Portrait of an Artist

Shot a portrait of a patient from Long Beach Memorial Hospital that also dreams of being an artist. It was a beautiful day! It had rained the day before and was suppose to rain the next day as well. The air was that deep blue it only gets after a storm and there were actual clouds in the sky. Couldn't of asked for a better day.

No Cooler than Kelvin

I did a portrait of Kelvin, the owner of VIP Records in Long Beach, an old school hip-hop store that has been around for 30 years. As I rolled up, the place seemed familiar and it dawned on me that I had been here before about 10 years ago! Back at UCLA I was a huge Pharcyde fan and when I caught wind that they were going to sign copies of Labcabincalifornia, I headed down to the LBC with some friends.



It was a great day (and a great album).



Sadly, Kelvin said that they've taken a big hit with internet downloads and they have had to make money selling various bits of merchandise (Obama shirts were popular). Hope he pulls through. I thanked him for having Pharcyde there 10 years ago. Probably not the biggest act that has ever graced the parking lot of VIP, but my personal favorite.

A Glorious Christmas Afternoon...

The air was clean and brisk. For once, it felt like winter in our strange beach city. We took a ride out to the QM and back during a little break in the rain and I was reminded of all that I have to be thankful for.

Gift Not to Scale

They didn't quite come in time, but I didn't want Laura to be empty-handed so I printed and cut out a likeness of her coming Christmas present. It should arrive just in time for our Santa Barbara to SLO adventure on New Year's Eve!

Meta-Photos

Today I had a fun shoot with photographer David Lauridsen, though this time I was on the other end of the camera. I'm going to be in a small profile in Sunset Magazine in March and this was the shoot to accompany the article.





It was a blast. Strange at first but both David and Finn were pretty laid back so it went smoothly. Some snaps!


The photographer lives dangerously :)




I'm going to start a series of snaps with people and the cargo bike, this is the first!

A soapbox moment..

Recently, there were some road "improvements" on the stretch of PCH in Long Beach. Added to the road were some really poorly implemented bike lanes. I would argue that they do more harm than good. The southbound lane abruptly ends in several spaces, one of which is a bridge with some surface irregularities.

This is a quintessential example of people with no bicycling expertise designing bike facilities. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to see that the lanes are dangerous. I wonder how many people have to be nearly run over or run over before things change. Anyway, here is a short assemblage I'm going to be showing at a presentation tomorrow with some city people.

A fun ride, but dang my shoulder hurts...

Well, I went on a fun ride today up in Turnbull Canyon. I rode (and pushed) up some dirt roads and saw some great vistas. You can read about it at Epicurean Cyclist.


It was great until on the way home. I managed to flip over my handlebars riding up an embankment on the river trail and landed on my shoulder pretty good. It's sore, but I think I'll make it. I'm trying not to move it so hopefully I'll be A-OK in a few days.



For more pics, visit my Flickr Set.

Another contribution to society :)

Aside from the photography by bike, I've been working on another project with Jayme, a cyclist and friend of mine.

The Bike Burrito!



Yes, I'm serious. We even got the domain name BikeBurrito.com. It's a funky take on the classic tool roll. You can either strap it to the rails of your seat or toss it in your bag and it keeps your tools centralized. We're having fun with it. We'll be releasing The Tamale soon, which is a little smaller and carries just the essentials.



Anyway, if you're looking for something fun for your bike, or a fun gift for a fellow cyclist this holiday season, check out BikeBurrito.com, send an email and place your order!

Web 2.0 Compliant

For better or for worse, I've joined Facebook to make myself more Web 2.0 compliant. So if you're on FB and you like bikes/bike touring/classic bikes/cameras/classic cameras/photography/eco-friendliness/orange chicken/don't own a car/bike commute/hate AT&T/went to school together....then hey, add me! Now someone has to explain what the hell is the point of Twitter again?

Day in the Life of Tony Cruz

A few more images from my shoot this morning. This stuff I did NOT use the G10 :) The G10 is a bit slow for some things, but more importantly, it really blows after 200 ISO. These images were shot with my faithful D300 and D200 using a 17-55 2.8 and a Tokina 11-16 2.8. I don't quite have the dollars for a full frame Nikon just yet, so I shoot ultra-wide with the Tokina. Not a bad lens for the money and MUCH cheaper than a D3 or D3x.








I wanted a real intimate feel for the images. Something more like a "day in the life" essay rather than something too slick. One of my beliefs is that bicycling would be more mainstream if people looked at cyclists as PEOPLE and not TRAFFIC problems. With that in mind, I tried to focus on the humanity of Tony Cruz as a professional cyclist rather than the trappings of a "racer" so to speak.

Canon G10 on a real shoot...

I decided to try the G10 out on a real paying gig today :) I shot a series of images of Tony Cruz, a local professional cyclist for an upcoming website. We shot some candid/PJ style images at his home where I used my D300 and D200. Then we went out to the lighthouse to take some portraits.



The G10 can synch up to 1/2000th of a second! In comparison, my D300 only does 250th. This allowed for a lot of creativity using lights to overpower the sun. In these images, I'm using a single Nikon strobe to overpower the ambient, giving it a slightly surreal and poppy look!



Not bad for a little point and shoot!

A few more vacation snaps...

Some more photos from the recent trip.

Some snaps from my bike vacation!

Laura and I did a mini bike tour this Thanksgiving. We made it from Long Beach to Sunland. Then from Union Station to Laguna Niguel, where we biked to San Clemente, jogged inland to Escondido, then back out to Solana Beach. It was a wonderful weekend and we covered a lot of miles, drank some great beer and had the time of our lives!



Here are some snaps from the trip. All of them taken with my new point and shoot, the Canon G10. It has proven to be a great little camera. I certainly took more pics this trip than others. I think part of it is that taking the DSLR out is a bit of a chore and it's heavy. I would ride with the G10 bandoleer style and take photos. They say the "best" camera is the camera you have in your hand. That is to say, if you don't take it out and use it, then it doesn't matter if you own a Hasselblad or a Leica or a Holga.

Just snapping around...

I've really enjoyed having a camera I can bring with me everywhere (in case you haven't noticed). If anything, the G10 has reminded me why I like photography in the first place. Anyway, here's a snap from today. There was a great sky from the storm and it made the Vill (and Long Beach as a whole) particularly dramatic.

G10 Portraits...

A few more portraits I took today with the G10. These are for a mock PSA I'm working on that will promote cycling in Long Beach. Hopefully this concept will come to fruition. All the images shot using available light. Post-processing for lens blur, BW, corner vignetting and exposure adjustment to give it that Avedon look.

More thoughts on the G10...

I posted a few more thoughts on the G10 after three days of use on Epicurean Cyclist. I talk about ways to make it more Leica-like by changing some of the settings. So swing over there and take a gander!

Canon G10 + Vivitar

I took the G10 out tonight for a party. I haven't taken a camera out for a purely social gathering in a long time. I threw on a small Vivitar flash and decided to see how it would fare.



I put the Vivitar in Auto mode and guesstimated the exposure in manual mode on the G10. It came out to something like 4.5 @ 1/5th at ISO 200 or something. Not too shabby, I think. All things considered, the pictures are pretty pleasing from a point and shoot. Probably not a whole lot different than from a DSLR.



There was a bit of shutter lag and I minimized this by pre-focusing the lens to 4 feet in manual focus mode. It felt like my old rangefinder days where I would zone focus the Leicas. Ah...the good ole' days.