An Early Christmas Present For The Daytons (Dec 16, 2012)

Baby Matthew

     On Saturday, December 15th, 2012, my friends Stephanie and Andy welcomed into the world a little bundle of joy.  His name is Matthew and is a cute little fella.  The next day I got the opportunity to shoot some images of him.  Stephanie is my wife's best friend and they were each others maids of honor.  They have been best friends since junior high school.  

     I look forward to taking many more pictures of this little guy in the future.  He really liked the camera and was smiling and looking into the camera the whole time I was taking his picture as you can see.  He even started to get fussy when he was getting changed and then I started taking more pictures and he stopped and turned his head and looked into the camera.

Thank you Matthew for being so cooperative.

Los Angeles Zoo, Los Angeles, CA (May 21, 2012)

Goin' On A Lion Hunt

African Lioness

     On Monday, I went to one of my favorite types of places to visit and photograph, a zoo.  I have been to this zoo, the Los Angeles Zoo many times and have my must see exhibits that I visit every time I go there.  Some of these exhibits are the gorillas, the lions, the chimps, and especially the sumatran tigers.  The tigers are my favorite to photograph cause they are almost always active when I visit and seem to play with all the enrichment that is in there enclosure like their waterfall, little stream, pool, and toys.  

 Sumatran Tiger

     On this trip to the zoo I went with my Mother-In-Law whom hadn't been to the L.A. Zoo since she was a teenager and my Brother-In-Law whom had never been until monday even though they live within an hour of the zoo.  It was a pretty nice day at the because it wasn't too crowded, quite a few of the animals were out and active and so was the sun.  It was also my first time seeing the two new exhibits the zoo has opened with in the last couple of years, the revamped elephant exhibit and the new reptile house.

Giant River Otter

     One "treat" we got to experience while at the zoo was the viewing of three giant river otter pups being feed by the zoo staff in the nursery.  We also got to see two sumatran tiger cubs (one pictured above) playing with one of their parents in the tiger enclosure.  More images from my day at the zoo are in the Los Angeles Zoo May 2012 gallery on my site.

Davey's Locker Whale Watching (May 18th, 2012)

Whale Watching or Watching for Whales?

 California Sea Lion

     Got an e-mail and facebook post from Davey's Locker Whale Watching tours this week talking about how a pod of 7 orca's were spotted in the San Pedro, CA coastal area and that they should be in the Newport Beach area the next day and if you can make it out to go on a tour, you should.  Unfortunately, for me I had to work that day but was still looking at the sighting logs and saw they were still seeing other whales in the area.  Since I have a four day weekend I decided to make a trip down there and see what we could find.  The last couple of trips I have gone on haven't produced much in the way of whales but it is always nice to be out in the sun and on the water.

Pacific Common Dolphin

     So more about today's trip.  Well it started out with promise the sun was shinning, not too much wind, and it was warm.  Then the tour group before us lets us know that they were able to view a couple whales (humpbacks and grey's) which go me excited.  Once we got out past the break water it got a little rough and bumpy.  It didn't take too long for us to come across a couple pods of pacific common dolphin which were very energetic and looking to play in the wake of the boat.  We followed them for a while as we moved up the coast trying to find the whales they had located on the last tour.  By the time we got to the buoy pictured above it was time to head back with no sight of whales.  During the trek up to the buoy I was able to film this little video of the dolphins playing on my phone.  Sound not that great but still amazing to see how fast they can move.

     When we headed back to the south there was still no sight of whales and our time limit out on the water was coming to an end so our captain headed toward the dock.   Then a thought came to mind that these tour should be changed from "whale watching" tours to "watching for whales" tours.  It makes more sense to me because you are out there to see if you can find them which doesn't always happen.  My rationale behind this comes from something my Uncle Lee says about fishing.  Fishing is called fishing because you don't always catch a fish with your pole.  If you did it would be called catching and not fishing.  

     To view a few more images from this trip check out my smugmug gallery Newport Beach Whale Watching May 2012.

Morro Bay, CA (April 12-15, 2012)

A Little Camping We Go

(Morro Bay State Park)

Our Campsite at Sunset

     I am a little behind in posting to my blog due to many reasons but this is the start of me getting caught up.  In April the gang from high school went on our 3rd annual trip to Morro Bay.  This trip happens anywhere from the middle of March to the middle of April.  It is one of the events of the year Ashley (my fiance') and I really look forward to, not only because I get to see the guys from high school but because Morro Bay is such a beautiful place to visit and Ashley and I just love the ocean and the outdoors.  Unfortunately, this year Ashley was unable to go with me on the trip.  

 Montana de Oro Mountains

     This years trip started out with a bad weather forecast of rain for the whole weekend which would of been a first for this trip.  The first year we had some sprinkling the first night but nothing after that and the second year we had awesome weather the whole trip.  On the way up it began to rain and pour, off and on, once we hit the Santa Barbara area.  To say the least that was just the beginning of the fun we were going to have that first night.  Once we got to the campground we hit a break in the weather where we were able to put up our tents and unpack everything without getting wet.  Everything was going good with a drizzle here and there until we went to bed.  At about 4 a.m. a "monsoon" hit our campground and woke me up.  It was cool, crazy, and scary all at the same time.  The wind was howling, my tent was shaking violently, and it was pouring rain so hard that branches from the trees in our campsite were coming down.  Not to mention the thunder was deafening and the lightning lite up the whole sky.  All I tried to do was keep all my stuff away from the walls of the tent so water didn't leak in.  I also tried to just sit there and enjoy mother nature while also not thinking about how badly I had to go to the bathroom right at that moment when I was woke up.

Morro Rock

     The next few days were spent catching up and reliving the gold old days around the campfire.  On the last full day of the trip before we headed back home I went on a little hike and found a couple viewpoints of Morro Rock and played around with framing the rock with it's surrounding scenery.  I also came across some other spots that I will definitely have to revisit when I have more time to observe wildlife and different lighting.   

Morro Rock

     If you are ever up in the Central California coastal area definitely stop by the fishing town and see what it has to offer you.  More images from this weekend can be found in my smugmug gallery Morro Bay, CA in the photoblog catagory.

Huntington Beach Pier, Huntington Beach, CA (Jan 24, 2012)

Huntington Beach Pier
(Really, it is 70 and sunny in the winter here!!!!)

     This weekend while skimming through my Facebook page I saw a post by OrangeCounty.com about the recent surf we have had and were going to have this next week.  The post showed images of that mornings surf and talked about how there were going to be 3 swells back to back this week.  I checked out a few of the reports for Tuesday since it is the next day I would have off.  According to the reports it looked like it was going to be nice in size around high tide in the morning and I made a plan to lose a little sleep and make it down there.  It actually was nice and pretty warm for the day following a rainy day in Southern California.  The only thing that disappointed me was that the surfers seem to just be coasting on the waves and not really carving or performing aerials and other maneuvers.  Here are a few of my images captured today.

     To see more of my surf images from today check out the Huntington Beach Surfing, CA (01/24/12) gallery on my smugmug site.

Shoreline Park, Long Beach, CA (Jan 17, 2012)

Shoreline Park, Long Beach, Ca

     I read an entry from the blog Click it Up a Notch where the author discussed New Year photography goals.  The author recommended doing daily projects, weekly projects, or monthly projects including blogging about your images captured in your project.  I, myself have a busy fulltime job with long hours eliminating daily projects so I chose to do weekly projects.  

     I have lived in Long Beach for three and a half years but never have photographed the city.  So today I decided to go down to Shoreline Park and see what I can capture.  One of my favorite subjects is sunsets and water and have always talked about making a trip here.  Pictured above is a panoramic of Shoreline Village, The Queen Mary, and Shoreline Park at sunset.

     I spent about an hour and a half in the park and surrounding areas and waited for the sun to almost completely go away and the beautiful lights of the area to come to life including that of the lighthouse and aquarium as pictured above.

    I plan to come back down here at least a couple times more before I move this spring, hopefully with a wider variety of images.  To see more images from today check out my Shoreline Park, Long Beach, CA (01/17/12) smugmug page. 

Whale Watching (Jan 7th, 2012)

 

A Sea Lion, Two Ships, and a Bunch of Dolphins

      First post on my new blog and of the new year.  After seeing reports online and tv about the different species of whales that are being spotted along our coast in the last four weeks, I decided it would be a fun little adventure for Ashley and I to go whale watching. I was hoping for a bit of luck on this trip and it started off entertaining. Before we even pushed off we spotted one of the harbor residents, a sea lion, posing for the crowd.

     Outside the break water we spotted only one grey whale on the way back into the harbor. We did get to see a lot of bottle nose dolphins which I have never seen before on a whale watching trip.  Usually we only see a bunch of the pacific common dolphin.

     We also saw the ship that was used in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The ship went by the name of The Interceptor in the movie.  The ship in the foreground is the Interceptor from the Pirates film franchise but its real name is the Lady Washington.  The other ship is the Hawaiian Chieftain.

To see more images from this adventure check out Newport Beach Whale Watching (01/07/12) on my smugmug page.