Great waves yesterday and today – spent time at both Rincon and Campus Point.  A few surfers asked if I would post shots – here’s a link to a gallery of images.  Drop me an email if I got you.

“A lot of people put their intellectual concerns first with photography, but I think it is a discipline that is at first a visceral one. The primary aspect of this whole engagement with, and through, photography is to try to understand what your instincts are. Don’t go counter to that, learn what the feeling is. If your instinct says go left, then go left…The results will describe to you who you are. The visceral and intuitive side will combine to show you your intellect as a photographer.”  – Joel Meyerowitz quoted in Lewis Blackwell’s recent book Photowisdom: Master Photographers on Their Art.

Above is my favorite image from the Newport Beach assignment last week. It is not likely one the client will use but it speaks to me -

Murphy Bartling and his friends were  bodyboarding the famous Wedge at sunset (left), full manual on a D3 and careful control of the hazy (smog?) sunset light which gave great reflections.  The intellect takes care of knowing that and knowing how to adjust and tune – the craft becomes natural so you can get it out of the way.    As the light faded, Murphy stayed in the water, catching wave after wave. You would say it was too dark to shoot but I wanted to capture a tonal blur of the dark waves with the last light reflecting. Handheld with a 200mm lens, slowly panning him and exposing a tenth of a second….that’s what I was looking for…

Understanding the craft lets intuition take over when a spontaneous moment happens like this candid shot from the next day. Walking along the street I heard the sax player come out of the door a dozen yards behind me,  turned, moved fast and quickly made some adjustments as I captured the little girl being serenaded.

The images below were licensed in January through Getty, Corbis and Aurora.  I only do Rights Managed stock, not Royalty Free or Microstock.  These are for: US museum display, US textbook, wall display in HongKong, Korean textbook, magazine website, printed magazine in Germany, Daily Mail newspaper in the UK, newspaper in Austria, US website, US books,  British book, Dutch book and a German calendar.   The woman in the red light district was licensed four times in the month and the aerial of Hanalei Bay twice.

Just wrapped up 4 great days of shooting in perfect weather for an assignment for Newport Beach travel ads – images for visitor books for the hotels, visitors guides, Newport Beach website, etc.  Particularly shots of people.  No lack of happy campers this past holiday weekend, tourists and locals alike.  Here is a broader set of 15 Newport Beach travel images.

One of the portals I’m using to reach buyers and editors chose my portfolio for their spotlight or focus of the day.  AltPick is in NYC: I’ll bet warm beach lifestyle and sunshine must be on their minds as they hunker down in the latest snowstorm/blizzard…

As of now the images on the site have a tighter focus: new images dropped in reflect the work that I love to do. Some recent assignments have been right along that vein and are portfolio worthy though I can’t show the shots till the images appear in a month or two.

Getting ready to send promotional emails out to a selected niche of a thousand photo editors, art buyers and art directors in the commercial and editorial (ie: magazine) worlds.

Here’s my calling card on a few portal sites:

Photoserve

ASMP (find a photographer)

APA (Advertising photographers)

photocrew

Editorial Photographers (find a photographer)

FindLAphotographer

AltPick

Off to an assignment – what it takes:

My favorite model is featured on JettyGirl’s website:

Michael Steele, Chairman of the RNC, could we be related?  Brother from another mother..a very warm and friendly politician I shot today for YAF.

“Rob Raker and I hadn’t seen each other for over a year when the e-mail landed in the inbox from Colorado: he was psyched to get back to his SB roots and back to the ocean and Channel Islands.   The Rake had been in the mountains for well over a decade, filming documentaries from Madagascar to Antarctica…”

So begins a feature story and photo essay that is in this month’s DEEP Magazine from a trip out to Santa Cruz Island in the Channel Islands last August. Clicking the images below will open larger and readable spreads.

“Last year the Rake had been in Nepal climbing ice routes on Lhosar with Erik Weihenmayer.  The trip was timed so that Erik could also catch up on the now 2-year adoption process for a young Nepali boy; a process that began before political upheaval halted adoptions as the Maoist party came to power in Nepal.   After the ice routes were sent, what was expected to be a brief visit bound with red tape was instead bound with joy as the adoption was suddenly cleared and Erik could bring young Arjun back to the states.

The email I received from Rake eventually led to a plan. The idea was a family outing to Santa Cruz Island for days to include my family of four, Raker and Weihenmayer and wife Ellie, daughter Emma (9) and now seven-year-old Arjun. Little Arjun would be introduced to the ocean.

For Weihenmayer this would be a relaxing break from his day job(s): paraglider, skier, adventure racer, paddler, cyclist, author, speaker and mountain climber.

Weihenmayer has climbed Mt. Everest. Last year he finished the last of the Seven Summits in Austral-Asia, climbing to the highest point on each of the seven continents.  Fewer than 100 people on the planet have accomplished this feat; and Weihenmayer is blind.”