You don’t wanna know.

Poppy took me to one of her favorite places to frolic, about four miles up the coast.

Every time I see pelicans, or flamingos for that matter, I think back to my favorite Tony Montana quote:

I feel for the San Francisqueños who do this every summer.

Finally got a cell phone that can take a decent picture.  On the jobsite, Solano County.

Took a summer Friday off to romp Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park with Kayla, Ruby and Poppy, sans weekend crowd.  Fun in the sunny sun sun, speaking of which apparently isn’t too down with Santa Cruz this summer.

Yes, that is a member of one of the few albino redwoods in existence (<24).

…that means “the nest”.  This is the nest.

I might as well stay on this little culinary trip I’m on…I stumbled upon this posting on The Selby (a pretty damn cool site) about a taco shop in the outer island extents of NYC (Queens I think). Now it doesn’t look like anything authentic, and it appears to be a predominantly hipster joint, but the food at Rockaway Taco looks a whole lot like some of my favorite foods to whip up. Fresh produce + Mexicanish food on the east coast, sounds like something I would seek out while visiting my Big Apple Little Sister in the mexi-depraved NYC.

Celebrated my birthday at a little restaurant in Los Gatos called Manresa. It was recommended to me by a friend in the culinary arts. I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into over there, but they threw together some works of art.  Turns out the headchef, David Kinch, beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef, if that means anything.  The produce all comes from a small farm in Ben Lomond that is owned by the restaurant.  Here are a few of the courses:

Abalone+pig trotters (feet)

Lamb.

Beef.

Duck.

Fruity dessert.

Chocolaty dessert.

Spent the last work week down at a primo jobsite in the interior wilderness of Big Sur.  This was my fourth summer on the job here, and I always look forward to it.   The per diem is minor, the bugs are intense, and I sleep under the stars next to a camp fire in the surprisingly cold June nights, but I’ll take a paid week down here any day.  It was nice to have Pops with me this time around, and she dug it too.

This is the backside of Pico Blanco, the highest peak in Big Sur (you can’t see the peak from here).  When I return in September I’m going hike to the top and spend the night.

A view down the Little Sur River valley.  This is a perch that I usually drive up to to catch a little late evening sun, cook dinner, and sleep under the stars.

This same perch was torched in the 2008 Basin Complex fire.  This here was from 2 years ago a few months after the fire.

The wildflowers are raging in the post-burn chaparral after a heavy rain year.

A similar photo from two years back.

Pops enjoying the remains of the day.

Just Pops and I.

The river rat enjoying a swimming hole on the Little Sur River.

The attention to detail in this stop-motion movie is top notch. I can’t imagine how much time this would take. I read an interview about the artist and he aimed to shoot 15 frames per second. I still don’t know how he does all the aerials, or keeps his footprints out of the sand…

Ah the street markets of the orient.  You can find most anything in these places, but my point is not to gross anyone out due to my own lack of cultural relativism (that’s going way back to a cultural anthropology course I took in college).  Most of the marketpeople get up at 3-4am to buy their products from the farmers outside of the city, come to markets and sell their goods for 12 hours, and then snag a little sleep before they do it again, and again, and again.  Some are sleepy (to the point of missing sales), some are beaming with smiles.

Things get slippery at the seafood market

Just a few eggs to choose from.

Or you can have your fresh chicken delivered…

photo by Kayla

On a recent cross-country trip, my Southwest flight had stops in three of the most heavily hit areas in the sub-prime mortgage housing crisis mess: Las Vegas, Phoenix and the Inland Empire of southern California (Ontario). The effects were evident from the provided aerial prospective of my cramped window seat. Construction in the massive cookie-cutter developments appeared to have come to a grinding halt, with clusters of homes clinging together in vast expanses of empty building pads and roads to nowhere.

It wasn’t all a reminder of the economic status quo…

A little intermission from the China photos as I am out in Rhode Island for my baby sis’ college graduation. Lobsta, chowda, popped collas, pies, and colonial mansions. Good times in Providence. Congrats on graduating Lu! Now get off to Manhattan and represent!  And Happy Birthday Kayla!

On a side note, I watched one episode of American Idol this year, and I really only remember one performance that show. And I happened to bump into this guy, Amadeo, at a Warwick Italian joint:

In the meantime, I like the looks of this.

Aside from my destinationless meanderings, we did visit some of the marquee, and even B-list tourist sites. We were not alone. The old American family vacation in the station wagon does not exist in Chinese domestic tourism. Instead, it’s jump on a bus with 50 other family, friends and strangers, throw on matching hats, and precipitously follow a blabbering guide with a flag and a megaphone through the narrow corridors of ancient villages. I bet they learned a lot though. I learned a lot too…if a place is said to be touristy, then prepare for tour group invasion 8am to 4pm.

Feature a village like Hongcun in a homegrown international hit like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (see below)…madness ensues, rain or shine.  We were lucky enough to stay in the town so we had the place to ourselves in the morning and evening (more on this later).

I spent a few days wandering the high-rise sprawl of Shanghai.  I would often wind up out in the boondocks, out of the westernized “comfort zone” with only a few scribbled characters being my only means of communication besides “hello”, “no”, and “cold beer” (cold was key, or else you would get room temperature beer).  It was pretty amazing to jostle among the millions going about their daily lives, albeit I did not go unnoticed.  The locals could stare deep down into your soul with no shame, sometimes out of curiosity and sometimes out of disapproval.  The easiest way to break these stares was to flash a big smile and a ni hao, and then for the most part you were best friends.  Here are some of the concrete and some of the organic.

So about a year ago I was in China with my folks visiting my sister who at the time was studying in Shanghai.  About a year later, I’ve only promised to post pictures and haven’t actually done the posting, mainly because the task of editing down all the photos was a gargantuan one.  Here and there, by and by, I’ve finally widdled it down to a select few. I will post a series of semi-organized thematic photos rather than a massive slideshow, where I will hopefully be able to maintain your attention and tell a better story.

The majority of the trip was spent in Shanghai, an evolving metropolitan city drenched in Chinese and foreign imperial history.  Almost 20 million humans live there.  Here the slimmest sliver of the populace.

Lights of an Oakland street scene, under the banner of jack in the box heaven.

I haven’t done much flash photography in the past as I’ve always enjoys the aesthetics and challenges of natural lighting.  However, after seeing some work by Jonathan Saunders, I had to figure out how made some of these images.  So I did a little internet reading (as how all my photoeducation has been absorbed minus a few boooks), bought a flash and some materials at Home Depot, and built me a ring flash.  It basically consists of a flash connected to a sync cord that fires into a shoplight and is diffused by a chefmate cutting mat.  This is what it looked like since at the first testing (I’ve since removed the binder clips and cleaned it up for a more “professional” look with zip ties [ha!]).  Their purpose is to provide direct even lighting, thus filling nearly all shadows of your subject, and also come with the signature eye reflection and cool halo around your subject.  Anyways, this thing was pretty fun to build and use and cost me a fraction of what they cost pre-built.

Oh, and it works pretty well for macro.  Here’s some shots from my backyard.

Thoroughly embedded in the grind, one must take advantage of thy weekends.  The friends, dogs and I had some recent fun ones:

This is the trailer for a surf flick I’ve been waiting to be released for some time. Looks like its finally going to happen June 15th. It’s the sequel to Sipping Jetstreams, and provides something fresh in the surf movie world. Focusing more on the travel, people, culture, and the beauty of surf travel, rather than the more common high performance, onshore, overhead sunlit contemporary surf porn. The film is a collaboration between prolific surf filmmaker Taylor Steele and photographer Dustin Humphries (D. Hump). This sequel features travels to India, Vietnam, Iceland, and more, all destinations on my map as well. Needless to say, I’m pumped.

Afternoon sun through the Japanese maple in my front yard

Sunday at the colorful Santa Cruz Flea Market. I’ve always wanted to bring the camera here as the people watching is amazing. It takes a trained eye to sift through the heaps of junk and find the occasional treasure. I still get overwhelmed at times but found myself a nice push mower for $15! Here’s a few.

video by kayla editing by meeeeeeeeeee

(beware of length and cheesiness)

A crisp Saturday morning bicycle ride along the pride of the westside, aka West Cliff Drive. No finer time than the morning to cruise the cliffs, before the weight of humanity ascends upon our 2.5 mile miracle. But on this particular morning, the speckles of early rising humanity were really the most interesting thing going on (besides our red tailed hawk friend of course).

Went up to Berkeley for a Saturday last weekend…

…Bailey puppy-sat pops…

…shared some vistas with college touring high school families (photo: kayla)…

…and some locals.  Was a flippin awesome spring day hangin with my kayla cakes…

…and Megan likes milkshakes.

Many call this beach “dog beach”, and I guess there is good reason because (after some litigious efforts) dogs run wild after 4pm here.  However I grew up with it being called “Its Beach”, a name more fitting in my opinion due to the creatures lurking here (and I’m not just talking about dogs).  You’re bound to find some interesting folks down here, and the waves are a different story.  Double-up wedges off the point, slabby shorepound aka bodysurfer’s delight, offshore reefs, and the place is truly awe-inspiring mayhem during big swells.  Here a few from canine time:

So I’ve been quite involved in the canine community as of late…puppy class, dog beaches, dog sitting, etc, and I’ve met some funny pups along the way. Here are a few:

Maya

Buck

Ruby and Poppy.

Congrats to my little girl she graduated puppy school today.  Then she proceeded to jump out of my car and prance around the Costco parking lot.  Daddy’s proud.

Last October we were socked in with fog.  Tide was too high for town so I drove up the coast and couldn’t see Jaques from the 1.  I stopped at Scott’s and there were only two cars parked on the shoulder, but I couldn’t see anything past the lagoon mouth.  I said “what the hell, at least it won’t be crowded”, grabbed the Jenky fish, and paddled out to glassy 6-8 ft bowly peaks with one other guy out in a white shoreless wonderland.  The nearly flat rocker of the Jenky fish led to some sketchy airdrops, but it was definitely a memorable day.  I paddled back in a few hours later just as it started to clear up and blow a little bit, and there were 8 guys getting ready to paddle out.  There was also a spaniard walking around with one of those waist shot medium format cameras taking pictures of seagulls, so I stopped and talked to him for a second, brushed up on my lispy castellano, and then he asked to take my picture.  No it was not flirting, I don’t think. He e-mailed it to me yesterday.

Photo by Aleix. See his website here: www.aleixplademunt.com
Nice hair.

Gracias Aleix

Here are some old pictures from a small village I visited in 2006…about 120 km north of Concepcion, the 2nd largest city in Chile and closest city to the epicenter of the 8.8 terremoto.  We arrived right after dawn, in time to see how the local fishermen get their boat from the lagoon to the sea.  There are very few motorized vehicles in this pueblito, as they relied mostly on oxen to do the grunt work.  This caballero has carved out a nice little niche in the local economy by renting the services of his studly oxen.