Lucio Villa

Out of 169 images I took and 2 hours of waiting from last night, I did manage to capture a couple of meteors; however, this image had the brightest one.But it was nothing compared to the first meteor we, Carla (my girlfriend), Brandon and I, saw around 12:30am. This was the first meteor shower I encountered and photographed and found out that we have to be lucky and patient to capture a meteor.

The PBC (Parent Bilingual Conference) put on by the Mexican American Student Association from Cal Poly Pomona, is an event where workshops are designed to help students apply for college/financial aid/EOP/AB540 and also for parents to prepare/help their children apply for college and how to find resources to help pay for higher education. These workshops are made available free to students and parents from local high schools. Lunch is also provided.


This event is put on annually to help students and parents from the minority community to help prepare for college. The workshops help both students and parents help search and apply to scholarships, apply to EOP programs and also one workshop that just started recently is one for prospective AB540 students.



This workshop in particular is very important for undocumented students who sometimes do not know that they can not apply for financial aid and would have to pay for their tuition on their behalf. The AB540 workshop had students who are AB540 share their stories on how they struggle every year to pay for school. Some students have two jobs and apply to a myriad of scholarships.


For information on how to attend next year's PBC please contact MASA at masa@csupomona.edu and visit their website at www.csupomona.edu/~masa

Stepped outside my house and noticed 4 separate brushfires near the 60 freeway in Diamond Bar, CA. Immediately I thought to myself, that although I am a student photojournalist that it should not stop me from covering stories from outside my campus. I began to think of myself as a professional photojournalist and although the images I am going to take are not going to be printed in a newspaper, I know that by doing this I will gain experience from a real-life event and help me in my future work by increasing my skills as a photojournalist. So I immediately grabbed my camera bag and drove up as close to the fire, parked my car and walked up to the bridge where the 60 freeway passes under and with my own will and no press pass, I managed to produce these images...

This is how it all began...
I received an email from a group called TNA (The Noise Academy) on Wednesday asking for help to shoot a festival that weekend(Oct 23,24). I told them of course I would! and that I would get a photo pass and a free ticket to get in. This was a huge opportunity for me as a photojournalist student and add more to my portfolio. So I agreed to help out. I went on Friday morning to practice shooting for the main day, the 24th. The bands that I photographed were Sublime, Deftones, Pennywise, Cypress Hill and Cheech & Chong. I have never seen them live or to a concert as epic as this one. I had a lot of fun! I took along my Nikon D90 with my 80-200mm f2.8, 18-105mm and my newly acquired 50mm f1.8. And I used every single lens to shoot the concert, at night of course I used my 80-200mm f2.8 and 50mm f1.8. The one band I had difficulty shooting was Cypress Hill, their lighting consisted of a blue overcast with no spotlight. I used my 50mm in that situation with a high ISO.

Overall, the concert was fun to shoot, learned alot on how to shoot (from where to stand to settings on camera), met professional photographers who have been shooting concerts for a living and got tips from them too. Now I am looking forward to continuing shooting concerts and attaining the Nikkor 14-24mm f2.8. That means my 18-105mm VR will be up for sale! (any takers?)