Ryan Resella Photography, Inc.

Recently I went to the LA Kings practice on 3/5/2010. The practices take place at the Toyota Sports Center in El Segundo. All practices are open to the public. I’ve never been to a Kings practice so it was interesting to see how it goes. Usually they end up running a lot of the drills and practice certain plays on the lines. Of course I took my camera and took a bunch of photos. Here are my favorites:

Dustin Brown

Wayne Simmonds

Michael Handzus

Anze Kopitar

Drew Doughty

Alexandar Frolov

Jonathan Quick taking a shot on goal

Anze Kopitar and Jonathan Quick

Ryan Smyth

Brad Richardson , Jarret Stoll, and Anze Kopitar

Ersberg and Quick

Brown and Kopitar

Jonathan Quick

Jonathan Quick

Jonathan Quick

Here is the entire set on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastminuteracer/sets/72157623443037913/

Check out this video I took also of one of the drills:

I have decided to separate out the photography blog. This blog will be kept for the business side and all the personal photos will go on my Tumblr site. Which can be viewed at http://ryanresella.tumblr.com

For the large photo sets of vacations I will post a link on here to remind people to go there.

Well it’s been almost 2 months since my last blog post. I haven’t had a chance to really had a chance to post. Hopefully I can find some time over the next few weeks to get the backlog of photos I’ve taken over the last couple of months.

On Saturday 12/19 I got a chance to take these photos in the lovely Bridgeport area of Santa Clarita.

Well I decided instead of renting out my other room in my condo to build a home studio.

Here are the photos of build process:

The before shots:

Off to Home Depot for some paint and wood laminate:

Painted 3 of the walls Silver White and the accent wall China Blue

After that began laying down the flooring:

Almost done:

Now with all the studio equipment all set up. 2 Impact Monolights with Softboxes and my rolldown background:

So now I have a studio on my house .. interested in getting studio photos? Contact me …

The Bridgeport community in Santa Clarita, CA has always been a great place for me to take photos. Probably because its really convenient for me. Ever since I got my first Digital SLR i used it as a place to take photos and test out images etc. Well on Sunday it was a super nice day out in Santa Clarita and decided to do a Bridgeport Photo Walk. Mainly because i got a new lens and a new camera body. I got a new Lensbaby composer which lets you do selective focusing on a subject. It has an intersesting concept behind itself, you can read more about it at http://www.lensbaby.com Also got a new Canon 5D body, which is my first full frame sensor DSLR. So all of these photos are taken with this new camera and the lensbaby mounted to it.

A few of my favorites:

A direct link to the entire photo set is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastminuteracer/sets/72157618920098368/

Or watch the slide show:

May 14th will always be a special day in the Resella Family. May 14th, 1917 is when Benjamin Resella was born. Happy Birthday Grandpa, you would have been 92 years old today. For the past couple of weeks I have been going through all the photos and negatives and scanning them. Here are some of the great works that he did that I would like to share.

My Grandpa painting the scene for Earthquake the movie. Back then he painted these scenes and now they are easily created with computers.

Grandpa with a background scene that he painted from Star Trek the motion picture. Hard to believe that he’s standing in front of a painting. The picture is signed be all the cast: Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner and even the creator of Star Trek himself Gene Roddenberry.

This was from my brother Robin who created this image for our memory book. The words say it all…

My blog has been pretty slow for the last couple of weeks. I’ve been out taking a lot of pictures that have been sitting on my hard drive and haven’t had a chance to upload yet. I’ve been way to busy with school and building my home studio. When that is done I will do a whole blog post on the build for that. Still need to get to my Boston photos, hopefully soon. I Had a chance again this year to attend the 2009 Cowboy Festival in Santa Clarita, CA. This event was held at the Melody Ranch Movie studios once again. Last year was pretty hot but this year the weather was great, except for the occasional dust storms. To see my photos from last year check out this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastminuteracer/sets/72157604773390797/ If you have never had a chance to attend this festival I would encourage to check it out next year. Even if you aren’t a big cowboy fan or western fan it is still fun to check out at least once. Here are some of my favorite photos:

Don Edwards

The rest of the photos can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastminuteracer/sets/72157617448465808/
Or watch the slide show here:

On April 18, 2009 the Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF) held a memorial for my grandpa Benjamin Resella. The MPTF is an exclusive retirement community for those who worked in the motion picture and television industry. Here is the wikipedia entry for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_&_Television_Fund. My grandpa retired and entered this community in Woodland Hills. This memorial was a chance for those members of the community do remember Benjamin Resella. Here are some photos I took of the event:

John Ford Chapel at the Motion Picture Television Fund

The rest of the set can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastminuteracer/sets/72157616981825567/

The motto of MPTF is, “Taking care of our own”. The members of the community are very caring. During the memorial the community members had a chance to say something about grandpa and each and everyone one of them had something great to say. There is one in particular that will always stand out in my mind, “I’m just sorry that I didn’t know him better.. I wish I had got to know him.” I think many of us feel that way, but he will always be a part of us and his legacy will continue on through the family and through our memories..

Here is the video:

Benjamin A. Resella (May 14th, 1917 – March 24th, 2009)
RESELLA, Benjamin A. Hollywood scenic artist dies at 91. Mr. Resella was the perspective genius behind Hollywood’s scenic backings for over 30 years, in movies such as Hello Dolly, Earthquake, Star Trek and many others. His family and friends remember him as a man of creativity, ingenuity and passion for life. He was a WWII veteran and a survivor of the Bataan Death March.
He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Consuelo, and he remains an inspiration to his seven children, nineteen grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

---

I started this blog almost a year ago to the day. Seems like only yesterday… I started this blog to share my photography. It’s been a passion that I’ve had ever since high school. Although photography never panned out for me as a career I have no regrets. I love taking photos as a hobby and for fun, it’s the Resella art side that I get it from. I’ve got hundreds of photos from my last couple of trips: Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle. Those photos will be posted over the next couple of weeks hopefully. Very rarely do I take a break from blogging about my photography but this one of those posts.

This post is dedicated to my grandpa who has been a great inspiration in my life, our family and all who knew him and his story. One of my favorite quotes from him was this: “I have a lot of imagination. Imagination is useless if you cannot put it on something. What’s the use of imagination in your brain? It’s not doing anything in there. You have to put [your imagination] on a sculpture, a drawing or paintings, or whatever, you have to put it down so people can see it.” -Benjamin A. Resella

To our family: Many of you have expressed that you wanted copies of the images below. I have provided a link at the bottom of each photo to download the high resolution version to get prints done. If you have trouble email me and I’ll send you the files.

I purchased my current camera the Canon 40D last March. The second day I had the camera I was able to attend the book signing for Filipinos in Hollywood in Historic Filipino Town. As I look at the file names, that event was the first 200 images that I took with that camera and how fitting that it was of my grandpa. Here are some photos from this event:

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The hat says Motion Picture Television Fund – Grandpa loved to show off his hat. He was very proud of it and all the hard work that it took to get it. The Motion Picture Television Fund is an exclusive retirement community for members of the motion picture industry.

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Grandpa was telling the story about how we was discovered at The San Francisco Opera house… how he was told to report to 20th Century Fox in Hollywood.. his first day on the job and the big gates…The security guard asking him if he thought he could do the job. . the rest is history.. It was the first time that I had heard the story and it was truly inspiring for me and everyone there.

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Ben Resella with Marie Tang.. Marie was filming a documentary about my grandpa that will hopefully be released soon for everyone to see.

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Signing autographs for the fans.. those books are going to be worth a lot!

For more pictures here is the set on my Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastminuteracer/sets/72157616479928833/

My first real post for this blog was my grandparent’s 65th Wedding Anniversary: http://ryanresella.com/2008/04/10/65-years-of-success/ .

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This is my favorite photograph that I took of my grandpa. It’s from the 65th Wedding Anniversary. This is my favorite photo because it tells such a story…   He has such a proud happy look and only he knows what he is thinking.

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Grandpa with Robin and Rodney.. telling them about many of the ideas he has..

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Marie filming additional documentary footage…

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All the grandchildren and great grandchildren

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Typical photo of grandpa pacing back and forth…

The following photos are very personal and private. So far this event was the most difficult in my life to take photos, but I felt that it had to be documented…

The Memorial Services…

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Sgt. Benjamin A. Resella a World War II veteran being saluted..
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Being laid to rest..

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Folding of the American Flag…

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Presenting the American Flag..

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Roses from the grandchildren

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All the grandchildren…

The rest of the photos from this set can be seen here on my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastminuteracer/sets/72157616499484579/

Here is the collage of all the movies that Grandpa worked on..

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3328/3425437420_e8f6981ca6_o.jpg

Here is the video that was played at the reception. Thank you Marie Tang for sharing it with us. This video was very inspiring and personal.

http://www.vimeo.com/4096664

Benjamin A. Resella was an amazing man who never gave up on living his dreams. He is an inspiration to all of us and like Joy said.. he made you proud to be a Resella.

“Having a dream is not enough. Live it. Don’t miss your destiny” -Ben A. Resella