I just got back from Minneapolis, where I spent the holidays with Ocala's family. I had a good time. It is always interesting to revisit somewhere you used to live. I always find myself remembering other times I was in the same place and wondering if I had any idea back then of where I am now. I hiked around St. Anthony Main (down by the Mississippi river) for a while and tried to get a good shot of downtown. Unfortunately the best shots of downtown at the time of day I was out are from the south side rather than the north.

A few days before this was a church. I had noticed several years ago that one of the walls was leaning badly while walking by. They eventually put supports on the wall. But last year another part of the building fell off and did substantial damage to a nearby house. From what I am told they were unable to raise enough money to repair the building so it was torn down. I wish I had got out and taken some pictures a few days before this, most of the building was still there, but by the time I had a chance the building was almost completely gone. The site reminded me of all those old world war II pictures of various bombed out buildings through Europe.

During the holidays, I got to go up to Canada where Ocala's family have their new cabin. It was the first time I have ever actually been out of the US, though I grazed the border of Canada several times when I lived in Spokane, WA. I didn't have a lot of time to take photos, but I got out for a couple of hours. This was a shot down at the creek behind their place. It was so peaceful and relaxing there. I felt really at home there.

Another shot from my trip to Canada. I had taken this as a preliminary shot, planning to take it again at golden hour. It was at the beginning of the hike and I was trying to time it so that I would be back at the right time. As it turned out, it got really dreary and overcast before I had a chance to take the shot again. I really like how important timing is to doing photography, it has a very zen quality to it. Patience is sometimes what makes the photograph. : )

A shot from another angle of the bridge at a different time of day.

This is one of my favorite photos of the trip. Its a moment in time. I took this same shot earlier, noticing the hill. It was sunny at the time and the hill only stood out a little. As I was walking back it got rather stormy and overcast. A single opening sent a dot of light moving over the landscape. I first saw it on the trees on the other side of the hill. I waited and sure enough it crossed over to the hill I was looking at earlier and as quick as it was there it continued on and over the next hill.

This is from the dock area down at St. Anthony Main in Minneapolis, MN. The atmosphere the day I took this was very somber and quiet, as it was hovering between 0-10 degrees (F). As on a lot of the photos from that day, the blurring around the edges is actually from the heat of my hand as I adjusted the lens. It was so cold that my camera kept fogging up when I touched the metal of the focus ring.

As I started walking around that day I decided that since the landscape was so winterly bleak, I would look for things that had a color to them already to contrast against it.

When I saw the church being knocked down it reminded me of another leaning building I had first seen on the same day. The Pillsbury building down by St. Anthony Main has been leaning for quite a while. You can see it a bit in the picture. I tried to line up the windows on the right side of the picture with the frame since. As you move left across the picture you can see the tilt. Granted, some of it is the perspective of the picture and the 50mm lens.. but trust me.. it isn't affecting it all that much. The wall of the building looks like it has a beer belly and the edge along the roof is arching in toward the building. You can see in the bottom of the picture that they have reinforced it with metal beams, but it is a disconcerting feeling walking by the place. It always makes me feel off balance.

A wintry sidewalk of trampled leaves. I liked the dinginess of them. Not really hallmark Christmas card material, but it reminded me of that moment after the Christmas party when you walk back outside into the cold and try to remember where you parked. It seems like a very urban picture to me, sidewalks in my home town were never this traveled.

Nicolette Mall in downtown Minneapolis is always pretty cool. The warm skyways are definitely something sought out by all the frozen pedestrians.

Yesterday was my 30th birthday. It didn't come as too much of a shock. I have been "almost 30" for three years now. I took the day off from work and Ocala and I made an impromptu trip to Sea World. It was a lot of fun. Just wandered around and looked at animals all day. It was super nice and relaxing, as I have been working crazy hours these days.

Its funny, but turning 30 seems a lot younger to me than turning 27 did. I guess it is because it is about the beginning of a decade rather than the end of one. I find myself setting goals of what I want to accomplish in the next ten years and they seem a lot less far-fetched then what I set about to try and did when I was in my twenties.

My uncle is very ill. I am not sure how old he is, but he is my Dad's older brother... and since my Dad would be like 78 now.. my uncle must be in his mid 80's.

The other day I was in the checkout line and saw that Harrison Ford was on the cover of the Enquirer for some ridiculous "Drunken Binge!" article. Obviously he went out and had a drink or two.. and got the usual drunk photos (the kind everybody gets) taken of him. Looking at the pictures of him I was thinking about how my lifetime had aged the man. I think about that a lot with celebrities, him specifically, since I am so used to seeing the much younger version of him gallivanting around the galaxy and finding precious artifacts in long forgotten caves.

But it always hits me as a surprise to see what it does to people I know. It gets accelerated when you move away from your family. Kids grow up in a couple of visits... Adults go gray overnight. My uncle is one of the kindest most gentle people I have ever met. He has a voice that you never confuse with anyone else. Him and my aunt lived near me when I was growing up for quite a while. I saw 'The Wizard of Oz' for the first time sitting in their living room. When I broke my arm in 6th grade, they came and got me. My aunt made a make-shift splint until we got to the hospital.

I can tell already that today is going to be one of those days where you drown in the pace of it all and it is all over before you even feel awake. The kind of day that I try not to have.

While I was sitting here typing, Afta saw a spider crawling down the wall. Even after it met with a toilet paper squashing death, she sits staring at the wall. She is both horrified and intrigued by bugs. When she was a kitten, she let out a loud yelp and ran to the other side of the room at her first sight of a bug. It was a beetle crawling along near the ceiling. She eyed the ceiling for weeks after that. It was as if her whole safe little apartment world had been shattered.

Watching that little drama unfold just now made today seem a little better and slower. : )

I took this right after taking the last one of the train, still in my habit of re-looking for the small things. I liked the texture contrasts. The crispness of the leaves, the grain quality of the snow, and the softness and sharpness of the plants themselves seem like a nice combination.

Another shot from the dock area down by St. Anthony Main.

Work has been crazy lately... as you can see from my lack of posts. I was two hours away from a 100 hour work week last week. The project is almost done and I find myself motivated by the thought of never having to touch it again.

The whole experience has made me think a lot about what I want out of life. I have never really thought of my jobs as work. It isn't that they aren't hard or sometimes painful, but being in an art related field tends to lend itself to not thinking of a job that way. I have an ambition to create and would be doing so even if I wasn't getting paid for it. Work seems to provide a good opportunity to do that. The thing about being an artist is that you are one all the time... I don't just put on my artist hat when I go to work. Because of all this, I often turn all my effort towards it without feeling like a work-aholic. It has kind of snuck up on my that way. I find myself "making a living, without having a life" to steal a quote from George Carlin.

I have promised myself to get back to living. : ) I am planning a road-trip after this project ends. I use "planning" in the loosest sense of the word, as in... I am making time for it.. and letting the wind take me where it will ( though I do have some ideas ). Hopefully I will get to take tons of photographs. Photographs never ever feel like work... I could do that 24/7. Sometimes I feel like I missed my calling... though at the same time ... I am kind of glad it isn't my job.

Its only three more weeks until freedom. There is always this part of me... it reminds me of owning a dog.. I have to take it for a walk once in a while. : )

Not that it has anything to do with this fish. For some reason it just seemed like the next picture to post after the smoke stacks. I guess it kind of resembles the picture I took of fish in the ditch where I grew up which was in sight of the smoke stack of the power plant.

A snap shot from the car on the way back from somewhere.

A picture I took years ago on a memorable day traveling along the North Shore of Minnesota. We arrived in Grand Marais just at sunset during a heavy fog. Along the shore people often set up the rocks in this manner.

This is one of my favorites. We were on our way to Spokane, and saw the Rockies for the first time. Driving through the middle of them, we went from a dry brown day into a snow storm. I say storm, but it never really hit us. It just touched the tops of the mountains. It was massive and silent. We began listening to audiobooks of The Lord of the Rings to pass the long three day trip. My impressions of the story are now fused with seeing the rockies and vice versa.

I spent a lot of the time during the trip setting the metering on my little camera while driving with my elbows, nudging ocala out of sleep, handing her the camera and saying, "Get me a shot of that". Poor girl. : )

I took this on a break as I was heading out the front door. The tinted glass gave the grass behind it an abstract quality I liked. Well maybe abstract isn't the best word... it felt like a screen print to me, at least near the upper portions of the image. The silhouetted grass in the upper blue part is my favorite part of the image.

I liked the texture of everything I was shooting that morning. This is from the same Malibu camping trip last year as a few of my other posts. It was early so everything was a little damp, and yet it still had the abrasive harsh quality of the desert.

When the sun set in Malibu it was bright red. It shot a harsh warm line as it went behind the hills.

I am heading off on vacation at last! I am off to beautiful Minnesota for the weekend and holiday and then back to go on a road-trip around California.

I am not sure if I will be posting. I will if I get a chance, but if I don't... have a good week and a half all.

And in the mean time, I posted these pics I took along the north shore a few years back during a wonderful fog filled day.

I thought this series deserved to be up for a week and a half.

I remember I went on that weekend getaway as a way to tell myself to concentrate on the here and now rather than always reflecting on the past. Ironically, I often find myself reflecting back on that trip.

Well my vacation has come to an end. It's back to work for me, though I liked vacation so much I have thought of taking it up full time. : )

I didn't take as many pictures as I thought I would. Instead I concentrated on getting my life going the way that I want. Besides, I want parts of my vacation to bleed into the rest of my life. Working a 8 - 10 hrs worth a day will seem like a vacation compared to the past few months.

This was an interesting display of baby sharks in little incubation sacks. They were all quietly squirming their way to adulthood.

I thought that the star fish and the rocks in the tide pool display that they were on all had an interesting texture to them.

I went camping over the memorial day weekend. We went to the Salton Sea. Its evidently California's largest lake. It is also one of the smelliest.

But with friends and fresh air, good times were had by all, in spite of the smells. The smell didn't bother the pictures. I should start work on a scratch and sniff website.

My friend Leo and I headed up a large hill to the east of our camp site (and away from the smelly lake). As we got near the top of the hill we saw a fence with a warning sign. Thinking it might say something cool like "Warning: Here, there be Aliens" or something similar, we both headed for it. As it turned out, it read "Warning: Raw Sewage"... Ironically the area was empty and didn't smell at all. I figure it must have escaped to the lake.

We crossed these tracks on the way up the hill.

This picture felt appropriate after not posting for so long. Get it?... I am sticking my head above water again... heh heh.. ok.. it seemed funny at the time.

My computer has been broke for the past month. I just got it back last week and it still is causing problems. : ( But hopefully I can get back to posting pics. I have missed doing it. Its hard to feel like I am getting anywhere if I am not building on this little collection of mine. You might find it funny, but when I get those sudden thoughts of how fast the years are now going by and that I feel like I haven't gotten anywhere or accomplished anything... I think of all the photos I have put up here over the past few years and sigh content. It makes the artist in me feel good.

This is another shot from when we went to Sea World on my birthday. The dolphins were practicing for their show, rather enthusiastically I might add.

This weekend Ocala, Sierra (Ocala's sister) and I went to the California Science Museum to see the Body Worlds display. It was a display of actual human corpses preserved through a process known as plastination.

Its funny, people talking often seemed to relate more to artificial hip joints and aorta replacements more than the bodies themselves. I think maybe it was in part due to the level of detachment you had to have while viewing the exhibit. All in all, it was interesting, if morbid.

You weren't allowed to take pictures in the exhibit. I took this picture of the area outside the building. It reminded me of Aughra's observatory from the Dark Crystal.

This is another shot from last years camping trip in Malibu. The light was had a rich quality to it that morning.

Yet another shot from Malibu. I am almost out of shots from that trip. Its from the same hill as the last post and the same tree as a post I did a while back from the other side.

Every time I look at those pictures it feels like its time to go camping again.

The other day I parked my car. Out my front window I saw a woman standing on the sidewalk staring in the shadowy area underneath some trees growing between a fence and the sidewalk. She seemed to be anticipating something or at least her posture suggested it. Her arms were slightly raised in front of her and slowly gesturing, acting out whatever she was thinking of doing next. When my eyes had adjusted I noticed what looked like a black duffel bag in the shadows of the trees several feet from the sidewalk. There was a crow standing beside it eyeing the woman. She made a "shooing" motion and the crow hopped back a few steps. She faltered for a moment there unsure of what to do next.

I opened my door and started to get out to help assuming that she was trying to get her bag and was scared of the crow. But as I watched she stepped off the sidewalk and walked to the bag. The crow stood in place, its head cocking every which way to see what was happening. Just as the woman's hand grabbed the handle of the bag and began to lift it, the crow made a mad dash for the woman and her bag. It alarmed me a little. With a swift jump it leapt into an open flap on the side of the bag I hadn't noticed.

Now I could see. There were vented areas on the top of the duffel. It wasn't a bag, it was a cloth folding animal carrier. The woman slowly put the bag back down and scooped the bird out. With a one handed swooping motion she made him scurry back a few steps. She zipped up the bag, stood up covering her face with her hand and hurriedly walked backed to the sidewalk and away.

The bird hopped toward her a few steps and then watched her leave. He stood there quietly for a moment not responding to any of the other crows in the area. His stillness made him stand out from their constant movement. Then with a burst he flew off.

I wondered, still sitting there in my car, if he was off to a new life or to find the lady that had set him free.

Not that the story has anything to do with the picture... : ) It just was an interesting scene I was there to witness. I wondered how many little dramas go on in a city like Los Angeles in a day. It also made me think of every "pet" I had let go. I was that kind of child, bringing home hurt animals, to my mother's horror, and trying to nurse it back to health. I empathized with that woman, for that letting go is a torn experience... It meant you successfully helped another animal which was rare, but more than likely you had become attached to it as well.

Blur (my employer) sure knows how to throw an Aquabash (thats what they called the party). We had our Siggraph party and it went well. Siggraph is a computer graphics conference where we all put on our geek hats (some of us can't seem go anywhere without them) and talk about animation and computers. It is common practice for companies to throw parties in order to schmooze.

They hired lots of dancing ladies and Crystal Method to add the spice. All in All it was fun. They were nice to do it for us. They try really hard to make us all the cool kids in the computer graphics community. I myself will resist cool to the bitter end, or at least thats what I am told. : )

Life has been a little rough these days, and yet rewarding.

Doing animation... and I think any art for that matter, requires a leap a faith. It never feels, starting it, that it is ever going to get done. I think animation has one of the longest leaps of any art form. It takes a lot of build up before you start seeing any fruition. There are longer I am sure, but animation also has so many puzzle pieces that have to fall in place and starting it usually requires throwing them into the air and watching them fall. I am a supervisor(one of three)on an in house short that Blur is doing and right now all the puzzle pieces have been thrown into the air, reached their height and have begun to fall. All eyes are on the table waiting for the first piece to land.

This picture brought a smile to my face, seeming oddly two-fold appropriate. Photography is something that relaxes me and brings me back to my roots. It has a much shorter (at least most of the time) leap of faith... that is usually the struggle to get up earlier enough or late enough to be at the right place at the right time for the shot. All that coupled with a recent visit to the doctor where my blood pressure was high and better diet was suggested, makes me smile at the broccoli-esqe tree in the photograph.

This is the last of the pictures from the camping trip to Malibu last year. Richard had thrown a large rock in a algae covered stream. Light was streaming down through the hole that was made so that you could see the rock, but I guess you can see all that for yourselves in the picture. : )

I probably should have thought of some metaphor about life and wrote it down here.

I am not sure I can do this.

It will be cold, I know.

The pavement has gathered dew, and although the air is warm, the pavement... will be cold. My barefoot hovers above a yellow dash in the middle of the road. Its the first step of a journey that will take all night. Without my boots, the cuffs of my pants will get wet dragging behind my heals. It's going to be cold.

Put your foot down.

It's the step I will remember. It's going to be important.. It's going to be cold.

Yes, but it's going to be real ...and so are you.

I will do it tomorrow night, its time to get up for work.

I find it interesting that so much of my life revolves around light. This site is full of pictures capturing it. My job at work is to create stories and images out of little squares of colored light.

One of my photography teachers, when I was in school, taught the science behind light as part of his courses. He was a big inspiration to me, more for his passion for it than anything else. He really made you understand the complex nature and harmony that enters your lens.

Ansel Adams used his experience in music in working on his photographs. He saw scales in his pictures, as in his music. It is hard not to think of that when I am at work adjusting colors to be just right. People often say that images aren't as powerful as music... but I think when you tune them, those frequencies of light, they sing.

Just a quick post.. Recovering from working a month solid on one of Blur's two new shorts. I took a short break over the weekend to drive Ocala up to San Jose and snapped some pictures on the way back. This was taken along the shoreline of a lake above a dam near the highway.

Another shot I took on the way back to LA from San Jose. I took this two days before this area felt a 6.0 earthquake.

On a side road driving between cotton fields made me wonder if these are the fields of Southern California that Jack Kerouac wrote about. I introduced my car, unaccustomed to uncivilized travel, to gravel roads, real pot holes and no roads at all. I would be lying if I said I didn't let if fishtale a little on purpose, what else are gravel roads for? : )

Yesterday was my last day at Blur. My girlfriend got a cool new job up in San Jose and I am moving up there to be with her.

Last days are always strange experiences, especially this one. Its everybody talking about something that is -going- to happen... you leaving.. but obviously you are still there. I went through it in a daze of last minute business... not really comprehending I wouldn't be back on Monday.

Being a production artist you learn a discipline of working with others that really isn't like any other. If you want to know what it feels like, take the coolest idea you ever had... jot down half of it and hand it to someone else... and then resist the urge to scream "Not Like That! Aw you're ruining it!!" as you see what they write. : ) You learn to trust the process and more over you learn to trust the people. Its hard to find people that are deserving of that trust and precious when you do. Every individual at Blur was/is one of those. I know that when I think of my days in animation, Blur is the place I will remember as "the place". It was Heaven (work) and Hell (schedules) all at once and I will miss it dearly.

Now... Now I take a step into the unknown. I have spent so much of my life going down this road. I got to where I wanted to be and now I am going somewhere else. I know that no matter how similar it may look, no road after this one will be the same one.

I thought this picture was hyper appropriate for all of this. The green light in the dark. What remains unseen in this picture is the large railroad bridge that spans from the road to the light. Its the same bridge that as I kid I was afraid to cross, but the help of my best friend, did.

I have spent the past week living out of an empty apartment. It has been getting very cold at night. I had emptied the usual things from my car into the apartment to make room for moving stuff up to San Jose. Rummaging around through the stuff on one cold night, I found my tent and a sleeping bag.... so I pitched in in the front room. : ) I am typing this from what I fondly am now referring to as "Base Camp".

A few weekends ago my friend Leo came to visit and we went across the Golden Gate Bridge. The next day, Leo, Nathan, Kerrie, Ocala and I explored the area around there. Fort Point was really interesting. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera, I know I know... you're shocked. : )

One of the first things I noticed about this area after I drove up the first time was how dramatic the leaves were changing color. I had missed fall living in LA.

While waiting for an interview today I wondered around the Presidio in San Francisco. This picture is from underneath the 101 before it goes up the the Golden Gate Bridge. The ground was slanted and a path had formed on the side of the hill. When I looked at it closely I saw that the feet that made it were tiny. Pigeons had made it. Further on down the path I encountered a group of pigeons moving in single file down the path. We all moved by each other quietly. It reminded me of how people act when you pass by them while hiking, eyeing you carefully and then nodding in acknowledgement.

My free days are winding down. It amazing how fast time can go by. I think I will try and spend the last few days hiking and photographing things. I did a lot less of that than I wanted to the past 6 months.

To see your own work on screen is really something. Its one of those things that... once its happened you just want it to happen more. I worked on a sequence which was called the "jovian flyby" during production where we move around the moons of Jupiter. Blur's crew on it was great. It was a very calm and relaxed job.

Its funny... there is a lot of press out right now about the stuff I have done over the past year. It seems like it hit all at once. Its all kind of strange, really. Its like reliving the past year over again.

If you're curious as to what I worked on.. there is Blur's short called "In the Rough" about a caveman who finds life "rough" on his own.

Sorry for the non-photographs.. but these images were part of my life during the last year as much as any of the photographs were. I like keeping this site photography only most of the time.. just thought it would be good to show you other images I have been making over the past year.

As for the top picture... its a snapshot from my birthday last year when Ocala and I went to Sea World. There... I am all PR-ed out. : )