San Francisco

This was the fourth time I went to Angel Island (day trip) and it’s always a treat. It’s pretty incredible that a lot of people living in the Bay Area have never been to Angel Island. Last time, I went camping (see previous post), we did get ideal conditions. This time we went later into the spring, hoping to get better luck with the fog. Overall the weather was ok but not yet as interesting as it could be, knowing the location potential. I will have to try again, until I get the image I want to make. In the meantime, here are some draft images I made while being...

Recently I rented a Fuji GFX 50s for one week. During that week, I had scheduled a photoshoot with one model and spent a couple days camping near the Golden Gate Bridge. My goal was to evaluate if the Fuji was a possible replacement for my Canon 5D MK IV. I have heard great things about the Sony Alpha 7 R II but when I used it, I did not like the view finder and the ergonomics. In contrast, Fuji came with a lot of expectations about the natural ergonomics and ease of use. Plus a 50 megapixels camera was very interesting to me.  It is true, I was able to use the Fuji within a couple minutes without even opening the manual. Everything is right where you expect it,  it’s like putting on an old favorite jacket (including finding loose change at the...

This post should have been posted a long time ago, but life made it hard. In early April 2016, I booked a photographic helicopter tour over San Francisco. I was waiting for the right condition to go fly, and when I could not book the time I wanted on a short notice (the helicopter was already booked), I made a bet and booked September 26th. My thinking was that September is the warmest month in the area, if I can hit a nice day it would be awesome. That was a lucky bet, because September 26th was one of the warmest day and evening of the entire year. We were twice lucky when the small helicopter I had booked was not available, I got upgraded to the bigger one (Robinson 66), which made possible for my wife to tag along for a small price increase.  It was so...

Every year, I try to look back at the past year and see what I have accomplished, what I have not done I wanted to do, what I have done I didn’t plan for. In numbers, 2016 has been an incredible year, I kept 33809 images (I probably took over 60K images knowing my kept ratio around 50%), I have traveled to Turkey, France, South Africa, La Reunion and Cuba. I did 32 headshot sessions over the year. That was the good side, on the not so good side, I have only done on aerial shoot this year, I was planning more and I did not do ANY sunrise over the Golden Gate Bridge (some improvements are needed in that section). No need to say it but reducing so many images to just 10 is really tough. Here the images that have a special importance for me in 2016: I have also...

Happy holidays! Wait! What? Happy holidays? It’s not even Halloween yet! Yes but why wait! So for a couple of weeks you can get some of my print at an incredible discount and you can get also my new calendar. The starting price on some prints is $49. Calendar Last year, I printed a calendar for the first year and it was a success, so I’m doing another one this year. Like last year, I have featured my favorite images of San Francisco: some of them you have already seen either on this blog, some of them are completely new. Here is what the calendar looks like open: If you want to order one, simply click the “Add to Cart below” [wp_cart_display_product name=”2017 San Francisco Calendar” price=”30.00″...

The Carnival in San Francisco was this weekend. I was following a salsa group called Rueda con Ritmo. Rueda is a type of cuban-style salsa dancing, where all the dancers dance as group and switch partners. We showed up early to photograph the preparation and the make-up of the dancers. The parade is always on the last Sunday of May. This year the weather was extremely pleasant and we all know it can be cold in May in San Francisco. The group had invited a professional cuban dance group, the All Stars, from Santiago de Cuba to parade with them. The parade was composed to over 50 different groups and it took over two hours for us to get going to the official parade route. Here is a couple of groups I was able to also get pictures: Leading the parade were old...