37°49’39.45″N 122°28’55.28″W
A cargo ship approaches San Francisco, as seen from Marin Headlands. This was about 30 minutes before sunset.

38°36’40.37″N 122°52’10.19″W
This mural is in downtown Healdsburg, CA. At 9:30 at night the town is basically shut down except for the streetlights. I liked a lot of things about this scene when I came around the corner, starting with the streetlight seemingly lighting up their whole valley. The fire escape overhead makes the whole thing feel like a stage set with a catwalk above, even when you’re there. I also like the real tree on the left blending with the trunk in the mural, which along with the scale of the people helps blur the line between the mural and the “stage.”

Another experimental shot. By placing a cutout matte in front of the lens you can affect the shape of the bokeh (or those “round blurry highlight bits”). This is an image of our Christmas lights on the house, zoomed during the exposure.

I wasn’t happy with any of the pictures I took today, so I drew one instead.

I’m still playing around with my new wide angle lens. One of the mandatory shots you have to do with a super wide is your dog’s nose. Cliched? Yes.

44°53’1.72″N 93°12’56.02″W
I had a layover in Minneapolis flying home today. I’m glad I didn’t know the tarmac was frozen when we landed.

Processed with HDR (High Dynamic Range).

40°26’36.71″N 79°56’31.30″W
This shot was taken during the closing finale to the Building Virtual Worlds student presentations of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. These graduate students have just finished the first semester of their two year pursuit of a Masters of Entertainment Technology degree, and have shown off a dozen or so of the virutal worlds they have built to a packed audience in McConomy Auditorium.

The cool news is that I will be a faculty member next semester advising two teams of students who will be working on projects at the ETC’s Silicon Valley campus.

40°25’57.64″N 79°57’55.17″W
Part of Don Marinelli’s wonderful lava lamp collection at CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center. He and I were having a great conversation in his office at the end of the day, and I got distracted by this incredible view. Don was gracious enough to let me photogeek out for awhile.

40°26’56.21″N 79°56’3.27″W
After spending the day in a couple of planes I was really happy to finally make it to Pittsburgh., PA.

This shot was actually inspired by a Shawn White AMEX magazine ad where he is captured mid-air over his hotel room bed wearing his snowboard.

To get this shot I set up my Canon 10D on the floor with a 6 second exposure, and then had my Olympus SW770 fire its flash with its timer in the dark. I had to jump at the right time to get the shot. I didn’t want to use the on-camera flash because I wanted my shadow to help define the space, but I don’t yet have a separate flash unit – so the Olympus filled in.

Sorry about the goofy smile!

36°56’58.51″N 122° 3’27.28″W
Taken during a Palo Alto Camera Club field trip to Natural Bridges State Park near Santa Cruz, CA. In the foreground is a seaweed root ball washed up on the beach. Though it was almost noon, the sun remains low in the sky.

This was a tough picture to get the right exposure on because I was shooting directly into the sun and the arch was in shadow. I shot it in RAW mode and was able to coax out the details in Lightroom.