I love it when architects have a bit of freedom to go mad with their building designs. It happened quite a lot in China over the past couple of decades and it was great to see something similar in NYC!
I spent a few hours here watching this blacksmith craft a few different knives and swords. I had a translator with me and asked him a ton of questions. I’m an amateur blacksmith myself, and, by that, I mean I only perform blacksmithery in role-playing video games. I tried to explain this to him and he was so confused. Finally he understood and laughed the loudest laugh I have ever heard! And then I got the international high-five and that made me feel better. Just one of the many awesome people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in Japan.
I came to this place with one of my worst plans, but it totally turned out well!
I tried to get reservations here via the bilingual concierge at the Ritz-Carlton in Tokyo, and even though he was very resourceful, he said it was 100% full. But I decided to go anyway and knock on every door of every ryokan until I found a room. I knew it would be hard because nobody speaks English in these places. Anyway, after I knocked on the door of ryokan #4 I finally found a room! Even better, they had private baths fed by all the steaming water from the nearby hot springs. It was incredible to be soaking in steaming hot mineral water while watching snow fall all around me. Thank-you universe, you worked things out great!
Beautiful details on the towers in Mahabalipuram. I could stare at them for hours. When standing there, you can see monkeys all over the place. They blend in really well, but there are a ton. They run and jump and swing all over the place, making the whole façade feel alive and ever-changing.
I took this photo while flying on a helicopter out to work on a photo project for a patron. That project took over a year or so to complete, so I ended up doing a lot of these flights. This one was in the middle of winter because I wanted to shoot the Earnslaw Burn in those conditions. My shot there that day came out kind of boring, maybe the most interesting was this one while I was on the way there!
Sometimes I feel like I would be content JUST shooting roads and sunsets for the rest of my life. I mean, it’s such a layup, right? I go through SUCH trouble to get all kinds of cooky shots that are cool. But these shots are just so easy! I mean, you just get out of the car and set up the tripod for a photo. It’s like cheating… then I think about all the hiking I do and all the work to get other shots that are sometimes not as interesting. The Effort-to-Result ratio is way off! But then I forgive myself and stop trying to be so analytical and “efficient” while making art. It’s more than okay to be inefficient!
I took this about an hour after the sun dipped below the distant mountain. Incredible, isn’t it? It looks like it’s freezing cold because that’s what snow normally looks like, but it was actually quite balmy and perfect.
Wow I almost got stuck in a torrential downpour here! You don’t want to be hiking around when these things hit… the clay on these mountains in Sedona gets super-slippery and it’s a great recipe for going ass-over-teakettle. There’s a little settlement up there on top of that mountain —don’t know if you can see it or not, but it looks like the universe is about to suck up the house!
We took the family out for a camel ride in the desert in Qatar because, well, why not! The funniest thing was that Ethan’s camel was really grumpy and would just make ridiculous noises the whole time. This pleased his sisters to no end!
Here’s one of my new favorite tricks inside mosques or cathedrals or museums or anything with a cool ceiling. It’s a bit of a ropey trick and it only works half the time. You’ll have to make sure it’s not too crowded… Anyway, set the camera flat on the ground with a wide-angle lens. Set up for a 2-second timer, click it, then run away! You gotta get pretty far to get outside the frame… It’s hard to line up too, so sometimes I’m a few degrees off the orthogonal, so you’ll have to rotate later on in post-processing.
