie by that name came out - just watched it the other day.  BTW - don't know if hashtags make a difference in these posts, but just in case:  #MuscleBeach #BikiniContest #VeniceBeach .

The good, of course, was all the great contestants, the judges (who pretty much agreed with my picks), the organizers, the crowd that watched and participated, and the photographers for capturing it all for all time (I'm in this last group, obviously).  And all the free T-shirts they gave to everyone in the audience.  Also for the contestants, the prizes were pretty nice, too!

So what was the bad - the late start.  Official start time was 2:00pm, but actual start time was close to 3:00pm.  I think there may have been some loss of audience participation and some people left before the competition was over.  If I had brought my paddle tennis paddle, I might have left to play some PT.  They did apologize for the late start, but no reason was given.

Now that the good, the bad, and the ugly are out of the way - if you were a Bikini Contestant, and you would like to see any of the photos I will be posting here or on FB, in their full size, please don't hesitate to contact me.  There is no charge for this at this time, as long as it is for your personal use.  If you really like the photos, and would like to do a photo shoot with me, let me know that, too.  Also, at this time, for anyone in the bikini contest, there will be no charge for a photo shoot.  I always meet before a shoot to go over ideas, etc.  If you are interested, you can often find me just south of Muscle Beach in Venice at the Paddle Tennis courts.  There is a link to my website on the right margin of this blog.

Now, a word about the photos - they were shot in RAW, edited in Lightroom, and then converted to JPG images, both full size and small for FB and this blog.  Many were cropped, but no individual retouching was done, because, well, you all looked great, so it wasn't needed.  In a future post, I'll talk about why I shoot mostly in RAW, as opposed to JPG (although I get good results with both).

I currently have 274 photos - many are similar to others, but expressions and poses changed, so kept more than I normally would have if I was shooting only one person.

Here are the first 20, starting with an overview:

For a bird's eye view, you either have to be a bird........or a drone.

More to follow in the coming days.  Hope you are all having a great weekend.