Rose Parade 2009

Got me a press pass to the 2009 Rose Parade.
Lucky me --I have good friends.


Was there at 5am.

With thousands of people lined up, waiting waiting sleeping BBQing fighting peeing reading watching

you name it they were doing it.

And then the floats came. Some amazing stuff. And some "what were you thinking" moments floated by as well.

If I only had a brain.

Xflosion and Eric Paskell

Discovered that when the set it lit it is pretty damn easy to get good lighting.


A yoga video with a band in back.

On stage at one of the larger studio lots in LA back in 2006.

Had no lights on camera--just used what was available from the video production.


Fun day. Can see why some photographers exclusively do this kind of work.

Helicopters are fun

I'm a big fan.

Only been in one a few times but the ride is the jumbliest craziest time.

Ordinary places look different from up there. Mostly a lot cooler than they look from down here.

Just some trees and some dirt.

Click on it.

Jerusalem Shuk

Nothing quite like it in the modern world.

Hard to describe the feel of walking on the uneven concrete, often wet. Harder yet to describe the feel in the air --one of many years gone past.

The smells vary. some not so good.

And the people vary. Arabs, Jews, girls, boys, military.
Often jovial-sometimes a frightening place if you know better.

It's the shortest path to the Kotel--the Western Wall. A busy place where you can find yourself very alone very quickly.

Click on it and you'll see the wetness and the snow. So very rare and precious.

Ahh, Jerusalem.

Vineyards

Shot some Vineyards out of the bus and processed em in Lightroom.



Not in Napa


Not in Sonoma


Not in France (damn it!)



Shot these out of a bullet proof bus in the West Bank heading to Hebron.



A little underesposure, recovery, clarity, black point, and contrast later and there you have it.

You can fo sure see the window in the last one.

Winter in Yosemite - I wish I knew Ansel Adams

I took a job up north so I could go to Yosemite. No other reason.

Always wanted to shoot in the winter and have brunch at the Ahwahnee. Oh man, do not miss the brunch.

10 inches of snow later and even I was getting shots that I loved.


Fog helps in this one. So does a mix of snow and green.




















Got up at 530am to get this one. 17 degrees

and one frozen pinky later I found my tree. Waiting for pinky to thaw was not an option. The light was magic that day.




Taken off Sentinel Bridge (with 43 other tripods and photographers) I knew I was in the right spot.

Shit, 43 others could not be wrong - could they?
Nope, but that spot was damn crowded.

But the brunch and my very nice waiter were worth the cold, the pinky, 43 tripods, and the cold feet.


As always click on any to make big and better.

Quick night at the Santa Monica Pier / Bluffs

It's too beautiful to not take pictures. I mean the weather.
I mean Obama.
I mean LA

A nine shot panoramic of part of the bay at sunset.
Father and daughter.
Son.

Happiness.

Click on any to make bigger.

Yosemite and snow

Came out of Fresno (where?) and headed up highway 41 on Dec 27. Had no idea the highway was closed all day on Dec 26 cuz of a huge storm.

Figured it out when the nice sherrif said I needed chains to go any further. $80.00 later I had non returnable chains from Kragens rip off auto store.

The panoramic is a 360 degree view of the valley from Sentinel Bridge area. 12 photos stitched in photoshop. Shot with a tripod, Canon 5d, 20-35 canon lens. So easy.

The trees on the each side of the photo are the same trees!

My old tennis club

I cannot help obsessing over the "products" my old tennis club has in the locker room. Now, this is a nice club. First class in most ways. Cept when it comes to "products". Oh, we have some real goodies. Names from old time commercials you haven't seen in years. Skin Bracer after shave. Clubman special reserve. Lilac vegetal with "masculine fragrance".
Scope - handwritten in pen.
Vitalis hair tonic--- what is hair tonic?
Brylcream hair groom-- a little dab'll do ya.

I love the fancy tennis club.

Philberon.com

Big green prefab house

Built a big prefab architectural green house.
Got it into a fancy magazine as the Wired home of the year. Many parties. Cool gadgets.

Green green green. Recycled this and solar that.

Built in a factory and put into place by a big crane.

Adrien grenier had a dinner party there when done.

blah blah blah


It is a really cool house though. Ray Kappe was the architect and it had a lot of fanfare.

Greg and Doria are living there. I get to do yoga on the poured concrete floors and make a latte in the cool built in latte maker.

Hard to imagine the house was airlifted by crane piece by piece. Each 50,000 pound module was craned 100 feet in the air.









Green as can be. The wood on the ceiling is recycled cedar and the wood on the outside is recycled redwood from a bridge in the Pacific NW.

The kitchen is by Valcucine and is pretty space age cool. Needs a few more cabinets though. Best part is the kitchen faces the back yard and is zen master peaceful.





I was thinking about it today and how (at times) it was so much fun to build this house. At times.

Medical photos

People always seem fascinated by the medical photos. Why? Could be the images take us into a place we don't normally see.

Or we are fascinated with the body. Or we cannot believe the reality of what can happen to a person when sick.

Or it is just cool to see humans in picture form - in cat scan form - with stuff that is hard to imagine for healthy people.

Take our friend up above. He is likely a smoker. The pure black areas are his lungs. On the right side of the picture there is a big gray mass taking up a large portion of the lung. That is a lung cancer.

This is not a non smoking blog but it couldn't hurt to quit--right now! Please.


Brain tumors tend to scare us - a lot.
And with pretty good reason. The brain does not like to be messed with in terms of pushing, crowding, pressure, anything. Our next patient has a problem most people can see without my explanation. It is a large white mass in the center of his brain.



Here is another view of the same patient. Believe it or not, there is really not much pain - rather brain functions start going haywire and that is what brings it to our attention.

Poor balance, forgetting, falling, personality changes, weakness in an arm, seizure, so many things could happen here.





Thought I'd change it up a little and come down the body to the pelvis. Male pelvis. See those dark spots? That outline is the prostate. And those dark spots are tiny metal radioactive seeds that we put in there to kill the cancer cells in the prostate.

Mighty effective treatment. Outpatient procedure and in the right person is 85-90% curative. .

Hope you learned a little and thought my little medical venture was fun or fascinating or whatever f word is appropriate.

Walt Disney Concert Hall Shines

I haven't been in a snappy (as in pictures) mood lately. But I feel remiss if I"m not blogging with a few photos so I dug into the 2008 archive tonite.

I went downtown to the railroad tracks in the fall with my friend and we shot the trains, the tracks, the graffiti. We stood on the tracks like idiots thinking we'd get "the shot".


We got some damn impressive very average shots. Very average.




On the way back I decided to drive by the Walt Disney Hall - always a cool place to stare and wonder. You might wonder what crack pipe Frank Gehry was smoking when he dreamed this place up. Or you might wonder how they made it so shiny.






I was there when they were building it. And I was there when they were putting the shiny skin on the wild, skewed beams. Back then I had a thing for construction sites - I still do-- and this one was so Dr. Seuss. Crazy angles, impossibly curved girder beams, shiny metal.


These guys were the happiest workers. Posing for us and smiling and all around good guys. Imagine that!






















So we spent some time taking pictures of the shiny metal. I hadn't looked at them since. Forgot about them. But the shiny metal is really beautiful and I thought you should see it.