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Posts tagged california
My Homage To The Mountains That Made Me 'Me.' In All Its 360 Video Virtual Reality Glory!

This one is very very dear to my heart. When I made the choice to move up to the Pacific Northwest a few months ago, I knew that I had to pay homage to the Santa Monica Mountains - the mountains that made me ‘me.’

So I figured during my final weeks living in the Santa Monica Mountains, I’d take along a 360˚ VR video camera on the remainder of my hikes and excursions and cut together my gift back to the mountains…

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TreyUSA Does L.A. - Trey Ratcliff's Photowalk Tour Found It's Way To Santa Monica

So that was a super fun evening! The one, the only Trey Ratcliff from www.StuckInCustoms.com and TheArcanum.com fame made his Los Angeles stop of his TreyUSA photowalk tour across the U.S. last weekend. There were at least 300 photographers crawling the Santa Monica beach and pier area, all of us learning, laughing, and snapping away.

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A Teaser From Yosemite For Your Phones And Tablets And Things

I know I'm still not completely caught up on the Sri Lanka adventure posts, but I've spent the past week in Yosemite National Park and wanted to throw a lil' bit of that paradise your way. Here's an image from Wednesday afternoon in Yosemite Valley, just as the sun began it's descent.

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Tattoo Artist Jun Cha's New Site Is Live With My Images! Get Inked!

So a few months ago, I got the incredible opportunity to photograph legendary tattoo artist Jun Cha’s new studio in Downtown Los Angeles. It was for his new website so I haven’t been able to share them yet until the site went live. Well, as of this week, it’s now live at MonarcStudios.com. This guy is the real deal. I mean, people fly him out to crazy places like Thailand and Hong Kong to get inked by his gifted hands. If you read this blog, you might remember my post on minimizing reflections in interior photography, and I posted an image to demonstrate the effect. That was from his studio and from this shoot. The studio’s delicate decor is as elegant as the art that Jun permanently adorns his subjects with. Everything from

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My First Month With My New Number 1 - The Samsung NX1!

This is it. This is the one. I’ve found the one! Actually, the one found me! The Samsung NX1. If you’ve been holding out on investing in the mirrorless market because of your trepidations as far as performance as compared to traditional DSLRs, now’s the time to let go. It’s been exactly a year since Samsung invited me into their Imagelogger program, and in that short year, everything changed. I mean everything.

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Happy Holidays! A Few Words And A Few Gifts - My Best Images Of 2014

As another year comes to a close and we prepare to spend quality time with the family and friends, I wanted to take a quick short and sweet few seconds to thank every one of you for the support, the warmth, the encouragement, the inspiration, and the all around positive energy you’ve brought into my life over the past 365 days. It’s been truly humbling and everything that has kept me going, encouraging me to get out and make another picture, write another post, keep doing the thing. I can only hope that I’m able to reciprocate even a small part of that. Happy holidays all you beautiful people. Click "read more" to find a couple of my favorites from the past 12 months. They’re high-enough-resolution versions for your desktops and mobile thingies and whatnots.

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That First 1st Led To My 1st Cover! Thank You National Park Service!

My first cover came from my 1st first! Huh? So I wrote a bit about my image Pole Position taking 1st in this year’s challenge category in the National Park Service ‘Spirit of the Mountains’ photo contest. Well, apparently they’ve decided to use that image for the cover of the new Winter edition of “Outdoors” magazine, the National Park Service’s quarterly publication covering events and hikes and news for Southern California’s Santa Monica Mountains.

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A Spontaneous Excursion Up Pacific Coast Highway - Part 4: From Big Sur To Barbeque

I woke up this morning a bit ragged. Today it was much harder to open the eyes, due in no small part to the fact that I was planning on making the drive back from Big Sur to Los Angeles. As I was unzipping my tent and cursing under my breath that I couldn't at least indulge in a cup of coffee on my final morning here due to the fire ban, there comes my aunt, as if on cue, straight out of the bushes at the other end of the campground, holding bright sunny fresh to-go cups of coffee! Boom!

She had made her way into town to come back and make our day! I took it as a sign. 

There was no way I was leaving today.

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A Spontaneous Excursion Up Pacific Coast Highway - Part 3: More Big Sur

he next few days in Big Sur were nothing short of magical. We woke up the following morning, our first in Big Sur, and figured the most logical thing to do would be to hit the beach. And, well, who are we to argue logic? The universe led us down the 3/4 or so mile hiking path from the campsite, through a covered canopy of trees that straddles the Big Sur River, all the way down to the quaint cove that makes up Andrew Molera State Beach. We spent several hours here sunning, swimming, playing, fighting off the seagulls that boldly flew off with half our food, and watching the surfers slowly but surely converge at Molera Point as they anticipated the swells from Hurricane Marie, the category 4 that had hit Baja California earlier that day, to come ashore any moment. And boy did they!

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