March 2, 2010
My first job in photography was as studio manager for Paul M Bowers, Imaging for Business back in 1998. I was always impressed with Paul's great, gritty, black and white street photos of New York City; the subways, the bagel shops, the towering World Trade Center towers. The camera he used, I was surprised to find was a little Olympus XA film camera.
A few months ago, I asked if he still had the camera and if he was interested in selling it to me. He refused to take my money and gifted it to me.
What a cool cat!
You can imagine how excited I was...I immediately shot a slightly outdated roll of Fuji Velvia just to test it out and am in love all over again. I found that it does need some lens focusing maintenance but at super deep depths of field, it produces great, sharp images.
Two days ago just before surfing at Oceanside Pier, I set the camera on a trash can and took a long exposure just before the moon and sun swapped shifts and the tones were recorded perfectly. Thanks so much Paul!
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My New Camera!
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March 1, 2010
All our closest friends think we're a bit weird when we talk about the special friendship we have with the Bonobos at the San Diego Zoo and one in particular, a 30 year old female named Lana.
But we think it's pretty special...
We've been members of the Zoo on and off for about 12 years and, before leaving for New Zealand for 7 years, went so often and were so drawn to the Bonobo group that they started to recognize us as their friends and would come to the glass to say hi when they saw us approach. We've only been to see them once this year and once last year as we now live much farther but on our last visit, Lana came running up with the rest of the group and pressed herself up to the glass, giving me a smile and a hello. I think part of the reason we're so drawn to these primates is that we share 98% of our DNA with them; they're extremely intelligent, obviously have great memories, and wonderful social interaction and conflict resolution skills (you'll have to read up on that one yourselves).
Okay, enough rambling...here are a few of our friend Lana. What a smile!
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Our Friend Lana
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February 23, 2010
Here are a few more from our road trip through Nevada, Utah, and Colorado last week. Having grown up in New England, winter and snow are part of who I am - even though I moved as far away from those two aspects as I could back in 1993. Since we've been so travel-happy the past few years - working between New Zealand and California summers - we haven't really experienced a true winter for a long time. Being cold and snowy is so good...
A few from the incredibly beautiful Moab, Utah
Alex's first snow angel
Farm dogs, Monticello, Utah.
It was incredible how much snow this town had. 15 minutes earlier and there was just a few inches on the ground. Monticello, Utah.
One minute we're in the snowy desert, the next we're in bloody Las Vegas! 
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[February 23, 2010]
shannon said:
gorgeous
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Winter in the Rockies
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February 19, 2010
So, El Niño has it's good points - as mentioned in the last post but it has it's drawbacks too. It rained harder than I ever remember it raining in San Diego for five days leading up to our 5 day surf trip deep into baja. Long story short, 5 bridges washed out on the main highway the day before our trip so our trip was over. We didn't let the weather get us down though and continued packing, but this time we were headed north. We ended up camping at the beautiful Jalama beach park and still had some fun surfs but even more fun tearing around the (almost) dead campground on Andy's trail 77 motorbike. Good times!
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Camping Trip with the Boys
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February 19, 2010
This has been quite the winter for surf here on the west coast thanks to the El Niño weather pattern and being a serious weather geek, it's been really cool to actually experience some proper weather for a change. The El Niño is, in short, a disruption of the typical weather pattern over the tropical Pacific. This typically brings much more weather to the southern tier of the United States and brings powerful winter storms closer and more frequently to the southern west coast (sorry about the snow Vancouver!).
Anyhow, here's a quick photo and close-up crop of the same image below. It shows the huge perfect surf at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. We didn't get to the beach this day but got a great vantage point from this high point in the Inner Sunset district about 2 miles inland...yep, 2 miles, it's big!
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El Niño = Big Surf
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February 18, 2010
It's been brought to our attention that the point of a blog is to keep regular updates on what we're up to. Right! Problem is, we've been away from our computers and on the road for most of January and February, and are bad (or good, depending on your perspective) at working while traveling.
Travel is such a big part of our lives - be it for work or purely to see new places or people we haven't seen in awhile - that we do it whenever we have free time. A wedding in Colorado early in February had us driving over 2000 miles throughout the Southwest and a new baby had us driving to the far reaches of Northern California in January. A much needed surf camping trip with the guys fell right in the middle and we'll trickle photos from all the adventures over the next week or so...
Here's a camper set on a spacious section near the Colorado/Utah state line.
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Long time, no entry!
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December 17, 2009
New York is such a multi-dimensional place; I still have trouble focusing on one particular aspect at a time (sorry for the image overload). Between the architectural three-dimensionality and added socio-economic layers, the city feels like some Orwellian experiment and is at once hectic and peaceful, maker of dreams or destroyer of hope...truly unlike any city I've known. Add to that the holidays, a small child, lights galore and you have a whole different experience altogether.
Hey, that's me!
Hey, that's me!
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New York, New York Big City of Dreams...
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November 23, 2009
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[November 24, 2009]
Anonymous said:
I just love that song. It's even better now that I see him singing it
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Happy Thanksgiving
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November 18, 2009
We had a weekend off! We decided to take our camper van, affectionately known as "The Camel" to Joshua Tree. We went in a caravan with the Burt Family - good friends of Dennis' from college and their 4 children - the youngest only 2 weeks old (yes Mia and Jed are wicked cool parents). We stayed for 3 days, and went bike riding, rock climbing, nature walking, bug hunting, plant and cactus identifying, did some sitting by the camp fire, S'more roasting, cooking, and at the end of the day, the kids snuggled up up in The Camel and watched a movie on our laptop as we did some wine drinking! Overall, a successful trip!
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[February 17, 2010]
Jeanette said:
Wow, really cool photos. What lens did you use to take these, they are so crisp? Great work.
[December 24, 2009]
jonill said:
I am SO confused as to why there are no comments for these...they are INCREDIBLE. Wow. Beautiful shots of adorable children.
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Joshua Tree
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November 11, 2009
It's a bit unfair we've waited so long to post any photos of our newest family member but better late than never. Here's Buckley - our 1-2 (?) year old Rottweiler/Mutt/? mix. He was found on the way back from Arizona wandering the streets and no one claimed him so we took him on as a new recruit. No more beatings little guy!
Just got a new lens in on demo Canon today so I thought I'd snap a few off to make sure it works and what a great and patient test subject.
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[November 29, 2009]
Anna Gross said:
So cute! Buckley and Izzy would be best friends. Izzy was found on the street too. He says hi and hopes to see you again when we beg you to come back for our next big occasion.
[November 18, 2009]
Sinead said:
He is GORGEOUS! Well done for taking him on board, I'm sure he's never been happier...
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Introducing...Buckley!
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