Hi All. I'm almost a week into my six week trip, and am writing from Cinque Terra, Italy. Yesterday we were on Lake Como, before that Milan, and we started in Venice. So, its been a busy week.

Tomorrow we leave for Florence, but are stopping in Pisa for a quick trip to the leaning tower. I heard from a fellow traveler that you can climb up the inside now, so that's what we're going to try to do. Last time I visited the inside was closed off. We did climb to the top of the Duomo in Milan, which was a thrill and had a beautiful view.

I can't process any pictures until I get home sometime in mid-November, so I'll post the pictures then. I'm keeping detailed notes everyday, so I have lots to write about. I just wanted to drop a note and let everyone know we're having a great time, and I will post more about the trip soon...

Villa Riviera, Long Beach, CA

Two weeks from now, I'll be boarding a plane headed to Venice, Italy. From there, it takes us about two weeks to go through Florence, Milan, Lake Como, Cinque Terra, Pisa, Rome, Naples, Capri, and back up to Rome.

44 hours later, I arrive in New Zealand for another two weeks. I land in Auckland, and road trip from the north island to the south island, continue to Lake Wanaka where my brother and his wife live, then to Christchurch, then back home.

I've always said that 50% of traveling is the anticipation of the trip. That's one of my favorite aspects of the entire process. You get to dream about all the amazing places you'll be visiting, research what adventures you'll take, choose which cities to stay at, talk to friends that have been there, and the list goes on.

My last hike through Italy has mostly fallen into oblivion due to a poor memory and unfortunate circumstances. I left my backpack in a taxi cab. It happened around two weeks into a month long excursion around Europe, and I had just switched memory cards. As you might have guessed, the memory card, with all my photos, was in the backpack... along with the camera's battery charger. I came home with almost no pictures, but with a big smile on my face.

Live & learn. Two weeks into this trip, my pictures get sent home on a hard drive, memory cards get flushed, and I start again. I hope to have all of my photos in two places at once while traveling, and come home with some beautiful shots.

After the next three two week adventures, a smile is a foregone conclusion.

A few weeks ago I made a promise to myself; by September 1st, I would have launched both of my pending projects. If this was baseball, I'd be batting 500.

Travel plans have a way of sneaking up on you, and October 5th is doing its best to keep up the tradition. Come Monday, it will officially be 1 month until I leave for Italy, then New Zealand, and back stateside in November.

This weekend, I, unfortunately, have to work. Not that life really cares, cause it simply goes on without your best interests involved. If only we could go back to school, when 65% was almost a passing grade, and you could convince the teacher to pass you.

One thing I am working on in my own life, is to find balance. In years gone by, I would have spent every waking minute at work. However, I have seen what that does to my life, how it effects me personally, professionally, and physically. I refuse to return to my frame of mind at the beginning of this blog, and simply start over.

I am working today, of course, but not until after I took a long run along the shoreline, spoke with my friends, and worked out some issues that made me loose my focus today.

For example, I just finished processing this picture (was not taken with my hi-def camera), and how cute is she? The child of a long-time friend of mine.

Far too much time has passed since my blog saw a new post. Life for me has settled back into its usual course of work, with spouts of rendering my next big adventure, if only in my mind. Lately my schedule has enjoyed a healthy balance, more than I was previously accustomed to.

Last weekend was spent with my Dad in Catalina, a self-imposed vacation from the daily grind of a computer screen. We worked on the house together, went to our favorite eateries, refueled our relaxation tanks and had a lot of fun just simply catching up with one another.

I'm presently in the middle of a big push to finish my current projects before September 1st. After that, life gets a little hectic again, with welcomed appreciation. The salmon are about to run, and plans are in the works for me to fly to Washington for some fishing around mid-September. It all depends on the fish.

October 5th is my jump off date. I leave LA bound for Italy. After over 16 hours, with just enough layovers in Detroit and Paris, I'll be tracking down my bags at the Marco Polo airport, about five miles north of my final destination. Searching for a bus into the heart of the floating city is no stranger to me, but still I expect complications. Venice is one of only two places I will have a hotel reservation. More about that later.

Italy's itinerary is penciled in, with the eraser close at hand. Should any city require more attention than anticipated, my travel buddy and I will adjust our plans accordingly. Truth be told, I have visited most of our expected destinations on previous trips, but those memories encompass 16 years, not all of which I remember.

Italy is a beautiful, historic, endlessly interesting country. No one trip is enough. Yet, this is not where my adventure ends.

October 23rd is the beginning of what I expect to be the longest day of my life. I will be traveling west from Rome, headed to Auckland, New Zealand. From departure in Italy to arrival in New Zealand takes 44 hours and 15 minutes, covers 15,192 miles, and spans 15 time zones. That is over 61% of the Earth's circumference on this one flight, well over half way around the world.

Hotel reservations are not built into this trip. Hostels, as I grow older, are unfortunately not an option. In Italy the plan is to show up and bargain to the best of our ability. In New Zealand, we rented a "Jucy Van" and a road trip will ensue towards Wanaka, crossing over from the north island to the south.

I should arrive back home around mid-November. Unfortunately, my time at my brother's house in New Zealand has, according to this schedule, been cut short. Those plans may change, but for now, I need to focus on work.

Our Corner

No. Not that kind of street walking. I was in Minnesota with a friend, walking to a local bridge for some pictures together. This scene was captured hand held using a three shot +-2 exposure. I went a little cartoonish with the processing, I admit. Click on the image for a full screen.

Its amazing how quickly different skills fade. I have not processed a lot of HDR photos lately, and am still sorting through the pictures from Texas. After getting a little frustrated with portrait shots today, I needed to take a break and have some fun.

A happy puppy found in Arlington, Texas

This past week I was flown to Dallas, Texas, to shoot some pictures for a commercial laundry equipment distributor. During a visit to one of their local coin laundry locations, we found this cute pup hanging out in the back of a pick-up truck.

This was one of only a few personal images I captured, despite having taken over 700 pictures in roughly 72 hours. That represents over 20 gigs of data I now have to sort through and whittle down to something useful. After working from dawn to dust each day, the last thing I wanted to do was go hiking around town with twelve and a half pounds of camera gear on my back and a tripod slung over my shoulder.

One of the goals of the trip was to take pictures of each employee and record personal biography information for their new website. I found its easier to be behind the camera than in front of the lens, but if you're relaxed and confident, your subject will be too. I spent nearly a half hour with each team member, and only a few minutes actually taking pictures.

I admit it was a challenge to find the sexy side of laundromats. Bikini models would have helped, but that was beyond the budget. At one site, a handyman happened to be on location, so I snagged his latter and got some good high-perspective shots. A very handy trick I learned from Scott while in Costa Rica was to lay the camera on the ground, and those shots turned out to be very dramatic. Or, as dramatic as a washing machine can be :)

Dexter Dryer Wall

My hosts were overwhelming gracious, and knew all the best food stops in the area. Their hospitality was especially appreciated during the last day of my trip. I was scheduled to fly out of DFW around noon, but due to an approaching thunderstorm, my flight was cancelled. This is the second time in the past month that an airline has failed to keep my originally scheduled flights.

To complicate things further, the local transport authority temporarily closed the only freeway between our office in Garland, and the airport in Dallas. Traveling south towards the Dallas airport, there is a section where three main freeways converge. A fuel tanker decided to have an accident right at this location, which turned everything within a 5 mile radius into a parking lot. My client and I were stuck, in the rain, hail, and lighting, for over two hours while we waited for the wreck to clear.

Once I arrived at the airport, I found that my flight was now expected to leave 8 hours later. I also would not be flying back to Orange County, but rather to Burbank, an hour north by car from SNA. It quickly become one of those days that you must sit back, relax, and try to roll with whatever happens.

After three gate changes, and nearly 11 hours, the plane finally rolled back from the gates, and we were on our way. Needless to say, the passengers and crew were a little cross-eyed by this point. As the plane started to lift, several of us burst into cheer followed by a sarcastic round of applause.

Hi Mom. I hope you have a great day and a fun time in Catalina. Try not to work too much and enjoy you're day :-)

Continuing with the pandas, I found this panda walking his own panda trying to sell pandas on the boardwalk yesterday... Panda!

I hope the boardwalk will be as busy today as it was yesterday, although you wouldn't know it from most of my pictures. Somehow I managed to capture several photos with nobody in them. Just happened to be right at that moment.