This site is my personal project, wherein I post content for my friends. There is a bunch of stuff here, including my photographs and recommendations from travel and life in general. It's what I think (or have done), what I've learned or where I've been, and what people ask me about most frequently. 

Please take a moment to sign my Guest Book (link is above)--then enjoy! 

Self-portrait for Advanced Photography class at Paul's Photo

These things get more competitive--and fun--each year.  A number of people asked how I put this together so here goes:

Nikon D3, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 24mm, ISO 200, manual mode, f/6.3 at 1/200.

Photo taken in the family room at Jennifer and Duane's house.  Duane set up a rack from which we hung our black muslin backdrop.  Having come home from the Advanced Photography class white elephant gift exchange at the Annual Holiday Extravaganza with that silly shirt (it's actually sold by Playboy!) I decided to use it for this shot, playing the part of the Playboy photographer who got too frisky with the Playmate candidate.  We clamped my SB900 flash on the rack and bounced it off the ceiling.  We put one of my SB800 flashes on a stand with a softbox on it about 1' off the floor and 1' away from my right elbow.  We put another SB800 flash on the floor with a Honl speed grid on it aimed at my hair, about 1' away.  I put an SU800 trigger on my D3 to fire all three flashes and Duane took the shot.  I'm holding my D2X so I'd have a camera of some kind. 

That's Jennifer's leg and that's her Colt Python.

Duane printed a copy after I emailed the file to him.  Jennifer heard a shriek coming from Duane's office Friday night and rushed in to find Brooklyn and Christopher holding the photo, very upset, and Brooklyn blurted out, "Mommy, someone's trying to kill Papa!".

One of my favorite cooking magazines devotes its entire issue to Los Angeles and our food.  Great stuff inside. 

   Half of the members of the Board of Directors at the Palos Verdes Bay Club have apparently lost their minds.

"Over the last decade Earth's temperature has not warmed, yet every model (there are many) predicted a significant increase in global temperatures for that time period. If the climate models cannot get it right for the past 10 years, why should we trust them for the next century? [The leaked email at the heart of] Climategate reveals how predetermined political agendas shaped science rather than the other way around. It is high time to question the true agenda of the scientists now on the hot seat and to bring skeptics back into the public debate"
-- Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center, predicting in the Houston Chronicle the coming collapse of the global warming consensus.

"I don't make jokes.  I just watch the government and report the facts."
-- Will Rogers

"Let Wall Street have a nightmare and the whole country has to help them back in bed again."
-- Will Rogers

"Suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a member of Congress...but then I repeat myself."
-- Mark Twain

"There are two things the public should not be allowed to see being made:  sausage and politics."
-- Various, including Otto Von Bismarck

"My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician.  And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference."
-- Harry Truman 

"What this country needs is more unemployed politicians."
-- Edward Langley

"You can always count on politicans to do the right thing when there's nothing else left for them to do."
-- Jack Sunderland

"In a democracy, people get the government they deserve."
-- de Tocqueville

"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess.  They always run out of other people's money."
--Margaret Thatcher