There sits an old restaurant along Euclid Avenue near the border of Fullerton and Anaheim. It’s an ancient place that looks like it has been there forever, or at least since the fifties. The La Palma Chicken Pie Shop. Fifties Americana food…chicken pies with thick gravy, fresh baked pies and two owners who are so tied to the business, when they take a vacation the restaurant shuts down.

Everything about this photo was wrong. Taken in the middle of the day, poor composition, boring subject matter (parked cars in a lot?)….yet somehow it works.

Fullerton Art Walk

For those of you not following our facebook page (and why aren’t you?)

I will be participating in the Fullerton Art Walk on Friday, August 6, 2010. Photos from my series, Scenes of India, will be exhibited at Unity Salon during the Art Walk, and for the entire month of July.

Date: Friday, August 6, 2010

Time: 6pm – 10pm

Location: Unity Salon (map), Downtown Fullerton

I will be at the Salon from 6-10. There will be wine, snacks, and hopefully a nice crowd of friends and visitors. Framed images from the series will be available for purchase, as well as signed copies of my book, Scenes of India, various matted prints and potentially a video slideshow. Special show only pricing will be available on prints, as well as future orders.

I am also offering a 10% off Pre Art-Walk special. Order a print prior to the Art Walk and I will sign, matte, and deliver the print at the Art Walk. 10% off…Plus you save on shipping! Please contact me directlyfor Pre-Art Walk orders.

One of my favorite parts about New Orleans is the weathered wrought iron you find all over the city. In front of buildings, along courtyards, in the cemeteries…beautiful, distressed, aging wrought iron. During our trip to the crescent city we spent a lot of time walking through various neighborhoods, I’d walk by a building, wrought iron would catch my eye and I’d start composing various images while Andree was once again forced to wonder what the hell I was looking at. Sometimes I’d look for patterns in the repetition…other times I’d focus on the shape. When we returned I tossed all the wrought iron shots in a collection and forgot about them. The other day I was sending off some prints to replace some that sold in the recent art show and Andree asked if I could order a shot from New Orleans she especially liked. As I’m wont to due I was quickly distracted by my collection of wrought iron and ended up creating a series of toned black and white shots using Silver Efex Pro. I used a Holga style treatment of the photos with medium Selenium toning, the subject matter suited to the mystery and historic feel you get from that combination.

Fullerton Art Walk

For those of you not following our facebook page (and why aren’t you?)

I will be participating in the Fullerton Art Walk on Friday, August 6, 2010. Photos from my series, Scenes of India, will be exhibited at Unity Salon during the Art Walk, and for the entire month of July.

Date: Friday, August 6, 2010

Time: 6pm – 10pm

Location: Unity Salon (map), Downtown Fullerton

I will be at the Salon from 6-10. There will be wine, snacks, and hopefully a nice crowd of friends and visitors. Framed images from the series will be available for purchase, as well as signed copies of my book, Scenes of India, various matted prints and potentially a video slideshow. Special show only pricing will be available on prints, as well as future orders.

I am also offering a 10% off Pre Art-Walk special. Order a print prior to the Art Walk and I will sign, matte, and deliver the print at the Art Walk. 10% off…Plus you save on shipping! Please contact me directlyfor Pre-Art Walk orders.

Gallery of Wrought Iron

So, maybe I’m a little behind, we did get back close to two months ago…but here are some photos from our trip with Ace, Michael, and Genghis, backpacking through Southern Utah. Photos were shot with a Canon G9, still not entirely used to using my small handheld to take large landscape photos…in the middle of the afternoon. The photo above is of Michael, Ace (and Andree hiding in the corner) as we get ready for our final descent in to the canyon on our first day. We ended up camping/sleeping in the small canyon, in the deep shadows, about 1/3 of the way up the photo (from the bottom).

Here’s a gallery of images from the trip.

Two more days until the Art Walk in Fullerton. We met with the fine folks at Unity Salon last night and hung 10 framed prints on the walls. It was an interesting experience, watching my framed art hung on the walls. Yeah, we’ve hung a few photos around the house, but this was different…a nice little ego boost for sure.

15+ venues will open their doors on Friday night for the Fullerton Art Walk, so there should be something for everyone (though I would obviously expect you to spend most of your time with us!).

Date: Friday, July 2, 2010

Time: 6pm – 10pm

Location: Unity Salon (map), Downtown Fullerton

I will be at the Salon from 6-10. There will be wine, cheese, and hopefully a nice crowd of friends and visitors. Framed images from the series will be available for purchase, as well as signed copies of my book, Scenes of India, various matted prints and potentially a video slideshow. Special show only pricing will be available on prints, as well as future orders.

Date: Friday, July 2, 2010

Time: 6pm – 10pm

Location: Unity Salon (map), Downtown Fullerton

I will be at the Salon from 6-10. There will be wine, cheese, and hopefully a nice crowd of friends and visitors. Framed images from the series will be available for purchase, as well as signed copies of my book, Scenes of India, various matted prints and potentially a video slideshow. Special show only pricing will be available on prints, as well as future orders.

I am also offering a 10% off Pre Art-Walk special. Order a print prior to the Art Walk and I will sign, matte, and deliver the print at the Art Walk. 10% off…Plus you save on shipping! Please contact me directly for Pre-Art Walk orders.

Seeing as this is my first real exhibition, the entire process is a learning experience. Add in the fact we don’t have a lot of spare cash laying around, and it definitely makes it a challenging process trying to find the most cost effective way to put together a quality product and exhibition! Over the next few weeks I’ll be chronicling the fun.

Been interesting using Photomatix Pro on some of the photos from our trip to Zion National Park. The image above is an HDR compilation of three photos (regular exposure, +2 exposure, -2 exposure). I then converted the image to black and white using Silver Efex Pro.

Bryce Canyon National Park, in Utah, is simply stated, an absolutely fantastic landscape. Along the many overlooks amazing hoodoos stretch for miles and miles, prime examples of how ice, water, and erosion can carve rock and create spectacular vistas. Images of Bryce have spurred the imagination for years, so much so that years ago a company created a 3d landscape generator, which created some interesting computer generated landscapes, and named it after Bryce.

But Bryce is also a more complex area than the amazing landscape, it is also a prime example of why the National Parks were created in the first place and need protecting. A few miles outside of the park entrance sits the city of Bryce, or maybe a more apt description is the Ruby’s Inn behemoth. The original stopping point for visitor’s to the park has become a blocks long western themed amusement park…hotels, restaurants (including a cowboy dinner show), horseback rides, ATV rentals, helicopter rides, RV parks, tour buses, souvenir shops, etc. etc. etc. All sense of being in the great outdoors an afterthought to the tourist money traps that line the road to the entrance of the park. Oddly enough the first time I visited Bryce a few years ago, I didn’t get the same impression. I thought Ruby’s Inn was a charming convenient little location for visiting the park, I’m guessing the fact that it was the middle of December and I was one of a handful of tourists at the property created an entirely different atmosphere.

This doesn’t mean Bryce shouldn’t be visited, it is still an amazing landscape…it just means planning your visit to Bryce should take in to consideration the crowds, seasons, and trying to separate the landscape above, with the tourist trap you have to go through to get there.

Portions of the blog/website will be down for maintenance on Wednesday/Thursday as one of my vendors does some behind the scenes work. Apparently it’s supposed to give me some cool new features, but I haven’t bothered to read what those features are as of yet (and I’m still two revisions behind upgrading my blogging software as it is).

It’s been a whirlwind month, between our travels through Southern Utah and then returning just in time to finish packing and then move across town…not to mention being without internet (or tv!) for the first week in our new place. Yes, boxes still litter the landscape (especially seeing as Sierra had a grand old time alone in the backyard), pictures still sit on the ground, and the garage looks…well, looks like our garage normally does. But this is the first morning I’ve had to sit down in my new office looking out the giant window, the leaves swaying slowly in the breeze, Sierra continuing to explore her new backyard, the birds singing…I do love our new home.

At some point I’m going to get through the photos from our trip to Utah…but for now it will continue to be a slow smattering of images when I have a few moments and am taking a break from cleaning out the boxes and all the other miscellaneous moving chores that have to be finished.

The photo above is from our first night along the trail, deep inside a small canyon with a small creek babbling alongside our campground. The crescent moon was making it’s way across the sky as twilight descended upon us.

We’ve successfully returned from Southern Utah (with a quick stop off in Las Vegas)…and we’ve had to dive right in to moving this week. So updates are still going to be light while we get squared away in the new place. But I wanted to stop moving boxes for a few minutes this afternoon and post a quick photo from our trip to Zion. We were walking along the Virgin River at Sunset and saw one amazing scene after another. This was shot towards the western wall and the Tower of the Virgins. HDR compilation of 3 photos to maintain detail in the sky, as well as the foreground.

See you next week

Navajo Sandstone

We’ve returned from our backpacking trip through the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Southern Utah. We cut the trip a day short due to the 50 mph winds that are howling through the area at the moment. Tough to find a place hide in the middle of a slickrock canyon, so we kicked it in to high gear and exited the canyons in time to grab a fabulous burger and a few beers before a well needed shower and putting our feet up.

I’m beat, so I’ll do a longer rehash later. Here are a few quick tidbits.

a) How was the trip?

Fantastic and a great learning experience. Ace and Michael were fantastic teachers and a great help.

b) Did you really sleep in a cave?

No! We arrived at the cave, only to find a man dressed in a loin cloth and another man sharpening deer antlers. It would appear we got to meet a local legend in the area, but we did move to another camping area farther down the trail in the middle of a beautiful canyon with a flowing creek.

c) How was carrying a pack?

It was hard work, and we definitely learned what “luxury” items we don’t need to bring in the future

d) How was the scenery?

Absolutely beautiful, I’ve never been in canyons like this. Navajo Sandstone that has been worn down by water, wind, and sand. The textures and patterns were stunning and everywhere you looked you could see life finding a way to exist in an extreme environment.

e) Tell me more?

Not tonight