600 feet deep

Imagine floating in the middle of the ocean where the water is 600 feet deep with 100 foot visibility. If you looked down, this is what you would see- Your feet, maybe a fish or two (the white object in the middle is big fish about 100 feet down), the suns rays piercing though the water, and the green object on the top is a kayak. Everything is a bit distorted from the fisheye lens.

Its an eerie feeling to think whats living in the depths under you! Later that day in Hawaii a 13 foot tiger shark swam right by us. Luckily we were in the boat and not swimming around like I was here! A couple lines from Wikipedia about tiger sharks:
"It is notorious for attacks on swimmers, divers and surfers in Hawaii; and is often referred to as the "bane of Hawaiian surfers" and "the wastebasket of the sea".
The tiger shark is second only to the great white in number of recorded human fatalities [2] and is considered, along with the great white, bull shark and the oceanic whitetip shark to be one of the sharks most dangerous to humans."

Another fun image of my feet in Hawaii!

Back from Kona

Kona was an incredible time. Very glad I had the opportunity to join my buddy Taylor in that adventure.
I took over 2,000 photos during while I was there and had a chance to sort through them on my plane ride home. I put together a slideshow but of course I'm a bit short on time right now, so here is just one of my favorite photos, and more to come soon, promise! I'm so behind on blogging! This week I'm going to be working like crazy to get lots of stuff done, so hopefully I'll be able to get up to speed on this stuff!

Thanks to my buddy Erik at Del Mar Housing Projects I was able to get some cool looking in/out of the water images with my underwater housing where you can see above and below the water in single frame. So fun!

life @ a thousand miles an hour

Sorry about the sporadic posting recently. I've been busier than ever and it's getting crazier by the minute!

I'm leaving right now to fly to Kona, Hawaii (the big island) to help my good buddy Taylor shoot an assignment on big game fishing (sharks too!) from a kayak. It's going to be a blast. I'm going to be shooting in the water mostly and Taylor will be shooting from boats and stuff.

If I don't update in 2-3 days from now, I've probably been eaten by a shark... Or maybe just can't find an internet connection. :)

A pic I took a couple days ago... kinda feels right for this post.

BFF

Sorry about the title... I just had to.

Bethany and I were happy to arrive in Jackson Hole 2 days ago and but sadly were about to hit the road and go back to Oregon today. We've been staying with, as much as I hate the term "Best Friend", it just doesn't sound right simply saying "friend", so we've been staying with my BFF (best friend forever, haha) Grant Galloway and his awesome wife Kristen. The visit was way too short because I have to be in Portland tomorrow for a photo shoot with Embry Rucker, but we'll be back this summer for sure.

Here is one photo of the 4 of us cruising on a golf cart at the amazing golf resort Grant works at, more photos coming soon!

Were leaving right now for our road trip back to Oregon. It's been a great time in Michigan and it's sad to leave, but I'm definitely excited about stuff going on this summer in Oregon too.
I'll try and update soon with photos from the road. Were trying to make it to my buddy Grant's house in Jackson Hole Wyoming by tomorrow night so were gonna be driving nonstop!

zoom zoom

Had some fun on the sea doo today, even took a few photos. Here is one for now!

Colin and his bus

This is a little portrait of my brother Colin that I shot a few weeks ago. He was cleaning out his VW Bus and the light was perfect, so I had him jam on his guitar while I took a few photos.

20 second exposure @ f/3.2, ISO 125, perfect time of the day to balance light in sky with other light and get maximum color and punch.

just a daisy I found aside the road

4th of July funness (is that a word?)

We spent the evening of the 4th on the family boat Lake Saint Clair in Michigan. There are literally thousands of boats that come out to watch the firework shows that are going off everywhere around the lake. The show that we watched is cool because it's really big and long, and all the fireworks are shot off a barge. There was a couple things different things about this show that I had never seen before... first was fireworks on PARACHUTES! They go up, explode like normal, then these bright flashing things basically float in the air, coming down really slow! We were really confused, then we noticed that all those slow moving fireworks had small parachutes on them! Very cool. The second thing I had never seen was when the barge shot hundreds of shots at about a 45 degree angle 100 feet from the boat. A few seconds after the shots landed in the water, they would shoot up fireworks straight out of the water! Just when I thought I had seen it all with fireworks this comes along!

I would have loved to be in a small helicopter taking overhead photos of all the boats and stuff, but I don't have one, so here are a few from my non-helicopter view. ;)







Actually one of my favorite parts of the night was when one big firework went off way too early and it sent huge flaming chunks down on all the boats! Here is a pic.

Mayday Mayday!!!

Yesterday Bethany and I had a great time with family at the Battle Creek Balloon Festival at the W.K. Kellogg Airport. Bethany's uncle works at the airport for the FAA, so we got special access and stuff! Really cool. He let us play around in a $10,000,000 ($20,000,000 including the equipment inside) Learjet plane! Everything in the plane was turned on except for the engines... so it was a blast tinkering around with the instruments and controls!

Happy 4th of July!

Here are some photos from a few days ago when I was in Colorado and Wyoming. We had no shortage of fireworks that weekend because my Uncle Larry stopped by a casino in Mesquite, Nevada and won $13,300 in one pull of a handle! He had about $17,000 of total winnings that night... not bad for just stopping by on his drive from San Diego to Wyoming!
So his first stop was for Red Bull, which he bought $75 worth, then his second stop was for fireworks, he got $800 worth! He just sat back and watched the show with all our family and friends while all the boys lit off the fireworks, haha. We actually started quite a few brushfires but luckily we put them out quickly so they didn't spread too far!

a little trip to Virginia Dale, Colorado

I just got back from Virginia Dale, Colorado for my cousins country wedding. Lots of fun in a short amount of time!

I'll post more soon, but for now here is a fun photo of my cousin Tim shooting two (big) bottle rockets out of his hand.