Here is Ethan out with his friend on a hot summer Texas day. It was a good water fight for dad to keep a distance with the 200mm VR to capture the action and stay dry.

I was alone in Yellowstone, and I found this other guy standing alone too… so we spent a short moment together.

It was a very long day that I spent in Akbar’s Palace. Early in the day I parted ways with my guide to walk around the grounds by myself. The palace was relatively empty, being a bit out of the hustle and bustle of Agra. Most everyone else tended to go over to the Taj, but I found the most delicate and beautiful parts to be in these oft-neglected quarters.

It was a blustery day on the coast as I jumped out of the car between squalls to aim the camera in the most dangerous and interesting direction. This camera is fairly good at keeping out water, although I’ve never tested it in a torrent… nor do I want to… even though I do have the sweet Nikon D3x on my mind…

I was working on this photo this evening with a friend to show him some of the techniques that have evolved since HDR started getting popular. I find my methodology changes and evolves about every two months or so. I look back at my old stuff in horror!

Ah yes… the wet streets of Paris here… Seems like an idyllic place for this little store called Cartier, eh?

Because my photography is Creative Commons (no commercial use without permission), I open it up to be used by other artists to create derivative works. I get all kinds of emails from all over the world to see amazingly interesting and great things. One such email I got recently from Katey, whose cool website I invite you all to visit, who has taken my photograph of Valeria’s afghan and turned it into a painting.

I’ve put the these below, followed by to owner of the Afghan herself, Katerina of Siberia. Note she does not go by that name in public, but I think it would be cool if she did.

Usually a fine layer of mist indicates as that one area is cooler than another area. In this case, even in the early morning light, that could not have been the cause of the mist since it was burning hot with every single step. There was some sort of steamy condensation, but most of it was wrapping itself around my sweaty body. A tiny bit of breeze might have been nice, but maybe that would have blown away the mist!

I did not fully realize I was entered into a competition and then I ended up winning! That was nice after I got past about 10 minutes of confusion about the contest… and then I think I remembered, but not as well as I did 10 years ago.

But I do remember this shot - it was a lone swan on a lake in the famous Stanley Park of Vancouver. I shot this when I went up there to speak at the Canadian Cato Institute to a bunch of Libertarians about online gaming economies being their last great hope.

You can get a link to the contest, the webpage, and find out more about the sponsoring website at this link.

I think about all the sunsets I miss. I always seem to be out and about somewhere, noticing a great sunset and noticing that I am not even close to my camera and tripod. It’s just unacceptable!

This day and evening I was in Yellowstone alone. I had just seen a grizzly bear and a black bear about 30 minutes before this shot, crossing the road in front of me. They went on their way and I was left in the middle of this area with just a few elk meandering a few hundred feet from me.

This is one of most famous buildings in LA for these kind of advertisements. I can’t think of a cooler one than showing those three characters from GTA4. Even though I played and beat the game, I am not quite sure I ran into that gal on the left… I think I would remember that.

No… I am not living in Hong Kong, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like. I was surprised to see how green and hilly parts of the city were. It almost reminded me of a San Francisco x10 on with 10x less Asians.

I went up a narrow passageway to get up here to the roof. The stairway was clearly not meant for a tripod like mine… although I suppose I could have collapsed it before wrestling it the narrow twisting corridors. It reminded me of moving my friend’s stupid sleeper-sofa up a curved stairway in college.

The fire burned through about a third of the park about 20 years ago. There are still several areas where all the trees stand alone like charred corpses under the burning sun.

It’s a great city! I always have a good time there… I wish I could get back more often, and I’ve been about 7 times! I’m always surprised how I much I enjoy the times over there even though I should be getting tired of it by now.

We found this inside a church in Dresden. Whenever I say "we", I am referring to my camera and I, who I tend to personify because I spend so much alone time with it. This is either a bad sign or a horrible sign, but it’s generally a good idea to get such signs while in a church.

The geysers themselves were interesting, but the ever-changing patterns in the runoff and the glowing extremophiles was really a treat. There were so many good compositional possibilities - I hardly knew where to point!