For the last photo, here are some dinosaurs in a barn of sorts. Check back soon for an explanation and the rest of this set, and don’t forget: if you’re viewing this as a single post, feel free to take a look at the rest of my posts. Thanks!

While I go look for budget knife throwing classes, feel free to browse the photos below, all of which were shot in multiple states not beginning with the letter C and none of which ended with X.

1. Lost roses
2. A bridge from a trip I took
3. Drowned rose
4. Water being affected by gravity
5. Lost rose
6. La luna
7. A monument somewhere in OC, possibly overdone with my new LR VSCO set.
8. The super moon, which isn’t really that super.
9. Surprise! More lost roses!
10. Post-sunset from the abode of the wild donkeys
11. Glitter, my new enemy, clinging to a drop of water
12. (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.

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.

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!

My brother—the failed alchemist—and I went to the Carlsbad flower fields today. Despite having lived in San Diego for exactly 0 days, I never knew this place existed. I’m not sure what it’s actual purpose is, but it’s pretty cool. I do wish you could actually walk through some of the fields, but that aside, it’s still a nice way to spend an afternoon.

(Note: I don’t think there are any actual poppies. I just like McCrae’s poem about World War I.)

On the way home we swung by Trestles to see if any good sunset photos presented themselves, but not a whole lot came along. After a few bird photos we turned and trudged up the long path back to my motor coach.

The aforementioned brother takes a stroll.

There was a surprisingly small number of bees. With millions of flowers onsite, we expected to see more than the 6 or so we did encounter.

Signs everywhere tell you to stay out of the fields, but apparently the rules aren’t always adhered to.  :)

Location: London, Kiev, Chernobyl, Prypiat

One of my life’s goals has been to visit Chernobyl and the nuclear ghost town of Prypiat in Ukraine. After the disaster at Fukushima in Japan last year, the Ukranian government shut down access to Chernobyl. Following some nervous legal wrangling the site was reopened and I booked my trip almost immediately in case they closed it again.

Rather than spend two weeks in snowy eastern Europe, I started the trip off in London, hung out in Kiev for a while, and then finished off in Paris. This post has photos from London, Kiev, and Prypiat. I’ll post Paris photos in a few days.

London

I love the city of London, but don’t find it particularly interesting photographically. It’s got great night life and the most fashionable people on earth, but for whatever reason, it’s not a place that makes me want to shoot a ton of photos. My new friend Dr. Taylor has volunteered to show me around on a proper photographic tour, so I may take her up on that and go back sometime in the nearish future.

Anyhow, I arrived during one of the nicest weekends the city had in a while, and the flowers were out in celebration of this event.

One of my favorite historical locations is Westminster Abbey, which of course doesn’t allow photography except in one outdoor spot. This is unfortunate since Westminster Abbey holds the remains of some of the most important people in Western civilization, and is where the royals get married. Even though I didn’t get to take photos of things like Isaac Newton’s impressive tomb, I still like this photo of a rushed docent.

Another blooming tree, this one taking care of someone’s prayer.

I forget the name of this store (Anna: help?), but the storefront in Notting Hill had  like 1,000 old Singer sewing machines comprising an awesome art display.

The massive London Eye as seen from the bridge near Parliament.

Practicing parkour  near sunset.

The feeling I got from drinking all the volcanicity in this water was indescribable.

Another shot of the London Eye. Each of those cars holds 25 people.

Although I don’t smoke Heather tried to give me a lesson in rolling cigarettes, which is impossible unless you’re a wizard. I liked how direct the packaging was. 

This is the one photo that I absolutely did want to get: sunset at Parliament. I have a rare photographer’s curse of having no clouds and nice weather most places I go. *Sigh* Clouds would have made this photo so much better. 

Kiev

After a few days in London I headed off to Kiev. I was supposed to arrive at 2:30 on Monday and have the day to run around, but thanks to Lufthansa–who apparently hates me–I didn’t get to my apartment until after midnight.

It was snowing all day Tuesday, Wednesday I was at Chernobyl, and Thursday I came down with a cold so Thursday and Friday were shot. The net result was that I didn’t get much opportunity to get out and take photos.

In the little amount of time that I did I have, I discovered that Kiev loves the heck out of gold-domed churches.  This is the lovely Saint Sophia Cathedral, not far from St. Michael’s golden-domed monastery.  A little way across town is the AMAZING Perchesk Lavra.  If you visit the latter, make sure to venture into the catacombs. Lit only by tiny candles, the claustrophobic tunnels hold some of Orthodox Christianity’s saints.

Artwork dedicated to the victims of the Communist inquisition.

Another shot of St. Sophia’s. The little boy was looking at this brother who had just gone face first into a puddle.

I have no idea what this is for (while I can read Cyrillic, my vocab is junk), but it cracked me up.

St. Michael’s, as seen from St. Sophia’s.

Ummmmmm…no idea?

A tribute to Gauntlet, the video game. Really.

This place was right next to my apartment. After seeing how incredibly beautiful the average Ukranian woman is, I can’t say I necessarily blame a guy for wanting to marry one.

The massive sculpture dedicated to berehynia in Independence Square.

 

Chernobyl and Prypiat

My love of abandoned structures and ghost towns has long made me aware of Chernobyl and its aftermath. A catastrophic explosion at reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 resulted in the worst nuclear disaster in human history. The nearby town of Prypiat–one of the most luxurious in the USSR–was evacuated within a matter of days and has been uninhabited ever since. The former town of nearly 50,000 is an eery, amazing place.

When approaching the exclusion zone, the first thing you see besides a well armed military checkpoint is this shrine.

A sign welcoming you to the Chernobyl facility.

Along with Prypiat, something like 180 smaller towns and villages also had to be evacuated. This monument pays tribute to all of these dead towns that literally will not be safe for habitation for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Many of the towns have been buried. It’s a strange thing to be driving through the exclusion zone and see a big black sign with the name of a town crossed out, and yet, there’s no town. It’s because the town is underground, entombed by dirt and radioactive trees above.

Radioactive military vehicles on display. These were not particularly close to the disaster, so while they’re heavily radioactive compared to the environment, they’re safe to approach for a few minutes.

These personal Geiger counters set off a crazy annoying alarm when the number on the screen (in microSieverts) got over 0.30. This particular tank measured radiation 50 times over that. Because of the alarm, this photo was much more annoying to take than it looks. 

The first abandoned place we visited was a kindergarten, slowly being consumed by the forest around it. It’s weird to think that items like this learning aid have been hanging on the wall and untouched for almost 30 years.

If memory serves correct, this is the abandoned reactor 5. Being built when reactor 4 exploded, construction was stopped. The cranes and construction vehicles sit in the same place as they did in 1986. 

Prypiat was a futuristic city in its time. The engineers and scientists who lived there made the best wages in the USSR and lived in a relative paradise. Contemporary photos show a Disneyland-like utopia with happy people in a city of flowers. The void that 50,000 people leave behind is unimaginable.

Note the tree growing inside the building. The forest is everywhere now. 

A former theater, now destroyed by time and nature.

The most famous icon of Prypiat. Because of the radiation levels we were only allowed 7 minutes in the amusement park. 

A group of artists has done graffiti in many places in order to restore a sense of life to the dead town.

A sign for a youth organization.

I found this stool in an abandoned grocery store. I liked the way the ice melted away from the legs.

The numerous gymnasiums (I think there were 12 of them) must have been incredible in their day. They have enormous swimming pools and sports courts and are still impressive even now. This pool is probably 20 feet deep and descends into the first floor.

Near the end of the excursion we were taken to a facility right next to the destroyed number 4 reactor. The public relations director who runs the facility was kind enough to take time to discuss the explosion and its horrible consequences. This is a model showing the inside of the destroyed reactor. To give you an idea of the power of the explosion: that round ball structure in the middle with all the wires coming out of it is called an upper biological shield. It’s meant to contain the energy from an explosion and weighs 2,000 tons (4,000,000 pounds). It was thrown 30 feet into the air and came to rest on its side. Think about that: 4 million pounds was thrown 3 stories into the air.

I would have loved to have talked to this woman for more time, but we were kicked out when a high ranking UN delegation arrived. The  Chernobyl facility represents one of the gravest dangers facing humanity today, but because of their 26 years of experience, it also represents the frontier of securing our nuclear legacy. The UN and experts from Fukushima visit regularly.

This is an external shot of the dead reactor 4. Enclosed in an aging sarcophagus, the structure is set to get a new radiation shield in about 5 years time. Amazingly, even after they put on the new high-tech shield, work is scheduled to continue to secure the material inside for more than 100 years.

Visiting Chernobyl is one of the strangest things I’ve ever done. If you didn’t know the haunting secret behind it, the location would seem almost idyllic. The place is dead quiet, and peaceful forest is everywhere. And yet, this one building has enough poison in it to kill millions of people.

During the entire time near the reactor our detectors were in full panic mode. Radiation is a horrible mistress: something you can’t taste, touch, feel, or smell has the the power to kill you, and quite effectively at that. Scores of people died horrible deaths in the aftermath of the disaster, and something like 6,000 more have died since from the after effects. I made sure to tip a glass to their memory later that night.

I plan on visiting the site again sometime in the next year if possible, but will be exploring Prypiat more fully. If you’re reading this and want to join me, drop me a line and let’s see if we can’t figure something out.

Look for my Paris photos in the next few days!

Yes, yes…I know I’m late. Rather than bore you with words, here’s a small selection of 2011 photos from a myriad of different shoots. Apparently, I spent a lot of time on various beaches.

In 2012 I’ve got trips planned to San Antonio, New Orleans, London, Paris, Kiev, Chernobyl, and more, so make sure to check out the site from time to time.  You’ll only be mildly disappointed!

I took this next picture the day my friend Bobby Villanueva died. He was a good man who brought a lot of light to many lives. He’s still missed pretty badly.

Since I haven’t mentioned him elsewhere, I’ll mention him now: this is Dave Beck. He’s an all-around great person, cancer survivor, and soon to be an esteemed published author. You should buy him a beer sometime if you get the chance.

Remember that book entitled “The Monster at the End of this Book,” starring Grover? Well, just a heads up that in about 4 pictures there’s a photo of a lovely young woman that implies nudity. There’s no actual nudity, but since you might work at the Vatican or be looking at this post with your grandfather with the weak heart, I just wanted to give you a heads up. I think it’s worth scrolling past, but I don’t want to be responsible for murder.

Yes, we spelled “Death Valley” wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

Hopefully you’re still with me. If not, I hope the Vatican pays you well, although I suppose if you’re not still with me you won’t know that I hope this.

This is my friend Dave, a world famous linguists specialist. Although this isn’t my best photo ever from a technical  standpoint, it is a nice photo of Dave. And because it’s a nice photo of Dave and because he really is world famous, this photo is my most published one to date. It’s even appeared in a newspaper article in Estonia.

This is another one where I think I could have done better, but people seem to like it. Of all the photos I’ve ever taken, this is by far the most popular. I think it has something to do with parents connecting to a memory of their kids at a young, magical age. Before they had boyfriends or cars or credit cards, they let their parents push them in a swing.  In life, moments like these are over in a flash. Make sure to enjoy them while you have them.

Subjects: Women, children, butterflies, flowers, sunset, seascapes, Disneyland, beaches, friends

Another assortment of random jazz I’ve photographed in the last few months, but which I’ve not posted elsewhere. Enjoy. :)

You’ll notice in a lot of my sunset photos that they’re visibly vignetted at times. This is because I tend to shoot with stacked filters: a UV filter, a neutral density filter, and a graduated neutral density filter.  The filters become so “tall” that they show up in the photos.  This photo–which, by the way, my talented brother helped me with–is an example of getting the filters wrong. I forgot to rotate the graduated filter, which is why the left side is so much darker than the right. Even though it’s technically messed up, I still like this self-portrait.

I think we took about 10 of these photos, and I believe that this was the closest we got to smiles in any of them. :)

One comment on this photo: Danger was not cooperating for most of this shoot. Randomly however, he walked past me, laid on the floor, and let me snap this gem.

Oh, and one other comment: for reasons I won’t go into, I had a Justin Bieber star-shaped piñata at my apartment the night we did this shoot.  Danger’s dad decided to go through the mass of candy inside, and of course the kids were interested. Days later the family was passing near my place when Danger said something to the effect of: “Remember how Jake has candy in his star hole?”  Makes me laugh every time. :)