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Yesterday afternoon I was visiting with some family who I hadn’t seen in a several years and while showing them some of my latest work, one of them asked the question that photographers just love to hear…

“You must have a nice camera…”

I responded with “Yeah, I do… but….” and then proceeded to tell them the story about going to a fancy schmancy restaurant to eat the best meal of your life only to ask the chef if he had good knifes when he came out to ask how the meal was.  As David duChemin puts it, “gear is good, vision is better”.

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A couple of weeks ago my sister fell deathly ill and was rushed to facility in San Francisco and was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease and will need a liver transplant sometime in the next couple of years.  She’s home now, trying to regain her strength and seems to be in good spirits and while the future is uncertain, I can only hope that things will turn out good in the end.

For the past two weeks I’ve spent a lot of time in my car driving back and forth between Ukiah and San Francisco.  It’s amazing how draining sitting around and waiting is.  I thought about taking my laptop and camera with me but it just didn’t feel right, I was with family, so I just “checked out” for a couple of weeks and ow that she’s home, I am hoping to get back to my regular schedule, I really could use some shutting time.

Over the past few days I’ve had a lot of time to think about projects and ebooks and all the other things that I’ve been working on.  My schedule for June has filled up nicely with several planned shoots.  This week I’m putting the finishing touches on the first issue of my free monthly email newsletter and after that, I’ll be jumping into an eBook that outlines how I post process my photographs.

Anyways… I’m looking forward to the next few weeks and getting back to a regular posting schedule.  Thanks for “tuning in”, see ya soon.

For the past eight years I’ve worked at a small non-profit here in Northern California doing web-related tasks…  and due to lack of funds and bad management, I now find myself unemployed and wondering what comes next.  The obvious answer is something photography related but I’m just not sure if I’ll be able to turn that into a money-making career.  I can live pretty much anywhere and on the cheap.  So maybe, with lots of thought and planning, I’ll be able to come up with a plan to turn my dreams into reality.

The other night, my friend Ron and I stopped by the little train depot building in Cloverdale California.  It was built many years ago after freight train service in our area had already been shut down.  There was no passenger service being offered at the time of construction.  I suppose it was built-in the hopes that passenger train service would someday open and this little depot building would serve people who wanted to commute down to the bay area for work or shopping.  All that I really know is that lots of money went into this structure and that it’s never been used.

After we were done at the depot building, Ron and I took a drive down the road to Francis Ford Coppola’s winery to take a few more night shots before calling it an evening.

Hello there…  My new site is finally finished and I’ve made public for all to see.  My name is Chris and I am a photographer who lives in Northern California.  My photographic journey began many years ago when I took a photography class during the summer session at the local high school.  I didn’t take it very seriously at the time and it would be many years before I decided I wanted to “really” get into photography.  A few years back I bought a Nikon D50 with the 18-55 mm Kit Lens and started taking pictures around my neighborhood.  A few years later I moved up to a Nikon D90 with the 18-105 mm Kit Lens.  Somewhere along the way I became distracted and my interests changed but a couple of years ago I decided that it was time to make photography a priority in my life and that’s where I am today.

Today I am shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II and a few L Series Lenses and sometime in the next year I am hoping to travel across the county making photos.  That’s my car, pictured above, a few years ago on the Bonneville Salt Flats near the Nevada/Utah border.  It’s a 2006 Scion xB that I own outright and gets about 35 miles per gallon on a tank of gas.  It has enough room for myself, my gear and a few other belongings to comfortably travel in.  I’m going to start this process off by taking smaller local trips within few hundred miles of my home.  I’ll use these small trips to fine-tune the travel process and to figure out what works best.

So that’s my plan and I’d love for you to follow me on this journey.  You can keep in touch with me on Google+, Twitter, or by “Liking” my page on Facebook. You can also subscribe to my monthly newsletter which will contain excerpts from popular posts, recent photos, free wallpapers and free eBooks. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe anytime.  Use the form in the sidebar or the one at the very bottom of this page.