This picture is of the Fremont Bridge in Portland from the riverbank below. Its a really cool industrial area down there.

The first day I got off the plane here I went straight from the airport to a dinner with the crew. I sat across from Kang-ho Song who played, Sgt. Oh Kyeong-pil, the prominent North Korean soldier in JSA and Detective Park Doo-Man in Memories of Murder. He poured me several glasses of soju (akin to Korean vodka)with one hand which in Korean culture is a sign of friendship. He was a super nice guy, a character and I have grown to respect his work greatly.

In the middle of writing this I got a call that the camera crew was in the downstairs lobby. They got us presents. I won't say what it is cause they got presents for other people too, but it was very heart felt. Its gonna be sad to go. They have been such a great help to us, and me in particular, as my job was to get information from them. We gave them with the chromeball (something we shoot for lighting and reflection data for cg work) that we have been using on set a couple of days ago. It was incredible nice of them. I feel honored to have worked with them. Despite the language barrier its been easy to understand each other and see their dedication and skill in the art of film.

The lighting is also in contrast and is what initiated the photo. The warm light from the sun coming in the window and the cool glare on the bricks from the blue sky visible above.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is a shot early one morning during siggraph 2003 (a computer graphics conference) from the 24th floor of a hotel near the San Diego Convention Center.