Ka-boom!

Taken at the Edwards Air Force Base Open House last November. The heat from this hit me like a tidal wave!

Proud

I could not have been more proud. And a film camera no less! Little boy's growing up.

natural selection

Taken at the L.A. Museum of Natural History. I've been wanting to go back and take this shot since my first visit to the museum. There's a lot to improve, but this is a good start! Have a great week!

Ride the wave

Disney Concert Hall. Endless possibilities.

Sunset walk

Taking a walk with my baby girl.

Spring in motion

Here's a little short film I put together showing some of the color that's popping up around here. Happy Friday!

Cell block

This is the main cell block on Alcatraz Island.

Sprung

Spring has officially sprung around here. My hands down favorite time of the year.

Dowtown San Diego Time Lapse

I shot this over several nights while we were staying in San Diego. We totally scored and got a corner room on the top floor of the hotel! Shot with my 7D and Tokina 12-24. Enjoy!

Hall of Justice

I took this in downtown San Diego. When I drove by this building all I could think about was the old Justice League cartoon. "Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice." Loved that show. I shot this up close with a really wide lens to give it that imposing look. Also shot HDR to capture all that cool light inside. A fair amount of post processing to get the kind of moody look I wanted. Good times. Have a great Monday!

Our lady of the beautiful window

I took this during our most recent trip to San Francisco. This church was about two blocks down from our hotel, and the stained glass window kept catching my eye. Have a great Sunday.

Wet leaves on black

Shot this down the street from my house just after a storm. Have a great Friday!

Red Express

Gettin' moody

Midway Phantom

An F-4 Phantom aboard the USS Midway.

US Grant at night

The US Grant Hotel in San Diego.

I had taken a number of pictures of this hotel on our previous visit to San Diego and took a few more on this most recent trip. I had noticed an area about four stories above the entrance that had plants on it and looked like a terrace. I asked the front desk about it and they said it used to be an outdoor terrace for guests, but an "accident" had happened a few years ago that caused them to close it. I really wanted to get out there a take a picture that hadn't been taken before. It never hurts to ask, right? Surprisingly they said yes I could with someone accompanying me. Score! The guy that went out with me was very cool and let me walk all over. I'm sure that very few people have been out there, and I'm pretty sure that no one has ever taken an HDR picture from there.

Big thanks to the staff at the US Grant for making this image possible and for making our stay, once again, awesome.

Studio Diner

Heard about this place on the Food Network show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. It was everything Guy Fieri said it was and more. So good. I recommend the Samson sandwich with waffle fries.

Confused

I've been a bad blogger. The family and I went away to San Diego for a few days and I left without so much as a "see ya!" Many apologies. On the plus side, I did take quite a few shots that I'll be sharing very soon! Just to be clear though, this isn't one of them. No, I shot this today while out on a walk with my two younger kids. I titled it "Confused" because hey, it's still Winter. Didn't this bush get the memo?

Magic Light

HDR Tutorial Screencast

Well, I finally got it done. Whew. A number of people have asked about my work flow for creating HDR images, so I thought the best way to show that would be a screencast. I hope this gives you some insight into my process and inspires you to create some of your own! I've never done one of these before, so your feedback is welcome. It runs about 40 minutes, so grab a beverage and kick back. Oh, Vimeo won't allow me to embed the HD version, so if you want that just click here.

Find cover

Alcatraz portrait

While we were touring Alcatraz, my little girl kept saying she wanted to take a picture of me. When I found a bit of light, I gave her the camera. I love her.

Sunset Geese

I saw the clouds building up yesterday and thought there was a high chance of sunset awesomeness. Turned out there were too many clouds and the color never showed. I was really nice hanging out by this lake, though and a flock of geese obliged me with a fly by.

Balboa steeple

Taken in San Diego's Balboa Park.

Take that first step

San Francisco Time Lapse

Many thanks to Philip Bloom for his many tips and tutorials, both on his website and twitter, about creating time lapses. I actually got to meet him at Skywalker Ranch during our trip and had a nice little chat about movies and gear. A real gentleman.

And now, on with the show.



This was all shot from my hotel room over the course of three days. For bodies I used a Canon 7D and 50D. For lenses I used the Canon 24-105L, 70-200L and Tokina 12-24. The shooting time ranged from 30 minutes to a bit more than 2 hours. I used the Canon TC80N3 to keep the interval love going.

Post wise, I combined all the frames in Quicktime 7 then exported them as a full size movie file. Editing was done in Final Cut Pro with the final movie compressed in VisualHub. Whew, that's a lot of tech talk.

Thanks for watching and have a great week!