Posts made in December, 2014

I wish you an amazing new year that includes a lot of travels and a lot of photography. Last week we had an incredible clear day after a quick rain. The two combined events made the atmosphere exceptionally clear. I drove to the East Bay hills to capture a panorama of the city of San Francisco. The sky was so clear, I was able to see the Farallon Islands from the Berkeley hills. For information, the Farallon islands are 30 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge and I was 14 miles away from the Golden Gate. You can see more of the images of San Francisco here (including new images I took that evening). If you want to capture the fireworks of San Francisco, read this post. All the images presented here are available for licensing or as fine art...

It’s this time of the year when you reflect on what happened to you this year? First and foremost I spent two extraordinary weeks in Burma. Seven of my top ten images are from Burma and I could have easily have more. I have started to find that challenging weather environment can result in unique, more interesting images than fair weather. My last three images illustrate this point: a thunderstorm in Burning Man, a very strong dust storm or a foggy evening on the San Francisco Bay.

Mandalay is the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Burma. Located 445 miles (716 km) north of Yangon on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, the city has a population of one million, and is the capital of Mandalay Region. Mandalay is the economic hub of Upper Burma and considered the center of Burmese culture. Mandalay is also known for its monks. Half of the country’s monks reside in Mandalay and surrounding areas. After our flight from Yangoon, we went directly to “Marble Street”. It’s a street where most marble buddha statues are made. They are made by men with drills and angle grinders and then polished by hand by the women. The entire street is filled with marble dust, it’s everywhere. We stayed for about 1 hour...

Friday evening, my wife and I went to see the exhibit of Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz island. We choose the evening tour because it let us combine the exhibit and an a photoshoot of the city with the Christmas light from Alcatraz. The tour boat left at 3:20pm with plenty of time for looking at the exhibit before the sunset at 4:51pm. December is the best month to go to Alcatraz to photograph the city’s christmas lights. It’s a unique vintage point and relatively close. I love doing panorama of the city while there. You need to sign up for an evening tour otherwise you have to leave the island before 5pm. Only evening tour people can stay and take the last boat of the day at 6:40pm. One of the side benefit of seeing the @Large exhibit is the fact that it is...