Anyways, below are a handful of photos each from a few recent trips: Seattle, East Jesus/Slab City/Salton Sea, and an abandoned waterpark.

First up: the waterpark. The slides and such are destroyed and not very interesting. However, the graffiti and stencil work left by vandals is pretty awesome.

The previous tenants left their tumbleweed behind. I hope they don’t need it.

As you enter the park, there’s a road with billboards on either side of it. These artists took over each one to wonderful effect.

Oh, and here’s a picture of some Chinese lanterns just because.

I visited Seattle for a few days. I didn’t get time to do a ton of photography, but still enjoyed it immensely.

So, as usual, I had near perfect weather on this visit. Regular readers will recall that I’m cursed with good weather at most places I travel to. It’s great for just existing and getting around, but it usually makes for sort of ho-hum photos. Anyways, I drive over to this park to try taking a boring sunset photo of downtown Seattle and the very impressive and very tall Mt. Rainier in the background.  I’m actually kind of excited, because I didn’t expect such a clear view of the mountain.

I got to the park two hours before sunset so I could make sure I got a good spot, since I know this place gets crowded. Not a single cloud was in sight the entire time. However, once the light finally started getting interesting, this one cloud decided to meander in and block my view of Rainier. I’ve decided that I’m at war with the sky.

This photo probably couldn’t be more cliche, but I decided I should get it anyway. Consider this a reward for what you did in the toothpaste aisle.

Mt. Rainier, before my enemy The Sky made his move. Fact: Zeus lives here.

This was visible on someone’s balcony whilst walking to the waterfront. Don’t ask me. I don’t know.

A shot from inside the market. Supposedly, there’s guys throwing fish everywhere. I imagined it as though I’d have to be ducking fish left and right (on a side note, are ducks known for squatting to avoid things? I wonder where that term comes from.). The only flying fish I saw were on this sign.

I was walking away from the market and this man said “hey, can you teach me everything you know?” I said “no, but you can have my hat.” And so, I gave him my hat. Also, my bucket full of balloon animals.

So long Seattle, and thanks for all the fish.

Speaking of fish, this is the Salton Sea.  It’s 50% water, 50% salt, and 50% dead fish. The air is 100% gross to smell.

It is the only place I’ve ever been, and I’m not joking about this, where the shore is literally made of ground bones.

Why go there? Because of East Jesus. It’s a cool place, and much nicer than West Jesus. Slab City, which is the larger community that East Jesus is in, is…interesting.

Here’s my friend Ania, sitting in the dirt for some reason.

My brother and I thought the art installations and low amounts of light pollution would make for interesting photos. We were right. Unfortunately, we didn’t really take any. Both of us came away feeling disappointed in what we had captured.  Here’s one that I did like.

A shot from the pet cemetery at Slab City. Poor Gunner.

And, since hummingbirds are good luck, I’ll leave you with this shot as the last of the bunch. Feel free to click on my name at the top of this page to see more of my stuff. Thanks for visiting!

I’ve been collecting photos for a while now that don’t quite fit into their own sets. So, here’s a somewhat largish collection of location and portrait work I’ve done recently.  I’m supposed to get up at like 4:30 in the morning tomorrow and it’s already 11:30 p.m., so this is almost all of the writing I’m going to do. Lucky you. :)

The next four are from a campaign I did for my friend’s new business Bronzed Sugar. The weather had been nice for a while, but of course on the day of the shoot it was super overcast and cold. Poor models. Fortunately, my friend also owns a marketing company, so these photos after retouching look decidedly better.

Me and a model on location.

And to close, variations on a sunset at San Clemente pier.

Location: Salton Sea, Bombay Beach, East Jesus, Slab City

(Editor’s note: Jake has been having trouble sleeping, so he took a sleeping pill before he started writing this. Please forgive its somewhat incoherent structure.)

(Author’s note: I don’t actually have an editor.)

My brother and I felt like taking a road trip adventure to the Salton Sea area, so we headed out to this little part of crazy this past weekend.  Our first stop was an abandoned city with an abandoned prison somewhere not anywhere close to the Salton Sea; unfortunately, while it’s no longer inhabited, it is decidedly unabandoned. Razor wire and security were onhand, but apparently, my social engineering skills were not.  Undeterred, I’m now trying to find a route via the owners. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Because of the distance, it was late in the day by the time we made it to the lake, so we opted to shoot sunset at Bombay Beach, home to a large number of destroyed buildings from the lake’s sordid past.  Unfortunately, in the few years since I was last there, most of the structures have been totally wrecked. This is one of the last ones still standing.

Sunday we made our way to East Jesus, an artistic community in the midst of the crazy lost settlement called Slab City. East Jesus has some pretty rad installations, this tower being one of them.

Salvation Mountain at Slab City.

The “trophy room” at Salvation Mountain.

The room was full of trinkets; “laser cats” was my favorite.

Another sunset shot at Bombay Beach.

Interior of Salvation Mountain.

A random sand dune that unexpectedly swallowed a road we were driving on. Guess we didn’t want to go to that wrecked neighborhood anyway.

We had high hopes to do some star photography, but the moon was too full and waaay too bright. Long exposures made the ground look like day. Sort of bored, we decided to try our hand at making our own burning bushes. We’re making plans to go back to East Jesus on an upcoming new moon and do some night work with the installations. With any luck we’ll have more interesting results from that.

Apparently, this station has been closed for a few years.

Hopefully this mannequin doesn’t get anyone in trouble at work. I mean, she does have geese bodies for arms.

The difference between me and my brother: he climbs my truck to get a better view of cows, while I try to shoot the abandoned factory. Obviously, I’m way cooler, and I’m pretty sure my grandmother would agree.

East Jesus, now with 25% more goose parts.

Dear sleeping pill: please don’t let me dream about this guy tonight, especially since I know you’re not going to let me wake up when I need to.

To wrap up, here’s two variations on sunset from the shores at Bombay Beach. With a returned trip planned for the near future, I’ll hopefully have better stuff for you guys next time.  As always, thanks for stopping by.

Locations: Orange County beaches. Subject: Orange County Beaches (duh)

I’ve been trying this thing called “photography” with some regularity since about 2007ish. While our relatively nice Orange County weather cuts down on the number of interesting sunsets we have (no clouds), an evening spent at the beach is never wasted in my book. And so, over the last five years I’ve taken hundreds of photos at OC beaches. Since we’re about to leave our preteen years in a few days for the grown up two-thousand-teens, I thought I’d put together a collection of some old and new coastal shots from what I hope was my adolescent photographic period.  Maybe the next five years will bring some good stuff for a change.

If you’re a regular visitor, you’ll recognize a lot of these. Either way, thanks for visiting!

I know the colors in this image look unbelievable, but they’re real. I actually had to tone down the pink a little to get the blue sky to come back a bit.

I shot this at the Bolsa Chica wetlands with a 500mm lens. That’s Long Beach Harbor in the distance.

Self-portrait. Note to self: take off headphones next time.

This is my cousin and cousin-in-law and their “family.” This was taken above Newport Beach as part of a Christmas card set.

Another self-portrait, and a great example of what a shot looks like when you forget to rotate your graduated ND filter.

This next shot is the result of a 4-minute exposure. I don’t do many exposures that long because of our sparse cloud cover, but am always happy when I have the opportunity.

For my last shot, an image taken at Victoria Beach. Thanks for coming by!

My friend John married his lovely bride Svetlana this year, not long after I got back from visiting the wrecked nuclear site of Chernobyl near Kiev, Ukraine. Svetlana is from Russia, and some of her friends were in town from that part of the world.

Introduced to a few of them, they jokingly took several steps back as if I was radioactive.  Even though one does get a “healthy” dose of radiation at Chernobyl, it’s not something the average visitor needs to worry about.

Interestingly enough, many pilots and flight attendants get more radiation dosage than employees of nuclear facilities, and apparently, might get more annual radiation dosage than almost any other profession. Frequent flyers run the risk as well.

But, let’s see: I spent a decent amount of time at Chernobyl, so that’s about 2/3 the annual dosage of a radiation worker in that one trip. On top of that, in roughly the past year I’ve flown back and forth to Europe twice, flown between the UK, Paris, and Ukraine a few times, went to New Orleans twice, San Antonio, and Hawaii, plus several other trips I can’t remember.

Hmmm…maybe the wedding guests were right to step back a little. Nevertheless, I wonder which super power I’ll eventually get. I hope it’s not something dumb like being a Wonder Twin.

All kidding aside, I was very fortunate to be able to travel as much as I did this past year. In a few weeks I’ll do a recap of 2012 in its entirety, but I wanted to cover some of my favorite shots from my trips to Europe. Since people seem to like pictures of the famous landmarks more than street scenes, I concentrate more on the former here. And, since I already talked at length in my previous posts (here, here, here, here, and here) I’m not going to say much this time.

Hope you like the photos!

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My original introduction has been removed, so if you read the comments you might be a little confused. Maybe someday it’ll be back. 

I have another couple of posts from France that I’ll put up, but this is the last one of a general nature. In a few days I’ll be posting about French street art and will also do a “best of” post. Until then, I hope you enjoy this last big set.

The two staircases at the Arc de Triomphe are arduous to say the least. Don’t want to go down? Sneak into the semi-hidden disabled persons elevator next to the gift shop.

Local flora at the Jardin des Plantes. In addition to the gardens, there are a number of great museums here, as well as a zoo. I don’t recall its name, but if you go skip the greenhouse/botanical museum thing. Boooooooooooooooooring.

A friend of mine is obsessed with chandeliers, so I was on the lookout for photos I could take for her (this one is at Versailles). Curiously, I’ve always found them interesting too, likely the result of staring at my grandmother’s large crystal chandelier for most of my childhood. It bugged me to no end that the candles were so crooked on this one.

Toy moulins (windmills) in a shop window near my apartment in the wonderful Butte aux Cailles neighborhood.

The Louvre is an amazing place, but: it’s unimaginably massive, and as you can see below, it’s also insanely crowded at times. Most museums in Paris close on Mondays, so on this particular rainy Monday, that meant everyone wanted to get inside the one museum that seemed to be open.

Sculpture at the wonderful Parc de Bercy.

Something about the woven mask on this mummy haunts me. I don’t know if it’s too many horror movies of monsters with missing faces, or if it’s my brain trying to figure out why there are no features. Either way, I think the funerary garments are beautiful.

The beautiful interior of Sainte-Chapelle.

Iya Traore performs in front of Sacre Coeur. Watch a video of his awesome skills here.

Sculpture at Église Saint-Louis des Invalides.

One of my favorite locks at Pont de l’Archeveche.

Disneyland Paris is awesome, but for someone who grew up within miles of the original park in Anaheim, it feels like some strange doppelganger. It seems…sterile in comparison.  Nevertheless, jump on the RER and head out if you get a chance. It’s a great place with a lot of really fun rides (make sure to go on Big Thunder).  This is a shot of “Phantom Manor,” a “scarier and darker” version of the ride than at other parks (as seen from the steamboat landing).

The animatronic dragon beneath the castle. Sorry for the junk picture; I didnt have a tripod and it’s about negative one-thousand dark in the cave.

Scary “Small World” doll is scary.

I don’t normally colorize my images much, but it’s been more than 30 years since I’ve had a “first time at Disneyland” experience; I don’t have any photos from the first first time, so I thought it only fitting I have one that looked like it.

My mom and aunts visited for a little while. They visited the souvenir shops for long whiles. Here’s two of the three in their natural habitat.

In the crypt of the Pantheon.

The Elizabeth Tower (home of “Big Ben“) in London.

Resting place of a young Parisian.

The roof and chandelier in the beautiful Palais Garnier (also called Opera Garnier)

Mass at Notre Dame de Paris.

My daily view as I left my apartment.

Parisian sparrows hold court at Parc de Bercy.

Sacre Coeur, as seen from the Belvedere of Sybil at the delightful Parc des Buttes Chaumont.

The centerpiece of the park is the lake and artificial island pictured here. The so-called “suicide bridge,” near the left of the picture, gets you access to the Corinthian-style Belvedere on top of the island.

Prayers drift in the dark of Notre Dame.

Ghost fish at the Paris aquarium.

Play time, as shot from the top of the Centre Pompidou.

Sacre Coeur near sunset.

Late night traffic at Mont Saint-Michel.

Long exposure of the Moulin Rouge. If you want a unique experience, get off the metro at Pigalle and walk to the theater. And by “unique,” I mean be the object of attention for adult store workers or drug dealers. Unless you want to be (literally) robbed, don’t go into any of the clubs here unless you’re fluent in French.

My last photo of the post, dedicated to Andrew. Thanks for stopping by, and thank you to Paris for being so good to me.

“I hope that man gets swine flu,” I muttered under my breath. I didn’t really mean it, of course, but I’m occasionally an impatient photographer, and people kept walking into my shot. I was standing near the top of the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel in a light drizzle, desperately trying to get a photo as the sun broke through the clouds.

As one group would leave my frame some other person would walk in. Rather than keep moving, they’d find the one spot that made it impossible for me remove them later, and would camp out and take pictures or rummage through their backpacks.

“Your shots are going to be terrible,” I’d say. “Your family called. They said they don’t want to see your pictures when you get back, so maybe you should just keep walking.”

Just moments before I was hanging over a wall/cliff, trying to shoot part of the abbey that jutted out dramatically over the water. A set of doors in the lower wall was apparently a human factory, as people just streamed out of it like it was some magical womb that produced French adults.

Hopefully I don’t have any magic powers, as about 60 people will now have various diseases, including hantavirus and super AIDs. If that did, in fact, happen to you, I’m very sorry about your typhoid. But really, it’s your fault since you took so long to move.

This dapper chap lives at Passy Cemetery.

The chapel at Versailles.

View of the Seine from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower, as seen on my first day in France, shot from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

One of the things I love about Paris is the amount of green space spread around the city. There was a neat little park behind my apartment, and I discovered this hidden gem (Jardin Michelet) while walking nearby. Tucked between some large apartment buildings, most people passing by probably had no idea it existed.

One of the themes I was committed to working on was the Eiffel Tower reflected in puddles. One of the days I wanted to try it ended up being super rainy, so I ducked into the aquarium at the Trocadero. It was really dead.

One part of the museum has a massive wall with giant, swimming animals projected on it. Across from the wall are balls that visitors can spin that turn these animals in all directions. Feeling a little mischievous  I waited until I was alone in the hall and turned all the animals upside down. Like giant goldfish on their way to Valhalla, they dutifully floated that way for a few minutes. I laughed quietly to myself as confused children entered the room.

Detail of the altar thing (pulpit?) at the beautiful Sainte-Chapelle.

Long exposure at the Arc De Triomphe, site of one of the craziest traffic circles in the world.

Paris has a lot of awesome flower shops, all of which seem to treat their window displays as works of art.

Although I think the Rodin gardens are a wonderful place to spend time, I personally don’t like Rodin’s work for the most part. Bored trying to shoot “The Thinker,” I found this flower more appealing in the end.

Interesting skull art in the Oceania portion of the Louvre.

Hot chocolate art in a French cafe.

Sharks in waiting at the aquarium.

Young love on the Seine.

A path of reflection, at the beautiful Albert Kahn gardens.

I hadn’t originally planned on visiting the Palace of Versailles when I visited France this time.  Pictures of the gardens I had seen made them seem sort of boring, and I don’t personally find palaces and such very interesting. I mean, it’s cool to see how the kings and queens lived and to learn about the insane ritual that followed them every second of every day, but it’s not really my bag.

Nevertheless, Versailles turned out to be one of my favorite places in Paris. Marie Antoinette’s estate (specifically the Queen’s Hamlet) is incredible, and is something you absolutely have to visit if you’re in Paris. If you can make it out there, I’d encourage you to spend time at the main palace, and then spend the rest of your day at her estate. Skip the Grand and Petit Trianon palaces if you’re limited on time.  I ended up visiting twice, and would have gone back again if I had more time.

This next group of photos are all from the Queen’s Hamlet, which Marie Antoinette had built to escape the rigors of court life at Versailles. Built to resemble a rustic French village, it’s almost startling how simplistically beautiful it all is compared to the grandeur of the nearby palaces.

The Temple of Love.

The moulin (or mill). The wheel itself is only decorative, and doesn’t actually connect to any machinery inside the building. The queen built what was essentially her own Disneyland (see the rock fountain below).

Part of the estate is still a working farm and vineyard.

This guy lived at the farmhouse. Because of his two-face coloration, I named him Louis Antoinette in honor of the king and queen who last lived here. He seemed to like it.

I wasn’t going to make this joke, but I think it’s clear you forced me to: there is a fair amount of livestock to be found through Versailles. Here, your mom poses with some of them. (Hey-oh!)

The Tour de Marlborough, built to resemble a lighthouse.

The queen’s house and billiard room. About 12 people contracted the plague while I waited for this shot, if my magical powers are as good as I think they are.

Another shot of a farm house in the hamlet.

The structure on the right is called the Belvedere Pavilion, and is a neat little building. Having fallen on hard times since being used for music and dance prior to the French Revolution, it recently got a face lift.

The structure to the left is listed simply as “the Rock” on the maps provided to tourists. Built in the 1700s, it’s actually a man-made structure that has small waterfalls starting from the upper levels.  A small grotto with a peep hole and staircase allowed the queen to hide from annoying guests.

Leaving Versailles now, here’s a shot of the wonderful Sacre Coeur as seen peeking between an installation at the Centre Pompidou.

Invalides, as seen from the Eiffel Tower.

The artist’s square is a neat place to hang out in Montmartre, near Sacre Coeur, but if anyone offers you a free portrait, it’s best to say no. This man sits for a paid portrait. Note the third face on the wall.

The Mona Lisa is a small, inconsequential painting at the Louvre surrounded by other works of art far more interesting. And yet, for some reason, it is always swamped.  It’s so strange. Notice that it’s set behind like 6 inches of bullet proof glass, while all the other works are in open air.  So odd….

If you want to see it up close, keep your hands on your belongings. Pickpockets are known to operate in the tight crowd.

Prayer, Mont Saint-Michel. Not pictured: a sign just out of frame that says “no pictures.” Sorry sign, but I couldn’t pass it up.

Note the white border around the columns in this shot. They mark the edges of a window that is a looooong way up the side of the abbey at Mont Saint-Michel in the cloister, which saw construction begin in the 13th-century. As you can imagine, the window wasn’t there originally. I’m pretty sure that prior to the 20th-century people knew that accidentally walking off this ledge would be fatal, so it amuses me that there’s no balcony or railing or anything. Many a monk was likely lost to a mis-thrown football.

Chaos in the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe.

The Grand Arche of the Defense. Go here if you can.

Finally, the shot I was waiting for at Mont Saint-Michel. Just a few minutes earlier the lighting was more dramatic, but what are you gonna do? Mostly alone for a moment, I took a breath and pressed the shutter, thankful at last for a decent shot.

My picture taken, I promptly walked across the garden and stood at the wall for like 5 minutes.

The last day of my trip to Paris, France, was the most stressful one of the trip by far. Confusion over the navette from my hotel to Charles de Gaulle airport got me there incredibly late, leading me to practically sprint through the claustrophobic walkways of the annoyingly designed terminal 2.  Wayward children choked on their crepes and leapt from my path as I navigated a luggage cart towards my check-in counter, conveniently placed at the opposite side of the airport from where I was dropped off. Sweat literally dripping from my face, I pulled up to see the staff closing the luggage doors. I was not happy.

5 weeks earlier I had been in this same airport, much more relaxed (albeit just as exhausted) as I made my way to the RER train station. Nary a child was injured in the journey to the apartment I had rented near Place d’Italie in the super charming Butte aux Cailles neighborhood. My employers had graciously allowed me to work remotely from Paris, so during the day I got to run loose photographing the city and worked at night on a roughly California timeline.

Over the next 3-4 posts I’ll be sharing a selection of photos I took in Paris, Mont Saint-Michel, and London. In the 5 weeks I was abroad, I walked almost 300 miles and took more than 1,000 photos, most of which are complete junk. Even so, my one real regret is not doing more candid street photography, which will be rectified on my next such trip.

I got to know Paris exceedingly well and plan on doing  a practical guide  a little later. In the meantime, if you or anyone you know are planning to visit France, feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line if you have any questions. I’m happy to help!

Oh, and as for the airport: I got checked in with three minutes to spare.  I’m having a terrible time readjusting to the atrociously boring pace of life in Orange County; maybe I should have done more to “accidentally” miss my flight. ;)

This is how I brought my California workspace to Paris (although the wine was consumed while I wasn’t working, I promise!).  The large monitor is actually the apartment’s TV, pressed into service as a second monitor.

A bridge in the Japanese garden at the wonderful Albert Kahn museum and gardens.

Opera Garnier is the setting for the Phantom of the Opera. The placard on this door pays tribute to the location where the phantom sat.

Self-portrait at the Pompidou modern art museum.

Headstone decoration at the aristocratic Passy cemetery.  Some of the most magnificent funerary art can be found at this small cemetery near the Eiffel Tower.

The Tower Bridge in London.

Interesting flowers near my apartment.

This Mustang in the middle of Montmartre was one of the more unusual sites I saw while in Paris.

Bookseller on the Seine near Notre Dame.

My friend Jen poses near Notre Dame while we take a break on the Seine.

“What are you looking at?” Mont Saint-Michel.

About the time I arrived in Paris, many in the Muslim world were upset about an obnoxious American film, and a week later, about some offensive cartoons published in a Parisian magazine. A small protest-turned-small-riot happened near the US embassy in Paris, and it was rumored that more of this might happen the next weekend.

Never one to shy away from danger (i.e. “Jake is often stupid”), I decided to go looking for trouble. I happened to be near Gare d’Austerlitz when I saw a huge contingent of Gendarmes (para-military police) organizing and hung around a bit. A short while later a large group of young people began thronging a nearby bridge, so I headed in their direction. Within minutes I was surrounded not by angry Muslims, but by what seemed to be a million young French revelers at the Techno Parade 2012. I have never seen so many people in my life. Dora seems genuinely surprised too.

In order not to be overwhelmed, I climbed up on top of some sort of large electrical box and shot photos for an hour or two until the parade had passed me, leaving an army of very efficient street sweepers in its wake.

Behind them came another large team of Gendarmes, decked out in riot gear.

Lots of people were doing stupid stuff (like climbing on top of bus stops and trees and traffic lights), but fortunately, I didn’t see anyone get injured. Later, however, I happened to walk by a triage facility and noticed a fairly large number of people being treated for who knows what.

This old lady was dancing like a maniac on her balcony. The crowd loved her, despite the fact that she wasn’t really very good at dancing to electronica.

This shot shows a small portion of the parade as it makes its way towards my neighborhood. Like I said, it was insaaaaane how many people there were.

Towards the end of my trip I stayed with a friend in a small, sleepy suburb of Paris. In the middle of the river is a small island (actually two islands that look like one) nicknamed “hippy island” for its eccentric populace. At one end of the island is an abandoned waterpark of sorts. Unfortunately, because the island is private I wasn’t able to make it over. Regular readers know that I’m a junky for abandoned buildings and such, so it was painful to be so close to a site like this without being able to get to it.

Dueling Eiffel Towers and a full moon, shot from the Trocadero.

Long exposure shot inside the Pantheon.

Parisian cemeteries are super fascinating for their imaginative graves and mosoleums. Someone must have managed this particular grave for a while in order to get the tree to wrap the headstone in this manner.

I like doing panning photographs, but oddly enough, only tried it twice. This was shot near the Palais de Justice and Sainte Chapelle.

I don’t recall where this was shot, and am currently too lazy to look it up in my journal. So, you’ll just have to take my word that it was somewhere nice.

Marie Antoinnete and Louis XVI were basically dumped in the Madeleine cemetery after their executions during the French Revolution. Several decades later, during the Bourbon restoration, their remains were exhumed and moved to the royal necropolis at the Basilica of St. Denis. Note: the Basilica is absolutely worth a visit, but it’s in the poor suburb of St. Denis. Be mindful of your surroundings if you do go out there and be prepared to see some sad sights, including a large corps of injured and disfigured beggars.

Note the discoloration of the queen’s boosies; that’s what happens after 200 years of people disrespecting a grave site.  Oddly enough, for as many important sculptures as there are at St. Denis (kings and queens from the 500s are here), visitors can get right up next to most of them. Some of the monuments have been heavily defaced by idiots carving initials and names into them. Marie Antoinette has been heavily groped, but appears to have avoided being carved on.

Here’s a rear shot of the memorial statue of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

The face of Medusa, hanging in the Pompidou.

A section of the abandoned Petite Ceinture, not far from my apartment in the wonderful Parc Montsouris.

The king’s view, at the Palace of Versailles.

Inside Hotel des Invalides.

The London Eye near sunset.

I went to the Paris Aquarium at the Trocadero one rainy day. I have no idea why, but this little red light in one of the exhibits fascinated me. I think people were confused by why I was photographing it for like 10 minutes.

This guy (Iya Traore) puts on one of the best shows in Paris just outside Sacre Coeur (one of my favorite places in Paris).  If you’re up there, make sure to watch if he’s performing.

I love the interior of Invalides. The design of the dome and its surrounding alcoves makes for really interesting wide angle photos.

Long exposure near sunset at Mont Saint-Michel. Unfortunately, major construction is being done on the causeway, so I wasn’t able to leave it to get more shots. Even so, it was a pleasure to watch the sun set over this interesting site.

Incidentally, I say “unfortunately” above, but really, the construction is a good thing. Mont Saint-Michel used to be a frequent island when the tide rose, but since the construction of the causeway in the 1800s, water can’t circulate correctly and much of the bay has been silted in. It’s only an island during extremely high tides now. The work is being done to change the causeway into a bridge, which will allow water to properly flow once again. I hope to go back in a few years once the work has been done.

This shot of the Eiffel Tower is my last for this post. Check back in a few days for the next set of photos from Paris. Thanks for looking!

A year ago my good friend Gavin was born, and it’s been amazing watching him grow in the duration.  I had the good fortune to chase him around over a couple of days as his birthday drew near; below are some of my favorites.

Work paused while G took a “chase the duck” break.

“Oh, you want me to hold still and not crawl on your reflector? Too bad.”

Late in the day I got a little too much motion blur, but this is probably my favorite.

I’ve been having an incredibly difficult time getting motivated to photograph, well, anything recently, but especially Orange County. In an effort to shake off this couch related inertia, I assigned myself the project of going to the same location on multiple days to shoot the same scene and see what I could come up with. “Heck,” I reasoned, “even if I don’t want to shoot it’s better to enjoy a sunset at the beach than be at my apartment.”

“Me,” I said, “you’re pretty smart sometimes.” And then I gave myself a high five.

I decided to make little Corona Del Mar beach my target. Although I spent a considerable amount of time listening to French lessons and an audio book, I spent more time listening to amazing classical music. “Me,” I said, “that last piece was in C Minor, which is a funny nickname you could give to ‘Little Corona.’ You should call it that on your blog. Women will throw themselves at your feet, you’re so clever.”

I’ve seen nary a woman, but I do have some ok photos, so I thought I’d share them with you. Maintenant, je vous présente mes photos de la plage de plusieurs jours. 

Some kelp drifted into the neighborhood, so the crabs had a party. Except the big ones, who decided being in the open with a big target that said “My guard’s down, come eat me” wasn’t in their best interest.

How’s this for light pollution? I’m looking at you, Newport Beach.

Long exposure self-portrait.

And finally, a super long exposure about 30 minutes after sunset.