I spent a crazy five days taking photos and hanging out with some of the world’s top chefs including Anthony Bourdain, Éric Ripert, José Andrés, and Emeril Legasse in the Grand Cayman Islands for the famous Cayman Cookout! Here’s a highlight video!

You can also see my personal challenge to lose a little weight in my nonstop up-and-down struggles. How did I fare? Well, you’ll see…

Thanks again Pascha!

So Pasha brought his gal (pictured below) over to the Ritz-Carlton in Fort Lauderdale for a fun day of photography. Pascha is also the guy running our big charity event for my wife’s cancer situation. You can Download the Android version or the iOS version right now. After you get it, find me there in the app and join in! 🙂 The winner gets a 30 minute facetime with me to talk about whatever you like! 🙂

Daily Photo – Playing on the Beach in Fort Lauderdale

Here’s one of my favorite shots from my 2-3 hours shooting with Katie Ann, and there were a lot of good ones to choose from. She was really embarrassed and thought should would look stupid jumping because she hadn’t done gymnastics since high school. I asked her if that was last week.

Playing on the Beach in Fort Lauderdale

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-01-11 02:16:58
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/4000
• Aperture6.3
• ISO800
• Focal Length24.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias-0.7

Surfing Lessons

I have this great idea to go do surfing lessons with my son Ethan. I have lots of very bad ideas, but this one may be a good one. I’ll let you know how it goes. If it helps, my wife thinks it’s a good idea – and we don’t commonly agree on ideas! 🙂

Daily Photo – Surfing in San Juan

Surfing at sunset here off the coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico. That’s not me by the way… that’s Matt Martinez there – super nice guy. He saw I was taking photos as he leaving. He came up to my wife and I and said something radical then asked if we wanted to take photos of him. We said Sure! So he headed back into the waves as the sun was setting.

Surfing in San Juan

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-01-23 06:12:08
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/400
• Aperture6.3
• ISO1000
• Focal Length144.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias

New Challenges in New Spots

You know these videos I’ve been making in each location? Well in each one I try to come up with a personal challenge and then kind of check in on that challenge throughout the video. For this challenge, see below.

Also, note over the next 7 blog posts, I’m gonna bounce around to all the Ritz-Carltons we stayed at in Florida and the Carribean! We have a good partnership with this company – they let us stay for free and they make great home bases for taking photos! I’m not required to share anything… but I do usually end up getting interesting photos, like in today’s blog post 🙂

Daily Photo – The Simple Shapes of Aruba

The challenge here was to use this amazing Aruba water to create a simple canvas upon which to position object. I got a ton of photos I liked, but this one exemplified it the most. Watch over the next year as I explore this idea more.

The Simple Shapes of Aruba

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-01-18 00:53:12
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/1000
• Aperture6.3
• ISO200
• Focal Length26.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramManual
• Exposure Bias+2

Over the Tree Line

Looking at today’s photo just reminds me that I really need to do even more quadcopter flights where I get up over the tree line to see what is out there. Since we’re kind of stuck on the ground as humans, it’s really easy to kind of block out everything beyond the trees… I’m trying to think more like a bird nowadays, knowing my camera can go up and in pretty much any direction… still getting my head around this concept! 🙂

Daily Photo – Soaring over Bali

How beautiful is Bali? I took a drive out one day to visit some rice fields and other amazing spots. Halfway in the middle, I asked to pull over so I could do a random drone flight. I could not see any of the volcanoes from the road, but I had a feeling they were out there. You can imagine how surprised I was when I got up and saw these beautiful features on the horizon. I should have done more flights, looking back!

Soaring over Bali

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2015-11-14 08:52:02
• CameraFC350
• Camera MakeDJI
• Exposure Time1/1328
• Aperture2.8
• ISO100
• Focal Length3.6 mm
• FlashNo flash function
• Exposure ProgramUnknown (58655)
• Exposure Bias

Scamming the North Korean Golf Tournament

This is really funny… these two Australian guys pretended to be pro golfers and joined the North Korean Golf Open. Here’s a little video:

Daily Photo – Fearing’s in Dallas

Here’s a photo of a really cool bar and an amazing restaurant that’s right inside the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas. I’ve eaten here about half a dozen times and it’s always outrageously good. I even met Dean Fearing and took his photo about eight years before this… even before he had this restaurant. I didn’t know what a big deal he was!

Fearing’s in Dallas

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2020-07-08 17:38:15
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• Camera Make
• Exposure Time
• Aperture
• ISO
• Focal Length
• Flash
• Exposure Program
• Exposure Bias

A few days ago we did a Facebook LIVE show while at The Ritz-Carlton’s Cayman Cookout with one of my biggest creative inspirations – Anthony Bourdain. We talked a whole lot of things including creativity and teaching. Check it out!

Daily Photo – Facebook LIVE with Anthony Bourdain!

And here’s the man! Anthony Bourdain! I took this right after our conversation on Facebook Live. He’s an inspirational dude. He said one thing that is still on his bucket list is to get high with Keith Richards, listen to music, and eat food deep into the night.

Facebook LIVE with Anthony Bourdain!

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2020-07-08 23:45:37
• Camera
• Camera Make
• Exposure Time
• Aperture
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• Exposure Program
• Exposure Bias

The next stop in our crazy family trip around the world was was Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Lots of photo tips as well a model shoot that I typically don’t do. Thanks again to The Ritz-Carlton Resorts for hosting us at these amazing locations!

Vertirama Tip

This is actually a vertirama made up of 3 vertically stacked photos. Whenever I stitch them together in Lightroom, the sky is always overexposed (and unrecoverable with sliders in LR) – the only way to make it look decent was to process each on in LR individually then open them all up in PS for an auto-align with manual blending. It’s kind of a chore to do all of that, and I don’t understand why LR can’t do it on its own.

Daily Photo – Morning from our room

Here’s the view from our room here at the Ritz-Carlton in Fort Lauderdale. I’m not a morning person for sure, so I have to sleep with the curtains open so I wake up more naturally. There’s nothing worse than getting that wake-up call! Plus, I don’t want the whole family to wake up and have screaming kids while I’m trying to get a sunrise photos!

Morning from our room

Photo Information

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• Date Taken2017-01-07 20:44:40
• CameraILCE-7RM2
• Camera MakeSony
• Exposure Time1/80
• Aperture16
• ISO160
• Focal Length24.0 mm
• FlashOff, Did not fire
• Exposure ProgramAperture-priority AE
• Exposure Bias-1.3

We’ve decided to take the videos in a bit of a different direction, hope you like them! 🙂

We had a great time in Naples! In each of these videos, I try to add a few photo tips and tricks as well as show you behind-the-scenes stuff of our family trip around the world for this year. Lots of fun and funny things happen… trying to keep everything in balance! Our first stop was here in Naples Florida. Thanks again to The Ritz-Carlton for hosting us!