New Zealand Sky

I was chatting with Dan about night exposures which led me to process a couple of pictures I took of the night's sky in New Zealand last year. It was so peaceful there that night.

Death Valley Trip Highlights

View Death Valley Trip in a larger map

Here's a little map I've cooked up of places that could be cool to see in Death Valley this weekend. Not Sure what exactly we'll be able to see as the park is currently listing a lot of the roads as closed. They got rain or something. I will be especially bummed if we can't get to the Racetrack with its moving rocks. Hope the trip is cool.
Some general locations and things to do in them, as noted by the National Park Service:

Panamint Springs Area
Furnace Creek Area (We're staying there)
Stovepipe Wells Area
Scotty's Castle Area

Current Road Conditions

Honeymoon Photos Are Done

(click to go to flickr site)

At long last I have finished editing all the pictures from our honeymoon. Feel free to check them out. If you've been watching them over time, the latest pictures are in the Athens and Istanbul sets.

Santorini Pictures Posted

(click to view)

Whew, I finally got through the pictures I took on Santorini, if anyone is interested. The above is a church in Oia taken at night with a long exposure.

Now on to Athens!

I've Been Published!

Well, after a fashion, anyway. A guy who writes for an ESL website asked permission to use one of my pictures from the bazaar in Istanbul for an article he was working on. So now it's been published here.

Last of the Comic-Con 2009 Pix Up

(click to see set)

Pushed the last of pictures from Con up tonight. Seems to be a lot of nerd interest out there, as I have never seen so many page views on my flickr stream.

Istanbul Honeymoon Photos Posted

(click to go to set)

After much travail, I have finally pushed through the first set of pictures from our honeymoon. These are taken mostly in Istanbul. About half are annotated at present, so more annotations will be forthcoming shortly. Now just ten days of photos in Greece. <sigh>

Back From Utah

(more pictures to follow RSN)

Well, Noelle and I survived our trip to Bryce Canyon. We drove out and back in five days, which was a little extreme, but manageable. We stopped over at the Ritz in Las Vegas on the way out which meant we were fairly rested, which helped out immensely. The weather was funny there: clear as a bell at sunrise, followed by rain and occasionally thunder in the afternoon. Kinda put a damper on sunset pictures, but oh well. Besides wandering the length of the canyon, we visited Kodachrome Basin State Park, Escalante Grand Staircase, and on our way out we drove through the bottom of Zion National Park. Zion is beautiful, I look forward to returning. The road we took through the Burr trail in Escalante was also beautiful, very much like I remember Arches a few years ago. We also saw rainbows on the alien terrain of scenic Hwy 12 (it really is!). It was nice to get back though.

Utah Bound

Well, it looks like our road trip to Utah is a go. I took a couple extra days off at Memorial Day and booked a room in Bryce, UT. Looking forward to seeing the hoodoos and maybe some slot canyons at nearby Escalante, if I can fit my chubby body through them.

Oakland Fox Theater

(click to see more)

Noelle and I went to the Fox Theater in Oakland for the first time a few months back right after it had opened after being vacant for many years. I was really impressed with how beautiful it was on the inside. I was even more impressed that they apparently let people take pictures in there if the artists don't explicitly forbid it. So on the next trip there, to see Video Games Live, I took my 40D and a few lenses. Hopefully I captured the feeling.

ZOMG Art Wolfe Class in Antarctica

Evidently Art Wolfe is offering a class in Antarctica. This is unusual as a.) Art doesn't seem to personally teach much AFAICT and b.) IT'S IN FUCKING ANTARCTICA! Now, if only I had ten grand handy + probably another 2-3 for airfare, which I am sure is not included. Make that twenty, I'm sure I could not go to Antarctica and not take Noelle. I guess I can't complain too much as I have visited two other continents already this year and will have visited a third by the end of the year. Still, Antarctica.

Weekend Redux

1. Buy tulips and other plants for spring planting projects. Check.


2. Buy tickets to New Zealand on the spur of the moment. Check.


3. Go to Karaoke Birthday Party for Aki and Rachel, sing three songs, drink a few drinks. Check.


4. Go to Doug and Catherine's Get-Rid-of-Our-Booze-Party afterwards, drink a few drinks. Check.


5. Drink enough water to avoid headache in morning. Check.


6. Buy more tulips for spring planting projects. Check.


7. Find out about calling plans in Greece and Turkey. Check.


8. Get some new boots to replace my embarassingly worn Asolos. Check.


9. Get some travel books about New Zealand. Check.


10. Pay bills. Check.


11. Process more photo a day project pictures. Check.

I guess there's a reason why I feel like the weekend was a busy one.

Another weekend, another blog post

Well, I sort of got the recovery I wished for last weekend. Friday night I was sort of planning on getting my tax papers ready for today and maybe some Fallout 3, but I ended up having dinner at Amber and Morgan's with Noelle and then going over to Will's for a tour of his spacious abode, some board games (well, just Carcasonne, really), and a viewing of Hellboy 2 on his ginormous tv.

After that late night adventure (I think we got home around 3), we completely blew off Wondercon this weekend. I have mixed feelings about it, but it was really nice to sleep in. We also got a number of errands run that we would not have otherwise gotten to, I think and I had a pleasant afternoon with Noelle, culminating in dinner at Zao in Palo Alto. After dinner we joined the other nerds at the beautiful Fox Oakland theater for Video Games Live. Noelle had fabulous seats (second row orchestra) and the sound was outstanding. Best of all, I was able to haul my camera gear into the theater and hopefully I have some fantastic pictures. Need to get some image processing done, I think I am about three weeks behind now.

Sunday was another super sleep in day. We got up late, visited a nursery to look at rose bushes, went to a bookstore, got some stuff at OSH and that pretty much completed the day before we met up with Aki, Rachel, and Cindy to see Milk at the movies. I guess Sean Penn's performance might have been a little better than Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, but I think it was a bad luck for Rourke. After getting home, I pretty much spent the rest of the night getting ready for my Monday morning tax appointment.

And this morning was crazy too. Got up early to call a tow truck to take away the Z, which has been suffering from some new electrical malady, hauled some stuff out of the garage to donate, took Noelle to get a breakfast sandwich to placate her for needlessly waking her up early, saw my tax guy, and then rushed in to work to catch the last part of our monthly planning meeting. I am bushed and I have to take Noelle to the hospital tomorrow to have her gall bladder out. Too much stuff too close together.

New Photo Project

I've started a new photography project for 2009. I am attempting to take at least one photo a day for the entire year. I can take more than one, but I have to do at least one for each day of the year. So far I am 4/4. My PaD set starts here:

Crucible Pictures

(click to go to my flickr set)

Noelle, Wendy, Dan, and I went up to Oakland a few weeks ago to see the Crucible's Fire Festival, up in Oakland. It was a pretty intense show. They had fire tornados, trapeze artists, contortionists, clowns on stilts, and of course, a lot of shit on fire. It was a really cool way to spend a Saturday night. And they let me take pictures there, too.

Comic-Con Pix Up

(click to go to my flickr set)

My pictures from Comic-Con are up. I was surprised to see that some of them already have very high page views and I haven't mentioned it at all to anyone I know. I guess the people looking for Martina Sirtis pictures must be pretty desperate. :-)

Sequoia Photography Trip

Oy! I am really pooped, but having a good time at the photography workshop I've been attending at Sequoia National Park. The lead instructor is David Muench, who's fairly well known in the outdoor photography world. I've been getting up at 4ish to do sunrise shoots at various parts around the park. Yesterday I got to sleep in until six. What luxury!




I've been learning a lot of stuff, some from the instructors, some just from having a lot of time to use my gear in the field. Now whether I will remember it all remains to be seen.




I've met a lot of interesting people and been seeing a lot of cool stuff. Shooting in the woods presents a number of challenges, such as mixed light (David calls it "shattered light") and a lot of junk that's not that interesting to look at. Sequoias are additionally a challenge because they are so large it's hard to photograph them in a meaningful way. We had bears wandering through some of our shooting areas, which was exciting. I'll try to get more pictures posted as soon as I can.



I'll be heading home in a few hours and maybe I'll get to sleep in a bit tomorrow. Then back to going through the 1355 images I've shot since Monday.

Napa Trip

(click image to go to my flickr set)

Noelle and I took a nice weekend getaway to the north bay last weekend. We visited a few wineries, drank in the countryside and stayed at the Geyserville Inn, which is a great place to stay if you book a hotel room for wine country in May the week before going on it. It was actually a pretty nice place, but Geyserville was a bit north of where I had planned on visiting. On the bright side, driving route 128 from St. Helena to Geyserville is a gorgeous drive, especially at night with a lot of moonlight. I took Noelle to the Niebaum-Coppola winery because the facility itself is so cool. Sadly they've removed the desk from the Godfather and the suit of armor from Dracula from this winery. The Tucker is still there. Evidently he's building another winery/resort up in Geyserville and a lot of the props will end up going there. We also had a chance to eat at the Culinary Institute of America restaurant in St. Helena, which has fantastic food. A tad on the pricey side, but worth doing at least once. Anyway, it was nice to get out of the house and travel and not have to worry about when we had to be at a certain place.

May B-Day Pix

(click for more pictures)

Here are some pictures from the BBQ we had to celebrate the May birthdays this year.

New Toy

After reading a lot of people raving about the Canon 135mm f2 zoom and its sharpness, etc, I broke down and got one this weekend. And it is sharp. And fast. But being a 135mm prime, you have to move around a bit to compose. I have played with it a little bit and already gotten some great pictures.

Check out Tybalt's eyes in this one:



(This is the larger version, also pleasing.)



I like the detail in this pottery mushroom also. The lens can really make things pop!




Wide open, the DoF is really shallow, but that can make a pleasing, like in this pile of bricks.



Anyway, this flickr set has some more examples from this lens. Loving it so far!