Leif standing at a popular photo spot in Alabama Hills, a campground / rock formation near Lone Pine. Mt Whitney is in the background  

Alabama Hills - now on my bucket list to come back and camp tucked behind these huge rocks.  

Glad I carpooled up with Leif, he's a great photographer and was the inspiration to take dirt roads around the valley to find this spot.  

It was the weekend of Kevin Tsuchiya's bachelor party up in June Lake. That's north past Mammoth lakes in the Sierra National forest, just east of Yosemite National Park. We drove up Friday and stopped at Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, in the valley between Kings Canykn to the west and Inyo National Forest to the east. I was happy to have an excuse to drive my truck on bumpy dirt roads just for the hunt to find a spot to take photos. An unseasonable cold front was happening during the last couple days leaving snow on all the mountains and also meant that it would begin snowing just as we were arriving in the little town on June Lake. Fortunately the snow wasn't sticking on the ground so we made there without problems. I slept in my truck bed both nights and it would get into the low-mid-20s. Saturday we fished along the Owens River where dirt roads lead to dirt parking lots, you park and walk through the bogs to find a spot away from other serious flyfishers. It felt like a completely different world and lifestyle than I'm ever exposed to so it was a great change of pace.  

Kevin scoping for the best fishing potential in the Owens River

Kevin using a new fly fishing rod along the small river  

Ian let us all crash at his family's June Lake cabin, taught people how to flyfish and shoot his guns - legend. View of and from our fishing setup. Arty played the biggest part planning the whole weekend 

Along the Owens River shooting north towards Mt Gibbs  

A stop at a makeshift shooting range on the way to June Lake in the late afternoon. It's a different world out here, you drive down a dirt road for a mile and there's just trash to shoot at in front of a hill - that's the shooting range. Temps dropped about 20 degrees as soon as the sun was behind the mountains  

I finally got a chance to shoot real starlight.  

It was a learning experience, I need to make sure to use a remote shutter and not shake the camera while it's open for a 30 second exposure. 

Taken from the cabins balcony. It was so cold I would stand out there until my hands hurt, warm up inside, go back outside and try again  

two rolls of film from May were lost in the mail for more than 3 months, a flaw in the 35mm process that further convinced me to buy my digital camera. Anyway they finally made it to the developer. They included photos of the puppy's first weekend, a trip to my dads new boat slip in San Pedro, a sail and Easter in Sierra Madre. 

Days before Sophie turned 8 months  

Mia and I flew up to San Jose early Saturday morning and met with her family to help in any way we could to get James moved into his first year housing at Santa Clara University. We were all super excited and happy be there and see such a big moment.  In the afternoon he had orientation meetings to attend and the rest of us went to Livermore to see my mom, scott Nicole and Sophie at Tenuta Vineyards. It was a perfect few hours to hang out, followed by a really fun dinner in Livermore and then back to San Jose. Sunday we hunt around to run any errands and finish setting up anything we could before catching a flight back home. 

Scott, Nicole and Sophie make for a photogenic family

my friend Connor owns and lives on Sea Casa, his Hunter 31 that he has been preparing for a long open-ended sail down to Panama and East to Florida. For over a year since he made his decision he has been taking on all the precautionary and maintenance projects that this sailboat could ever need. the other weekend he sailed to MDR to a more reputable boat yard for a set of all new standing rigging. Because he's a liveaboard he had to get it back to Redondo while the yard worked on the rigging. I tagged along for a mast-less motor on a weeknight. Weather was great considering the night before was the thunderstorm and the seastate was comfortable enough to make it pretty easy. It made me want to go night sailing. 

A week later he texted me to see if I'd be available for a night sail and I was. The wind was light enough around 6-8 knots so he hoisted up the asymmetrical spinnaker while I handled the lines and steering. We went from 1 knot to 4.5-5 in the light wind. 

Just before leaving San Luis Obispo Sunday night we saw lightning flashes through the fog. A quick check of radar maps let us know we'd be driving through a building thunderstorm for basically the entire way to LA. I was excited, Mia was not. For most of the trip lightning was appearing over the water or on the horizons except during the highway 154 pass which is up the back of the Santa Barbara mountains. Mia was covering her eyes and ears and lightning bolts were striking very close and through heavy tropical rain. When we got back to Redondo around 11:30 Mia wanted to watch the weather because on radar, it was out safely beyont Catalina Island. We grabbed our cameras and phones and watched from the main channel and then out on the breakwall. I got lucky a few times with using a manual focus lens and 1 second shutter speeds. 

Neighbors project vehicles  

Took a drive up to SLO for a quick weekend trip, marking Mia's brother James's last weekend before moving north for college. We all visited the horses both days and took a walk with the puppy Sunday morning, played tennis, had lots of fun. 

a stranger having and easy Sunday morning 

Rosie has gotten so much bigger than the last time I saw her, she's 5.5 months now. 

Willow is perpetually stuck on whichever side of the house that Rosie isn't in  

A four day weekend, I went to Cabrillo and hung out on my dads boat, went to a birthday pool-party in downtown LA at Mia's friends insanely nice apartment complex, went to Sierra Madre to see Mia's family and was surprised by this bear family.  

This was the only time I turned on my camera.  

I grabbed my 42-150mm lens and zoomed in as close as possible as fast as possible. When the cubs went into the neighbors yard for the small waterfall pool, I crossed the yard and went up some outside stairs to get a better angle. 

There's another heat wave. I got home just in time for sunset and a sailboat race finish. The weather felt monsoonal and dumped some heavy rain drops on me whiling driving home but fortunately made for a great sunset. 

Long 5 second exposure using a railing to keep the camera still. 

A new powerboat on the dock... I don't think he's used the anchor for a while.  

The sun finally showed through late on Sunday while the rest of the weekend was cool and cloudy, apparently there's a heat wave going on everywhere else  

The photos above are all from attaching my old 28mm wide angle lenses to the new mirrorless camera. This allows for fun of manual focus and the lens acts more like a 56mm (2x) due to the sensor size of the digital camera. It also looks rad. 

Got some small projects done and looked more into my instrument panel wiring as well as organizing the aft port storage. Reinstalled the autopilot around the wheel back on the steering pedestal. 

practicing night photos again 

Sunday we took a minute to stop by the inside breakwall 

Here's what Mia was looking at  

On Friday I left work and went bodysurfing on the way home, Conditions were bad and felt sharky so I hurried home to take some photos before it got dark 

one of the only boat projects I've done lately was putting a bug screen up around our companionway to allow breeze in while keeping mosquitoes out 

Saturday we went with friends to a multiple band music show at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. One of the members of the hosting radio show took a photo with me. 2 years ago he waged a small social media feud against me because I pointed out that he makes this same ridiculous face in every photo. He didn't know that I was that guy from 2 years ago when he posed for this photo and I knew he was going to make the face