Mt. Hood's First Snow - Winter - 2007

I shot these at sunrise couple weeks ago when Mt. Hood got it's first blanket of snow for the season. It was such a gorgeous morning!
Bethany wasn't too keen on getting up at 5:30AM to trek around in the cold, but luckily ZoZo didn't mind a bit, so she kept me company!

Here is a snapshot of ZoZo enjoying the crisp air while driving along one of the icy mountain roads. :)

The saga continues...

Just got my September sales report from UpperCut Images and got a good laugh. It was a good month with a nice amount of sales.

The one that I got a good laugh from is the photo above. It was licensed for use on a billboard in the USA, for 3 months. Why is that funny? Well, you need to read the history on this image. Before you read the rest of this post, check out the post I did last year *HERE* that explains the story. It's really funny.

Bethany walked into the room this morning, and I said "I got another billboard..." She was kinda excited and congratulated me. Then I said... "Guess which photo?"
When I said that, she knew immediately which photo it was. Haha. I was laughing so hard. She wasn't exactly laughing with me. Wish I could have video'd her reaction. It was hilarious. But, she got over it quickly and had a good attitude about me ripping off her photo and getting it on a billboard. :)

The other day in Texas we bickering back and forth, and 10 minutes into it we bursted into laughter when we realized what we were bickering about. Ready for this? Hues and Saturation of a few certain images. Yes, hues and saturation. Haha!

So there you have it... A glimpse into the life of a husband and wife photography team!

For those curious minds out there, here are some of the other images that have been licensed in the past couple months. The two snowboarding images, and the tree were all licensed multiple times.

urgent tripod question

Hello to everyone who reads my blog. Bethany and I are leaving for our trip in 9 short days from now and things are really getting down the to wire. I need to place my last order to B&H photo very soon to get it in time.
I know that it's mostly photographers who follow my blog, so I was hoping you guys/gals could help me out.
I'm looking for a new tripod/head combination that will, um, basically rock my world. Right now I have a Manfrotto 3443 carbon fiber with a Bogen head, it's pretty good, but way too big and heavy for traveling/backpacking.
I need something very light, very compact and portable.

I'm willing to spend as much as it takes to get the best, because I know it will be worth it's weight in gold when were trekking through Asia with huge packs on our back!

So if you have experience with a tripod that you love, or know of one that would be best, please leave a comment, or send me an email with your suggestions! Thanks soo much!

Here is a link to the tripods on B&H. I've also heard great things about "Really Right Stuff". Anyone know anything about them?

good ol' texas

We've had a great time this past week in Texas! The people here are so wonderful. We kept busy so I didn't update with any photos at all, but hopefully I'll get to soon. Were flying back to Oregon tomorrow.
For now, here is a shot from today of my good buddy David acting like the grim reaper.

I'm a techie at times...

My wonderful wife Bethany and I are sitting here in the Portland airport right now. We have a red eye flight to Amarillo, Texas tonight! Were flying out there to shoot a wedding for some really fun and great Texans (which we haven't met yet, haha). The bride is the cousin of our most excellent long time friend David Esler. Thanks David! Can't wait to hang out in good ol' Texas! :)

Anyway, sorry about the major slacking on my blog posts lately. We have been busier than EVER recently with lots shooting and other fun stuff, like my dirtbike! :)
I hope to be posting more this next week as we are in Texas.

So right now I'm in the Portland Airport (best airport ever) because it has free WiFi and it's all nice and new, and really easy to get in and out of.
Our flight was actually supposed to be last night, but supposedly Houston had some gnarley storms last night, and our flight was delayed by like 4 hours. Good thing we called on the way to the airport, and didn't have to spend the night there. So they put us on the flight for the next day, which worked out really well because we went home, slept in our own bed, and got a TON of work done today that feels so good to be done with.
I'm really rambling now, and I'll get to the point of this post now. I'm a pretty techie person at times, but I don't talk or blog about it much, because I like photos a lot more than techie stuff. Some of my friends might say otherwise! :)
So were at the airport super early, because my parents took us into Portland and we all hit up Costco before it closed at 8:30PM. We bought 3 250gb portable hard drives for our trip coming up (3 weeks away!). Bethany thinks we need like 3 more, but I don't know, thats A LOT of images. We'll probably end up shipping hard drives home, and buying more while we are overseas. Who knows.
Anyway, with this extra time waiting for our flight, Bethany decided to read. I think reading is overrated, so I put our mobile office to work. With the stuff you see in this photo, a lot of stuff can be accomplished!

Some of the things in our computer bag-
15" Powerbook G4 (2 extra batteries), iBook G4 (for backup), 60gb iPod photo, 2 Seagate portable hard drives, USB2 Sandisk and Lexar firewire card readers, Bose Quietcomfort 3 noise canceling headphones (quite possibly the coolest things ever. My father in law gave me those for Christmas last year. Awesome gift!) (and I'm listening to a cool band my friend Peter introduced me to called "The Helio Sequence"), Canon SD450 point and shoot camera (digimon), and lots of other little gizmo things. Oh ya, and you can't forget the Planet Earth series! Quite possibly the best DVD series ever. Were going to watch them on the plane.

So that is an overview of our computer bag, now for the camera bag-
2 Canon 5d's (just bought a new one last week), Canon 30d (for my second camera/backup), 70-200 2.8 IS lens, 24-70mm 2.8 lens, 16-35mm 2.8 lens, 24-105 4.0 IS lens (just bought this last week), 100mm 2.8 macro lens, 15mm 2.8 fisheye lens, 85 1.2 lens, 2 580EX flashes, TTL Cords, tons of CF cards ranging from 1gb to 8gb, and lots of other gizmos and things too.
Photo bag (Lowepro Photo Trekker AW)-

Bags-

Lots of stuff. It seems like way too much, but remember this is for 2 of us. Being a photographer almost requires being a techie too. A good friend of ours is definitely an exception though... click here to see.

Ok time to get on the plane!!!

Honaunau Bay, Hawaii - Kayaking and Scuba Diving

As promised, this is the second part of our day from the post below.

After the fun at Ka Lae, we headed north on the island and stopped off at Honaunau Bay (pronounced Ho Now Now). The full name of this place is Hōnaunau-Nāpo'opo'o, Hawai'i! No idea how to pronounce that!

We unloaded the kayaks, all our scuba gear, and my underwater housing camera and were set to go. It's a really popular place to go snorkeling and scuba diving, and there were people everywhere, so Taylor and I paddled about a half mile or so to get out of the bay to the point, where it was void of people. After parking the kayaks up on the rocks we were in the water checking out all it had to offer. Super clear water, caves, coral, fish, and warm water all came together to make it a pretty sweet dive! This was my first time diving in water warm enough to go without a wetsuit, so that was a great feeling.

Here are some of the photos!

Paddling out to the point-

Coming out of a cave-

Taylor and I-

These 2 were super sketchy. I was about 45 feet deep when I took them, and my underwater housing is not made for deep water. The pressure starting getting to the trigger button because it sucked in really tight and basically became an innie instead of the normal outie. So I let Taylor go down to 120 feet by himself while I tended to my camera. If I would have gone down any further... that thing would have cracked like an eggshell! Erik (the mastermind behind the housing) wouldn't be too happy about that!

Coral and fish-

These were fun. I was cruising directly over Taylor and couldn't stop taking photos of his air bubbles rising. UFO anyone?

We took our regulators out and started blowing bubble rings, and I got this shot-

No better way to end an incredible day like that with super good Thai food. Mmmmm.

Ka Lae, Hawaii - southernmost point of the United States

This blog post is long overdue, but better late than never!

When Taylor and I went to Kona, Hawaii in July, we had one free day to do whatever the heck we wanted to do, and man, that turned out to be a fun day!

We got an early start because the plan was to visit the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but we actually never made it there because we ended up doing so many other things on the way there and ran out of time.

So our first stop was totally unplanned. One of those "Hey that looks like a cool road, turn here" type things. So we took that turn off the main road and ended up at a place called Ka Lae, which turns out to be the southernmost point of the United States. Pretty cool.

So we followed the little one lane road until the end, which led to a bunch more dirt roads that went all over, but our rental van couldn't quite take the huge potholes and erosion ditches, so we parked and started exploring on foot.

I can't even begin to explain all that we did with words, so here are the photos!

The road to Ka Lae

Kamaoa Wind Farm

Cliffs at the South Point

Cliffs at the South Point

We were cliff jumping into the water, and I thought of this shot, so I grabbed my underwater housing shot Taylor landing in the water

Snorkeling in the crystal clear water

We explored a cave in the cliffs, and a hole in the rocks above let the light shine down, creating these light rays in the water. Incredible! You can see the light reflecting off Taylors mask too.

Looking the other direction from inside the cave

Jumping through a hole in the rocks, to the cave beneath... quite a rush!

There was 2 ways out of the water, an old rusty ladder as seen here, or a climb up the rocks, Taylor of course had to climb up the rocks after he did the ladder!

Taylor striking a pose

If you want to feel secure on this ladder, make sure you don't put a mask on and look directly under the ladder. There were huge chunks of the ladder that had broken off and were now 30 feet underwater, haha.

It wasn't easy climbing up the ladder one handed. My other hand was carrying my heavy underwater housing!

At the beach around the corner of the cliffs

And here is a cool shot Taylor got of me jumping off the cliff

So that was just part of our morning from that day. I'll do another post soon with our kayaking and scuba diving adventure!