Edwin Villanueva

I love my family. How could you not? Happy New Year everyone!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Holidays!

I’m here at the San Jose International Airport waiting for my delayed flight back to San Diego. I had quite a busy weekend as I attended a karate tournament, anniversary and baptism.

Most of Saturday was spent at my nephews karate tournament at Gunderson High. It was my first time attending a karate tournament and I have to admit, it was a little nerve racking. While growing up, my parents would always tell me they hated watching me play sports because they were always nervous. Well, I got a taste of how they felt watching my nephew, Tobey and my godsons, AJ and Brian at this tournament. It’s definitely worse as a spectator. Maybe its because as a participant, you have control in the outcome. As a spectator, you’re helpless and can only watch. My nervousness was all for not as Tobey took first in his division and AJ and Brian took second and third in theirs. Congrats guys!

I spent most of today traveling back and forth from Berkley to SJ and then from SJ to Fremont to first celebrate my parents 41st Anniversary and then the Baptism of my cousins daughter, Charmaine. One word describes how I feel right now—STUFFED! I ate so much today that I probably won’t eat for the next couple of days.

After a long work week, this weekend has been all about relaxing, decompressing and catching up on things. One of the things that I needed to catch up on was my Tivo. I was behind a couple of weeks on all of my shows – Hawaii Five-O, The Event, Criminal Minds, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Caprica. I spent pretty much all day Saturday getting caught up on all of these.

Today, with the weather being so nice, I headed out to the Wild Animal Park. It’s been awhile since I last photographed anything so what better way to spend my afternoon at one of my favorite places with my camera.

This also gave me the opportunity to use the 70-200mm lens again. I’m absolutely loving the images coming out of this lens.

I finally got around to looking at the Hoover Dam photos from my little photo walk with Drew a few weeks back. The whole experience was awesome since it was the first time I visited Hoover Dam and the first time I met Drew in real life. We went early evening just before sunset to avoid the large crowds and to take some pics of the dam at night.

Below are a few of my favorites.




I was really hoping to get a frontal photo of the dam at night but there was really no place to take that shot from.

Next time I’m at the Dam, I’ll try this photo again but from a higher vantage point.