Mom Says I’m Running Away

Day: 345

Sorry for the delayed posts about Yosemite, but Felicia arrived last week and it has been rather busy since then (smirk). Only a few more days and I get off this continent again… I apologize for the long hiatus, but I think the next few months will make up for it.

Yosemite was busy with more early morning pictures and a couple of shots of the standard view, before ending our night with a glass of wine and hundreds of other photographers camped out below Horsetail Falls for the show.

Day: 344

With another morning in Yosemite I decided to force everyone into a pre-dawn photography raid on one of the valleys meadows. It was quite cold but we were able to pick up a few good shots before spending the day wandering about the open trails and fighting off the hordes of other photographers all there for the Horsetail falls spectacle off El Capitan; something I knew nothing about before this weekend, but here goes an explanation.

For two weeks every February the sun aligns itself opposite Horsetail Falls, falling perfectly though the canyon walls to cause the falls to explode with color if you are sitting opposite of the angle of incident (think lighting rules: the angle of incident is equal to the angle of reflection), and lighting only the falls in quite the spectacle.

Anyways, it was a rather nice surprise and I was able to snap a few pictures, although the extreme difference in exposure values between the walls of El Cap and the falls made it tricky.

Day: 343

With Felicia just days away from coming to California; Mom, Mike and I decided to spend a weekend in Yosemite covered in cold and snow. Last night we made our way up to Oakhurst, California to be perched to make our way into the park this morning (after breakfast of course). While not being as cold as I expected, the sun was shining and the skies were blue, which made for a relatively peaceful afternoon of drinking wine and eating cheese underneath Yosemite Falls.

Our form of extreme roughing it was shot to hell in a heated tent and a couple of bottles of red wine for the evening.

Day: 342

Having spent too much time at home saving for the next trip, when Ed invited me to take a day trip out to Joshua Tree, I really couldn’t turn him down.  After 60 miles we gathered up James who lives near the park in Palm Springs (and doesn’t know how to properly dress for a high desert adventure), and headed through he torrent windstorms/rainstorms and found the park cold, but with relatively clear skies.

The day went pretty well (other than when the wind kicked up), with me climbing things and checking out cacti and rocks and stuff…

Oh, and as a recommendation, if you’re in Southern California and looking for an awesome Spanish Tapas bar, be sure to check out Viva Madrid.

Patiently Waiting:

I got off work last night in Downtown LA and was going to catch the bus back to my brothers in Burbank, but he called and said he was in the area and he’d pick me up.  So instead I spent 20 minutes walking around the few blocks that encircle the theater I was working at and shot some pictures (all still using my new lens, which I am rather enamored with) while I waited.

Two Weeks of a New Toy:

It took longer than the UPS tracking said it would, but finally I got my new lens. For the last two weeks I have been more or less cooped up in my garage doing a room addition for my Mom, but whenever I got the chance to go out I’d drag this guy with me and as promised, here are a few of the new pictures. Mostly going out to eat and the standard around town stuff (sorry), I can’t wait to take it to South America in 6 weeks!

To those of you that aren’t hardcore photography buffs, this len’s big deal is the capability to shoot in very little light, with lots of background blur, and very sharp images. Which is what drove my lust for this piece of glass. For those of you have no idea what I am talking about, Thanks for the continued support and I am glad you trust me for you continued photographic viewing pleasure.

A Week Before Christmas:

The Second Annual Santa Pub Crawl went down last Saturday night to another raging success.  You can never understand, without being there, what a small army of Santas can do to a bar or just a common city street; horns honked, crowds parted, shots were bought, beer flowed and we must have posed for a hundred pictures each.  This year we gained 6 Santas, to get us up to 11, and next year we are shooting for 18-20 Santas!

Of course we drank a little much, but fortunately no one was arrested (as opposed to last year where 3 of my friends spent the night in jail dressed as Father Christmas).

After Not Dying in Death Valley:

I did the unthinkable and decided to test my mettle by living in Southern California without a car, with the intent being on trying to lower my personal carbon footprint (and saving on gas/insurance). Last Saturday I sold my car and now my primary form of transport is Moanahh II (above); combined with an assortment of trains, buses, bummed rides, and borrowed cars. It represents my first major step in fighting global warming in my way.

Today is my fifth carless day and so far everything is going well, the Metrolink trains and buses allow Moanahh II on with me and I haven’t been late to work in Downtown L.A. yet. Other than battling the cold winter mornings it’s actually a little easier than driving, although they both seem to take roughly the same amount of time. Some of you out there in blogland might just give it a try. I’ll keep you updated as the next couple of months progress through this experiment.

Other than becoming what my brother-in-law refers to as a full blown bum (i.e. no car, no permanent address, no permanent job, no bills), life has been going pretty well since my return from Singapore. I have spent vast hours in my favorite aisles at the bookstore (below), worked a bit on a couple of T.V. shows and concerts in L.A., and shot some pictures of the family at my cousins wedding.

I have decided on my next little getaway; In early March myself and a certain cute Asian girl are going to spend three months wandering around Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and possibly Bolivia. I know thats still 10 weeks away, but it will be the first chance for her to get away from her job and take off with me, so I just figured on waiting here and filling up my bank account for the rest of this years travel before we go.

Day: 341

Today was pretty routine for being in a National Park; driving around visiting Scotty’s Castle, doing some hiking in Titus Canyon and scrambling over the dune filled desert. Once again the sun hit the horizon far to early and we were left to wander about in the dark until we became tired.

Day: 340

Waking up slightly before our 11am check out, slightly hungover, Daniel and I quickly gathered our stuff and headed back to the Hybrid to get to Death Valley.  The plan was to get there, find a camp, do a little exploring, and  wander aimlessly in the dark when the sun goes down.  A few hours of driving and eating fast food and we made it into the valley just after two.

Unfortunately for us, after a quick visit to the Badwater salt flats (the lowest spot in the western hemisphere, -282ft), we made our way to the Devils Golf Course where the sun started dropping rapidly in the sky just after 4:30pm.  We shot a few new pictures of Daniel for his myspace page and as the sky went black we headed off to the campground; now completely engulfed in darkness.   A leisurely dinner of tuna sandwiches, mac and cheese and beers got us to 6:15pm.

We had now been up for only 7 hours and were sitting in the pitch black drinking beers trying to figure out what to do in our current alert state.  Some meandering got us to a ranger presentation on the U.S. national parks and that kept us busy until 8.

Then I found WiFi outside of the ranger station and we we’re able to check emails and stuff.  Daniel, being the pimp that he is, has a hard time not responding to the ladies for a couple of days and needed to check who was after him today.

We really just did nothing for the next couple of hours until we could manage to sleep, hoping to get up somewhat earlier tomorrow and try to catch more of the park before the sun sets on us.