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It started pretty simple. I got home from a party with my camera in my trunk and decided to try to shoot something. It was late and the streets were empty. I brought it in, processed it a little, and thought "yeah, that's not bad for a night's work."
But then I looked at the new list for Musically Challenged and that's where thing's started to get interesting. Fuckin' love this song.
"Bad" by U2
If you should ask then maybe they'd
Tell you what I would say
True colors fly in blue and black
Blue silken sky and burning flag
Colors crash, collide in blood shot eyes
"Bloodshot eyes?" Well, it's Saturday, so chances are some of you woke up with bloodshot eyes today. I know mine are after staying up till 5AM editing this thing.
EXPLORED
I still can't believe the quality of images we can get out of a cell phone these days. It's a good time to be alive.
Horseshoe Bend, Utah.
Just got back from another week at Lake Powell. Lots, lots more to come from the trip but for now just enjoy the view.
Last year I came here before we left on our week-long houseboat trip. We crammed in a visit at around 10AM before picking up more beer at Walmart. The mid-morning light was harsh and the skies were blue, cloudless, and boring. Sure it was impressive, but it wasn't the sight I knew it could be.
This year I went back twice at sunset and was treated to the best that horseshoe bend has to offer. I'm sure that if you search for "horseshoe bend" on here you'll find quite a few pictures just like this because it's obviously a popular spot for people with cameras. I just wanted to have a shot, an experience, every bit as good as any of those. And now I do :)
Vertical version in the comments. Which do you prefer?
My mom came out to visit me this week, and yesterday we went on a drive up to my favorite lookout spot in Malibu. When I saw this cliff perched above the ocean and clouds I knew I had to take a shot out there, so I handed my mom the camera, gave her a quick tutorial on how to focus, and against many objections sent her down the road to shoot me as I climbed out.
She was doing pretty well with it until I told her I wanted to do a jump shot.
"Hey I'm gonna jump, ready?"
"Oh no you're not!"
"Okay cool. One..."
"Jer!"
"Two..."
"Don't you do it!"
"Two and a half..."
"How do I focus again?"
"Three!"
New York City. The busy intersection of 14th St. and 1st Ave.
This has been home for the last month while I'm working in New York. Sometimes the street noise can be a bit much, there's a lot of nightlife in the neighborhood and a hospital a couple blocks up so ambulances are going by at all hours of the night. But it's worth it because each morning at around 7AM I start to wake up and I see the sun rising from the left and beginning to shine its light on this monumental lattice of human achievement. Engineering embodying another day of ambition and adventure. Every night I look out on the rising One World Trade building (the tall bright pillar on the left) and I think of what was and what will be again.
I miss LA, but for two months I could do a lot worse.
Shot with my Tokina 11-16mm. Please view it large and take in some of the details.
A year ago today, April 4, I took this photo of a man named Merlin at this exact same spot. I didn't plan it that way, just sorta happened. Last time I found a really interesting dude on a bicycle to talk to and photograph.
This time, though, the scenery stood alone. Couple more in the comments. I'll definitely be getting a print made of this for myself, if you'd like one let me know and we'll work something out.
I don't come around here much anymore. I appreciate all of you, your motivation, support, and your faces.
Hope everyone had a memorable Memorial Day weekend. Except those of you who don't live in the US and don't celebrate, I hope you guys just had a better-than-average weekend.
Maui, Hawaii. I highly recommend it.
Taken just before I completely ruined my white linen pants trying to get the perfect shot of the waves gently beating down upon the shore. I have discovered that owning white linen pants inherently means you will ruin them at some point by trying to live a carefree lifestyle in natural and colorful surroundings.
The moral, then, is don't spend a lot on white linen pants. Save it for plane tickets.
The video is live, but it's too long for Flickr's arbitrary 90 second rule, so it's on Vimeo. I'll probably put together a quick teaser, but in the meantime I hope you'll all go check it out.
Thank you so much to everyone who offered me encouragement when I first proposed this idea. It was tough at times, but knowing that there were people out there who actually cared, who actually wanted to see what I'd create made it extremely rewarding. I knew that I'd be letting more than myself down if I didn't come through.
Thank you all for making it an unforgettable month.
Maui, Hawaii. This actually exists.
If I bothered to do some research into this spot along the north coast of the island I'd probably learn that it was created by someone with a hammer and a chisel. However, since I'd rather believe that it was formed by thousands or millions of years of huge waves crashing into the rock in just the right place as if the sea were saying to the land "trust me, when it's all over it'll be worth it," I will not be doing any further research.
Front man Dave Grohl during the Foo Fighters concert at Madison Square Garden in NYC, November 13th. I have no idea how these guys are able to rock this hard putting on three hour sets night after night.
This is the first concert I've gone to since getting into photography where I had a camera other than the one on my phone. So glad I finally own a solid P&S camera, the Canon S100 is awesome! Only problem is that, like with a lot of new cameras, Lightroom has no clue what to do with the RAW files from it. Normally I wouldn't shoot JPG at a concert, but it was either that or wait several months until Adobe releases an update to get my pictures up.
LOTS MORE SHOTS ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE. Go Like it!
Be sure to check out my Print Giveaway!
We get maybe 10 sunsets a year that look like this in Los Angeles. We just don't get clouds very often, and for most lifestyles that's fine and dandy. But for a photographer it can get dull. So when you walk out of the house and see the sky shaping into something like this, you go back into the house and grab your camera. As I was processing this I was thinking that it's almost not fair. It's virtually impossible to take a bad picture in that setting. The trick isn't taking a great photo once you're there, it's knowing beforehand where to go to that it will be impossible to take anything but great pictures. And even then it doesn't always work out. Sometimes you get lucky. Like today.
I lost a GoPro camera on the way home that was attached (poorly, apparently) to the fender of my car. Now it's gone, and with it a beautiful time-lapse of the sunset and the shoot itself. So these shots are somewhat bittersweet. Funny though, sometimes the experience is worth more than the gear.
Photo taken by Veronica Castillo, processed by yours truly.
As you can see, I went to Rockefeller Center tonight to shoot The Tree. It got very cold and very snowy while I was there, which made for some gorgeous video. It is, however, becoming painfully obvious that I no longer have a clue as to how to stay warm when the temperature drops below freezing. This is the second time in a week that I've flirted with frostbite, which is pathetic since I grew up here for 18 years. So I'm headed back to Cali in a week.
A birthday present from my mom was this trip out to the Channel Islands, a chain of 8 off the coast of southern California. The weather was amazingly clear, giving the water a gorgeous blue tone that seems rare when you're on the beaches of Los Angeles. The islands are mostly national park property, and as such are maintained in exellent, natural condition. We only had 3 hours on the island of Santa Rosa, but this is definitely on the short list of places to go camping.
I went to India for a few weeks over the holidays to attend Kunal Nayyar's (of The Big Bang Theory) wedding to Neha Kapur (Miss India, 2008). I wasn't the official wedding photographer, but I still brought all my gear and got one or two nice shots :)
This was taken during the actual wedding ceremony. So much of wedding was about "presenting" the pride and groom, putting them on a lavish display before a thousand witnesses. First the groom is presented on a white stallion while the whole neighborhood gathers and dances in the streets. Then he rides the white stallion into the wedding. Then the bride is presented under a long, mobile canopy of flowers. They're both decked out in a pirate's booty worth of jewelry, and after being presented together they can finally make their way to the priest so that the actual ceremony can begin, and this can last for many hours.
I'm convinced there is no word for "subtle" in Hindi.
So I like this one because after all the fanfare and hullaballoo, Kunal and Neha finally get a moment when nothing is planned, no special rituals are taking place, and no one is really paying attention to them. They just get to be alone to briefly share a whisper and a smile.
This photo was published by People Magazine.
I found these guys while walking around Chelsea waiting to meet my friends at a bar for game 1 of the ALCS (side note: let's go Yankees!). They were jumping between two large stone barricades and I asked if I could shoot them. They agreed and once I showed them a couple of the captures they got excited and offered to pull this ambitious maneuver. I wasn't sure where to position myself, but when someone asks if you want to shoot him backflipping off a wall while his friend barrel-rolls underneath him, "No" isn't the first word that comes to mind.
I took all these using the on-camera flash cause it was all I had. Fortunately they seemed interested in shooting again using my full arsenal of strobist gear, so expect that in the future.
I like how it looks like I've blurred out the tail of the plane. That's just the paintjob.
Interesting the way styles change. I used to try to create more images. I used to light portraits with a thousand different gels at once, spray water or dirt or flour on myself, crawl around the neighborhood in dark places at night, and made some pretty unique photos. I was trying to master a set of skills that can attract people and clients, but I don't think it's where my passion lies.
Now I'm not so much about creating images as I am about living a life that inspires documentation. Once in a while a proper, well-lit photoshoot makes those times a lot better, and it's a skill I'm glad to have even if I'm not a Jedi with a flash. But mostly I want to find myself doing fun things in beautiful places and I figure that way the photos will just find me.
Hope everyone had a memorable Memorial Day weekend. Except those of you who don't live in the US and don't celebrate, I hope you guys just had a better-than-average weekend.
I'm up in Mammoth for the weekend. I made the 6 hour drive alone and so I posted a bunch of videos of myself entertaining... uh, myself. Might put a couple of those up for friends only, cause I'll warn ya, they're pretty stupid.