If you ever get the chance to go!

Last month I had the chance to travel to Morocco and shoot for a client.What an awesome country!  I think I could shoot there for two years and not run out of material.  Great textures, culture, and people.  One drawback, with the muslim culture, no one wants to be photographed!  We had some time to kill in Marrakech, and here are a few shots literally from the hip.  I put my camera on autofocus, attached a cable release and hung it off my left shoulder as we walked around the old city. It was a bit like Christmas morning editing what I had shot without looking through the viewfinder.

My Feet are Sore!

Wow what a Day!

One Week ago at this time my wife and I had just finished hiking the Bright Angel trail from the South Rim to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It was a 12 mile round trip that took us 6 hours, with a few rest and water stops along the way. If you haven't hiked into the Canyon I highly recommend it; except with my wife. Halfway up the wall, on the switch backs, 3 hours into the return, I had to keep asking her to slow down and wait up!

Hey, thats me on the left!

A couple of weeks ago I got the chance to travel to Minneapolis and meet the Dalai Lama!

Well, actually I was shooting some video for the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, and their Compassion Project, (I'm just getting a few things in place before we rolled here) but I did get introduced by Dr. Ritchie Davidson, so I can say that "I've met The Dalai Lama". I hear he's got a pretty tight schedule though, so I don't think we'll be taking in any Brewers games together or anything like that.

Anyway, pretty interesting stuff! Dr. Davidson is doing a study, including Buddhist monks, and has found that people who practice compassion, actually have physically healthier brains than their counterparts. The Trout Museum has promoted this concept along with the Appleton school district, through a huge exhibit where kids were asked to design their idea of compassion. There are over 10,000 pieces "tiling" the inside of the Museum. Awesome stuff! heres the link http://www.troutmuseum.org/compassion.htm you should check it out.

Really!!!!!!!!! Its almost May!

In a little over 8 weeks the days start getting shorter. Oh well, I guess deep fried cheese, ice fishing, and the Packers make up for it!!

I'm Going In!

Were just wrapping up a day of fishing in Florida last week when

I noticed some splashing around, about a hundred yards away from our boat on the Gulf of Mexico. I had a pretty good idea it was manatees so we slowly chugged over to them an found five of them playing along the edge of a deep hole! Once they noticed us the started poking their heads out of the water and were very curious about the boat. After about

15 minutes,

my wife announced she "couldn't stand it anymore and was going in". We swam with them for about a half hour scratching their bellies and looking face to face with the 2,000 pound animals. What a Blast!

Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

Man am I itching to ride!!!!!!!!!!

-and then my good buddy Jon Stubb sends me this link-

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/sports_blog/2011/03/experience-a-chilean-thrill-ride.html

Its a helmet-cam shot during a Chilean mountain bike race through the streets of Valparaiso.

Make sure you view it set on full screen. Nuts! If that dog swerves to the left your dead!

Oh well, I guess a virtual ride is better than nothing this time of year.

What planet are we on anyway?-

A few weeks ago my wife and I were ice climbing up in the UP. With temperatures in the mid-30's the second day, we decided the ice was pretty sketchy, and figured a hike along Lake Superior would be safer. Northeast of Sand Point we found a bunch of ice pans floating in the calm water of the lake, and it made for a surreal scene.

The pans form as ice breaks from the shoreline and then gets tumbled around in the lake when winter storms pass through the area. Just one more cool way mother nature creates and recreates the ever changing landscape.

How crazy is technology today Anyway?!

The week of New Years I was taking a few days off to do some ice climbing with my family up in the U.P. I had a request from a client to do a conference call on Wednesday afternoon. Sure I said, "I guess I can get a cell signal out of there."

It was a bit surreal sitting at the base of a frozen waterfall, on the edge of Lake Superior, 200 miles north of Appleton and having a 3 way conference call with the folks at Ideas that Deliver and their client in Neenah. - If Ernest Shackleton could see me now - can I get a pizza up here!

Say its not so!!!!!!!!!!

Well, cash-for-clunkers was just to good of deal to pass up so the mighty Bronco is on its was to being melted down and turned into 99¢ Chinese screwdrivers. Hmmmmmm, nearly 5 grand for a vehicle I payed $14,000 for 21 years ago and have just shy of 300,000 miles on; - pretty good return even though I did feel like I was stabbing an old friend in the back as I dropped it off at the dealership!

I think the Honda my wife is now driving would fair better in a crash since the whole left side of the Bronco was held together with 5/8 inch bolts where the body and floor had rusted apart. I know, call me a stickler for safety!

Well some fun Bronco facts for all who are lamenting its passing of an era. I bought the thing when I was 25 years old, so I owned it for just short of half my life, or 21 of the 30 years I've been driving. We bough it on 8/8/88 in Ocala Florida for $13,900. When we traded it in at the dealership to be crushed into tiny bits of rust, it had been driven 295,000 miles. Thats just short of 12 times around the earth or the distance to the moon and about a quarter of the way back. I did 101 oil changes on it using 126 gallons of oil (all Castoral GTX, (I wouldn't think of using anything else) I burned approximately 14,750 gallons of gas in it, or about 1/2 of a standard railroad tank car - at a cost of about $26,000.

I went through about 28 tires, 3 water pumps, 3 power window motors 4 heater blower motors, 2 transmissions, 4 radiators, 2 windshields, numerous mufflers, brake pads, U-joints and nuts and bolts and Two ice scrapers.

The starter was 21 year old and original! -they don't make cars like they used to ):

I always try to picture it as kayaking in molten lead-

'cause at these temps, if you go over, your pretty much dead. - as a friend of mine puts it "always wear a lifejacket, it makes it much easier to find the body"

 

Sure is pretty though.  Had a great day last week - first time splashing the boat in '09.  I ran up and down Little Lake Butte des Morts and did the limbo under the 441 bridge.

Great cure for my cabin fever!  Just need some weather in the 80's now! 

That's What You get For Bragging! That's, what my wife said.

Ok, so we're driving home late Sunday morning and I was so proud of the Bronco turning over 290,000 miles that I had to do a shot of the odometer.  I mean, you know, that's like almost 12 times around the planet not to mention about 50 thousand miles farther than it is to the moon. 

Three hours later, Lori and I are scoping out ice free areas on Little Lake Butte des Morts and I have two Sea Kayaks on the roof of the truck.  I go to make a tight U-turn and end up with one front wheel pointing one way and the other wheel going the other way.  Ahhhhh!, broken tie rod end,

 not good.  I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get this thing home. - might be a tough tow with two 17 ft. boats over hanging the roof.  Fortunately, I always have a few yards of nylon rope in the truck, so I managed to reposition the tie rod and hold it in place with two half hitches and a finely done timber hitch, if I do say so myself.  Back on the road- well, maybe.  We limped home at about 10 miles per hour; I was thinking that the front wheels going in opposite directions at highway speed might not be a good thing.  

Ha, and my Mom said watching all those Magiver episodes would rot my brain!

Frozen Fish!

I probably have the only Bronco II on the road in Wisconsin with a snook sticker on the back of it. -Ok I probably have the only Bronco II on the road in Wisconsin but who's counting!-

Anyone who's serious about saltwater sport fishing in the south puts a sticker on the back of their pickup (usually right next to their sticker of the confederate flag) showing what species of game fish they pursue. After catching a nice snook in the 26 inch range, while visiting my good buddy Joe Malher in Florida, we figured we'd keep with tradition and get the Bronco outfitted.

80 degrees on the Florida coast or -8 windchill in Wisconsin. --Hmmmmm who says those southerners are slow?

Sweet!

-its the coveted Tempt Printing video that I worked with the dudes from Stir in Milwaukee on. Their client, Tempt Printing, wanted a quick online video for a new high speed printer they just imported from England. We mounted a camera from the rafters directly above the high buck machine (read here lots of duct tape used as backup!) and triggered it with a remote. We shot the polaroid sequence in studio and edited the whole thing in our slick and fashionable editing suite here at Image. -turned out kinda' cool- and its always dang hard to go wrong with banjo music!

Hard to believe a couple of years have gone by!

In '07 around this time I was in Joshua Tree National Park shooting for Schneider National with the great Zach Magoon of Kemp-Goldberg fame.

After surviving a night in the lovely Safari Motor Inn and waking up to 17 degrees with no heat, (I recall waking up about 2 AM and emptying the contents of my pack over the top of my bed for insulation) we had a great shoot.  In the afternoon, we had a few hours to beat around the park; its an awesome place.  

Check it out if you ever have the chance.  Something like the largest gathering of Joshua trees in the solar system are there.

Here are a few shots that don't do it justice!

Hey forget about that Florida vacation kids, I have a better Idea for Christmas vacation!

Ah, thats my wife on the left, I think you can see why I love her; and she looks just as good in a

 bikini!

This would be one of our daughters making her way up "The Curtains" in Munising MI.  Child abuse?  I beg to differ!  she's been climbing ice since she was 5 and loves it.

Nothing like hanging out with friends and family in a warm and funky little cabin after a day on the ice. Ok, so maybe the tryptophan in the turkey dinner did made our son a bit goofy!

Proof positive that art directors lives are more valuable than photographers!

After shimming up about 7 stories on a construction crane in Minnesota, I got a great overview of a building project, and a very encouraging thumbs up from Art director Jon Stubb!

Break from winter? Conch Chowder anyone!?

Life doesn't get better than hanging out at High Tides Snack Jack on A1A in Flagler Beach.  We used to grab a beer and a bowl of chowder at this funky beach bar, (that was probably built in the early sixties) after a day of sun and surf.  All that black in the background is the Atlantic and the place sits on stilts about twenty yards from the beach.  The walls are nothing but screens and you could see people crusing down the beach through the gaps in the floor boards.

I had a shoot down in Orlando about a year ago and did the hour drive over to the place to grab dinner.  One of the few authentic places on the planet in a world of prepackaged monotony!