on location

A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go and photograph the old train station (on 16th street) in Oakland,CA. This train station was abandoned in 1994, when the newer train station was built. For over 50 years, this station was the main train station for the city of Oakland, CA. It connected the Pacific Railways to the local elevated electric tram. Think of this: in 1912, Oakland already had an elevated electric tram. There is almost no furniture left but the main hall is beautiful and so photogenic. The building is a private property, you can’t trespass but there is a couple of meet-ups that regularly organize private days there. It’s really cheap and you get a good 90 minutes to explore the building (almost by yourself). Here some of my...

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...

In June, I offered portrait images at a lower price. The success has been incredible, I have never been so busy than this past month. In total I had 8 portrait sessions, in 24 days and was very fortunate to work with incredible talents like Debbie, Kara, Sudeep, Brittany, Wendy, Joey, Bruce, Luka, Joe and Taurus the robot. I always try to have two models per session so I can be more efficient (one model is getting ready, while the other is being photographed). We had sessions on location in San Francisco, and some sessions in studio. Here I share a couple of my favorite images: Want to book a session for...

This year’s “supermoon” was on Saturday, July 12. A supermoon is when the Moon’s orbit brings it closer to the Earth (at the perigee) and make it appear larger (especially when it’s full moon and at moon rise). In San Francisco, any summer full moon is a challenging situation to photograph. The summer fog can play troublemaker and block any moon rise. My plan for that supermoon rise was to take a picture of the Moon sitting on top of the Coit Tower. Saturday night was a typical summer evening in San Francisco, cool, windy and with the fog rolling in. As I was waiting for the Moon to rise I took a couple images to show you the fog rolling in over the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands. The East Bay was still visible and I...

A couple weeks ago, I was invited to take part of a collective photo shoot in an equestrian farm in Sonoma Valley. It was the first photo shoot of a group called: The collective model. The idea behind the collective is to have a group of talented models, make-up artists and photographers who get together to help each other out. Nobody gets paid (except maybe the location) and everyone benefits from the shoot. Everyone gets new images for their portfolio. For this first shoot, the location was a farm in Sonoma Valley, where we had access to horses, stables and rings. There were 5 models (Taylor, Brian, Debbie, Yuliya and Russo) and one other photographer plus myself. After a quick introduction and walk around the property, we got to work. It was a very fluid...

My wife and I went to Kalispell, MT in the middle of the Winter. The only reason I could convince my wife to spend about a week in Montana in Winter  where highs never really got over 22F/-6C, was a chance to watch and take pictures of “winter cats” (lynx, bobcat). But in addition to the cats, we had the opportunity to see a coyote, a few wolves, and a few foxes. Let’s focus on the “smaller cats” first. We got to watch a Canadian Lynx and a Canadian Lynx kitten. They were  really cute with their furry tufts on their ears, their long legs and wide paws. The kitten’s paws were white, as if it was wearing mittens to walk in the snow. It was really hard not to try to take it home with us. Then we saw a feisty bobcat....